He did the music and sound programming in everything from Test Drive II to Stunts. Now he’s working on his own indie games.
Kristjan Hatlelid taught himself to program by writing code on paper, then borrowing computer time wherever he could find it. That got him to Frantic Freddie on the Commodore 64, and later copy protection and audio work that led to careers in both cyber security and the games industry. Among other things, he worked at Distinctive Software (now EA Canada), where he did programming, sound and music for well known games like Test Drive II, Wings of Fury, Pipe Dream, Stunts and 4-D Boxing.
We talked with him about all of it, including his current projects:
Could you introduce yourself for our readers? And tell us how you got into computing?
I’m Kristjan Hatlelid. Retired from corporate jobs at places like EA, Microsoft, Oracle and Amazon now, but I’ve made software most of my life, primarily in games, music, software protection, cyber security and cloud infrastructure.
I have no idea how it exactly happened, but as a kid I decided to write programs on paper from information in magazines and books, and got computer time at stores or with friends who had computers, which helped me learn and improve. I was always fascinated by computers from the moment I saw one. Starting on the PET, TRS-80 and VIC-20. Eventually I made software and reverse engineered software and hardware, which led to a job helping out at a Commodore trade show, and that kind of opened up my career path. I’ve always loved learning.
Your first game was Frantic Freddie on the Commodore 64. How did that come about?
It wasn’t actually my first game, but it was my first «distributed game.» I’d made VIC-20 games and sold them at local stores, which introduced me to other folks making games so we bought a tape duplicator and did professional packaging made a little money, and I somehow became friends with a guy named Gregor Larson. We had ideas for a game and started making it. At the same time I’d met a guy who made good to great VIC-20 games in my opinion, and who knew how to distribute and market better than we did. So Gregor and I finished the game, and he distributed it.
It was pretty early in the Commodore 64 lifecycle, so documentation was sketchy, and I was quite young and still figuring stuff out. But I was super lucky with the people I met who could help me learn. As I recall the majority of the game was written during a summer vacation early in high school.
Ah, tell us about your first games. What were they like, and how did you get your local stores to stock them? Do any of them survive today?
My first games were really simple projects, written in BASIC and/or assembly and saved to cassette tapes. I’d just walk into local computer shops, talk to the owner, and ask them to put a few copies on the shelf on consignment. I’m not sure how many survive today; most are likely lost to time or sitting in boxes somewhere. I personally don’t have copies, I’ve moved enough that I’ve purged most old stuff. The one that stands out in my mind is Caverns of Chaos which was an adventure game (unrelated to any other cavern of chaos games that used the name after me). I love adventure games, and after seeing Scott Adams Adventure I thought I could make one. I remember the parser being super interesting to me. Later, I wrote a MUD that incorporated some of those ideas.
What was working on copy protection for the Commodore 64 like? Was it frustrating to see games still get cracked?
It was really neat, and I ended up doing systems like that for other platforms and companies for awhile. Reverse engineering is its own thing, and me and some other folks reverse engineered the 4040 disk drive and then 1541. I had some insights on it that led to some fairly effective copy protection techniques. But at the end of the day people used hardware augmentation to break the software, and it was a good lesson that if someone has physical custody of a device, they can break the protection hands down. That work actually pointed me toward my longer term career in cyber security.
Security is frustrating by nature, so you can’t take the attitude that someone beat you. Because it’s asymmetric (you need to be right 100% of the time, adversary needs to be right once, and they collude), you basically just make it as expensive as you can to break something and keep improving, knowing somebody will eventually find the thing you forgot.
You started out doing programming. How did you transition into making music and sound effects?
Gregor and his family were extraordinary musicians, and I was «pretty ok.» When we were making Frantic Freddie, it was obvious we needed music, so we collaborated on the music driver, sound effects and music. I’m not totally sure of the timeline, but I wrote another music driver for the software protection stuff. We had a cartoon play if you tried to pirate a title.
You programmed your own sound drivers for the NES and SNES. What was that like, and how did you make the music for it?
