This was a busy time at Rare. We had started Grabbed by the Ghoulies straight after Banjo Tooie and we were developing it for the Gamecube. Right around this time the option for Nintendo to buy Rare outright (they owned 49%) was up, they had to buy us or sell their shares to someone else. As you all now know they decided against owning us entirely and Microsoft stepped in and bought us. There was other interested parties at the time but the MS deal looked like the best. So we had to switch Grabbed by the Ghoulies from Gamecube to XBOX pretty fast.

I got to use proper instrument samples for the first time, as the video games music was streamed from disk with the XBOX so that was exciting. I wrote somewhere around 50 pieces of music that played in a random order for the general exploration of Ghoulhaven Hall, and of course every villain had their own fight piece as well. It really was great fun writing darker music, I’d done some of it in the Banjo games but this gave me a chance to really go to town.

The sound effects were also fun to do, as usual most of the villains were voiced by people on the team. I think Mr. Ribbs was probably my favourite, he was voiced by Steve Malpass who did the Baron too, also the Mummys were hllarious, voiced by Steve Mayles.

I decided on random folders full of spooky samples for the general wandering about, you can hear clanking chains, hooting owls and lots of other creepy sound effects playing all around you in surround sound. The samples were on a random timer and they played randomly in the 3D space, it made it a very effective constantly changing ambience that really made the place come to life. I think my favourite piece is the Warlock fight but I do really like The Ballroom Disco, guitar solo by yours truly. Also the main theme in Grabbed by the Ghoulies was a bit of a joke. Two of the artists (Ed Bryan and Steve Mayles) used to have this funny tune they used to sing with strange vocal effects to the words “Grabbed by the Ghoulies”, I just turned it into music!