![]() Sega-16: The music to Ecco the Dolphin is widely regarded as some of the best on the Sega CD, and many gamers love its atmosphere. ![]() It was an awesome facility and we produced some exciting music there. That was the first of four studios I put together for the company, the last being a 11,000 square-foot, two story complex in a historic building in the South of Market (SOMA) area of San Francisco. But essentially they had NOTHING, so for the first several months I worked on my own gear – in a cubicle no less – as we slowly acquired equipment and converted some crude space in a large broom closet (really!) into the original SEGA Studios. Spencer Nilsen: SEGA was just starting to realize the potential impact the right score and SFX could have on the game experience, especially as 16-bit, 44.1K stereo “Redbook” audio and better quality MIDI instruments became a reality. Sega-16: How complete was the audio set up at Sega compared to some other places you worked at? Did Sega give game audio its full attention in terms of equipment, or did you ever feel like you had to “make do” with what you had? There were amazingly creative, bright, articulate, well-educated people in the multimedia studio, who had the patience to teach me about games. I was coming from records, concerts, TV, and film scoring and saw a tremendous opportunity to get in at the ground floor of an exciting and untamed new entertainment arena. I answered with a question, “Do video games HAVE music?” I was familiar with arcade and crude Commodore 64 games, but had never even seen a console game machine. Spencer Nilsen: I got a call out of the blue from SEGA asking if I had ever considered writing music for video or “computer” games. Sega-16: How did you come to be a part of the Sega Multimedia Studio? Nilsen about his time at Sega and his work on the Sega CD. Sega-16 was fortunate enough to chat with Mr. Nowadays, Nilsen is president and creative director of Ex’pression College For Digital Arts, an accredited college that prepares students for careers in entertainment production and technology. he then moved on to scoring television shows and commercials, and eventually he found his way to Sega, where he served as head of the music department for several years. Early in his career, Nilsen worked on productions for such artists as U2, Tom Petty, The Police, and The Who. Sonic CD, however, is but a single title in a long list of works for games, television, movies, and the concert industry. Nilsen was called in to score it, and the rest is history. That last title caused some controversy upon its American release, thanks to the American arm of Sega deciding to change the soundtrack at the last minute. the Kingpin, and the king of them all – Sonic CD. As one of Sega’s in-house composers, he left his distinctive aural mark on such games as Batman Returns, Spider-Man vs. Few artists are more closely tied to the Sega CD than Spencer Nilsen.
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