Well, it was just another couple platforms. The audio driver I wrote was used on a lot of platforms. It was fine. SNES and NES were my first dev kit engineering, where I had a box I’d have to upload stuff to. That was slightly painful, but the CPUs were pretty similar to a C64 and Apple IIGS. The rest of the SNES had some finicky bits so it wouldn’t pop.
It was right around the time I figured out I could write software that acted as a MIDI receiver on the machine’s ports, so using the joystick port to read MIDI. That was kind of crazy, and it allowed people who were musicians but not coders to make the music.
How did you land your job at Distinctive Software, and what was working with them like?
I knew Kevin Pickell from copy protection work we’d done, and he’d tried to get me a job at DSI, but for whatever reason I didn’t take it or get it or something. Later they needed music for a game and were desperate. You basically had to hire a composer who could also code. I was a pretty ok musician and had experience from Frantic Freddie, so I whipped up the music and audio driver for Power at Sea very quickly. Which lead to the music for Test Drive II, which lead for me doing most of the engineering work on the C64 version.
I did the music and drivers on most versions (I consulted on some). That was amazing, because I had to learn to code on a lot of different machines. I was good at it, so my job switched to just music, sfx and audio programming after that for a while and I became more of a manager. DSI became EA Canada, which I left to start my own company, came back to EA later, and then went to Microsoft as a security engineer.
Any fun stories or anecdotes from your time at Distinctive?
We had not discovered project planning, so it was very weird, with very long hours. Lots of late nights with pizza and music blaring. A very talented group of people. While I was at DSI, I ended up taking a contract job with a friend of the owners under a pen name, so I did music, sound effects, and audio code for Fiendish Freddy’s Big Top Of Fun under the name Igor Shimski. The owner used to do favors for folks, so I also ended up doing the music and audio code for Pipe Dream on the NES, which was basically a crazy long weekend. The guy was Henk Rogers of Tetris fame.
We got to meet some famous people like Gary Gygax, Bill Elliot and Mario Andretti. I did audio on Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat on the Gravis Ultrasound, so I speced it but somebody else got to record it with him. Dang. I ran Audio at EA Canada so I got to meet people like Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, David Whittaker – we all got together in Austin and shared war stories, that was pretty fun.
What did you do after leaving the games industry?
I decided to go more security, and went to Microsoft, worked my way up to a pretty senior director role (was an executive producer in Xbox for a bit, but mostly cyber security work). Then I went to Oracle as a VP, then Amazon as a GM/Director both in security.
I never truly left the games industry. I’d always be making little games just for me or for others. I still am, like The Majic Realm, Ready Freddie, and a new game called Wheel. You can watch lemondropgames.com for announcements.
Do you have any favourite game projects that you’ve worked on?
I love making games. My favorites were probably Frantic Freddie (I’m writing a spiritual successor called Ready Freddie) and The Majic Realm, a MUD I wrote with my friend Al, which I still run today. My newest game, Wheel, might become a favorite. What’s been amazing is using ChipSynth on Reaper writing new C64 music for Ready Freddie rather than the «old school» tools I used to use.
Are you developing Ready Freddie and Wheel on the Commodore 64? If so, what is that platform like to develop for today?
Regarding Ready Freddie and Wheel: Ready Freddie is currently being developed on Unity but my intent is a C64 version as well so it «looks and feels» like you remember C64 games. As it turns out I can still code 6502 pretty well even without an assembler although developing for the C64 today is a lot more comfortable than in the 80s, mostly because of modern cross-development tools. Being able to use an emulator and modern assemblers/compilers on a PC makes the iteration cycle incredibly fast compared to back then, though you’re still working within the same hardware constraints that make it fun.
Wheel is quite different, and will not be on the C64 (probably – ironically it would be easier than Ready Freddie). I’m not going to talk about it too much because it’s early, but it’s a party game in Unity that takes inspiration from role playing campaigns. It’s «kind of» retro, but really more modern. I actually haven’t seen any games like it which could be good or bad. ;-)
Many thanks to Kristjan Hatlelid for his time! Be sure to watch lemondropgames.com for any updates! And check out The Majic Realm as well.