Hi there!
The usual format for this channel is a video focusing heavily on the music, with information
limited to little cards that you can read.
It’s not uncommon to find a comment wishing that I’d talk instead.
In the case of Rick Fox, I think his story would work in a narrated form,
so I’m going to try that here.
Consider this a sort of Retelling of my last video.
So, our story starts in 1990.
David Bowie is in the middle of his Sound & Vision World Tour,
and Rick Fox is performing on keys.
In May of 1990, the tour lands in California.
Also in California: Jeff Spangenberg.
This dude’s career became an absolute roller coaster,
but at this time, he was simply looking into starting his own development studio:
Iguana Entertainment.
Details are a little murky, but it seems like Jeff went to one of these concerts, saw Rick
playing keys, and decided “that’s the guy I want writing music for my video games”.
There was a bit of a delay, since Rick had to finish touring, and the early days
of Iguana Entertainment were kind of rough.
Jeff and his team ported a single game before deciding the cost of living in California
was too high and making a move to Texas.
Rick came with them, and in 1993, finally saw a release with his music in it:
Aero the Acro-Bat.
This wiki says that he scored two games before Aero, but I can’t find any corroborating
evidence for this.
Anyway,
Aero wasn't specifically intended to become a mascot for its publisher, Sunsoft,
but it came out during the age of mascot platformers, and was read as such at the time.
Sunsoft embraced this for a little while.
Overall, I’d describe the reception to this first game as “mildly positive”,
with review scores tending towards "it's an average platformer".
The SNES and Genesis version were developed in parallel and released at about the same time,
and generally received the same scores in each magazine review, with one exception:
the SNES version always scored a little bit higher because of its music.
It features the same arrangements as the Genesis version, but the instrumentation simply
sounded better when Rick was given samples to work with.
Here, compare these two.
Museum 4 from the Megadrive,
versus the SNES version.
This applies to its eventual sequel as well,
which led to this pair of reviews in Diehard Gamefan that I just adore.
Anyway, before we actually talk about that sequel,
I want to go over the other genre of games that Rick worked with:
ports.
Side Pocket was the name of an 1986 arcade game, which was heavily upgraded for a Megadrive
"port"
in 1993.
The differences are so vast it may as well have been an entirely new game.
This included an all new soundtrack.
A year later, Iguana ported the Megadrive version to the SNES.
This port was faithful this time, but it continued the tradition of redoing the entire soundtrack,
which led to some of Rick’s smoothest work.
The SNES and Genesis versions of The Pirates of Dark Water have completely different music as well,
but for a new reason: they’re actually two completely different games,
developed in parallel but by completely different companies.
The SNES was a beat 'em up which was viewed, at the time, as a less good version of Streets of Rage.
It has some energetic SNES rock music to match the action.
The Genesis version went for a sidescrolling
action adventure style, to slightly better fanfare.
Its music is generally much more somber, and honestly one of the best ways anyone could
have leaned into the FM sound of the Genesis.
That said, it does sometimes reach into more energetic styles,
which is less perfect, but still a great sound if you ask me.
But back to Aero.
The first game was indeed successful enough to get a sequel, and it improved on
basically everything about the game.
It’s sadly kind of overlooked, as the “mascot platformer” aspect makes it kinda blend
in to the crowd, but if you load up the game you’ll find animation better than Aladdin
or Lion King in my opinion.
And of course, a soundtrack that steps up from the first game.
See, I’d describe the first game’s music as unendingly whimsical, which isn’t necessarily
a bad thing, but the sequel's ability to calm down led to some tracks that really shine.
Oh but wait, what’s this title?
Batasha?
That’s Aero’s new love interest.
Much to everybody's dismay.
Silliness of this mess aside, there’s also this character: Zero.
Aero 1 ended with a cutscene showing Edgar Ektor, the big bad, falling to his untimely demise.
Aero 2 opens by revealing that Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel saved Ektor from this fall,
and he's back to scheming.
Zero himself later got his own spin-off game, which ended up as the final game in the universe
despite a promise for more.
This game, in retrospect, encapsulates some of the trends of this era.
For example: a protagonist that wears a scowl to fit in with the growing popularity of "edgier" games
like Mortal Kombat and Doom,
and it also features a forest-destroying villain in line with the environmentalism of the time.
The music does its own thing, though,
which did lead to some reviews citing it as the weak point.
It's "too serious and slow for such a fanciful game", to quote GamePro.
That said, it resulted in the masterpiece that is Tunnels.
After Zero, Rick scored one last SNES game, then shifted to a more managerial role,
only contributing a few new compositions on rare occasions.
He stuck with Iguana Entertainment until it went under in 2004,
then moved to Take Two Interactive, where he still works today.
Since his earliest scores, he preferred to be credited under the name of his studio:
Fox Productions.
Since then, this has become an actual studio that handles far more than just game scores.
While he doesn’t seem to compose anymore, he’s been involved in music direction for
over 25 years now.
This could mean selecting composers,
clearing existing songs,
or using his own studio to record musicians.
Over the years, he's music-directed some pretty well known games/series.
To name a few of the series that stuck out to me, we've got...
Turok, we've got Mafia,
Borderlands,
Civilization V,
Duke Nukem Forever,
NBA 2K12 and beyond...
Which brings us to today, with Rick’s most recent work being Audio Producer for Shadow Man Remastered,
released a mere two months ago.
If you want the pure music version of this video, check it out here (or the link in the description).
Now that you’ve seen this, you can even ignore the visuals if you want!
If you like game music, I’ve got plenty of videos about that too.
Subscribe for more, support me on Patreon if you dig that sort of thing,
and thanks for watching!