Paul Anthony Romero, the composer behind Heroes of Might and Magic, says his entry into the games industry was entirely by chance. As a child he performed as a young musical talent, but after conservatory he struggled to find work and took odd jobs as a cook and on construction sites.
Everything changed when, at a party in Los Angeles, he met producer Rob King from New World Computing.
“He told me he was making a game about castles, knights and dragons and asked if I could write music that sounded ‘from another age.’ I said — of course,” Romero recalls.
That encounter earned him the commission for the first Heroes of Might and Magic: $400 and one week to compose the entire soundtrack. He chose a Baroque-inspired approach in the vein of Bach and Vivaldi, which became the defining sound of the series.
Romero later composed music for every Heroes installment, despite never having played any of the games himself.
“I evaluate my pieces not by how they function within the game, but by whether they succeed as music on their own,” he says.
Now approaching sixty, he still writes music for new Heroes projects.
“The important thing is I wasn’t forced to write the same thing for thirty years. The music grew with me.”
Source: iXBT.games