Mark Andrade (Viridis Corporation) Interview

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Interview Information

Worked On:	Date Published	Interviewer	Original Host Website	Archived Link
Zelda's Adventure	September 3rd, 2014	N/A (blog post)	SputnikGames	Here!

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Interview Body

Mark Andrade as Gaspra. Behind the scenes of Zelda’s Adventure.

My very first job doing anything video game related is acting in, of all things, a Zelda game. Weird right? I started my career in video games pretty much by accident. I needed a job and I couldn’t find anything in music to pay the rent so in desperation I applied to be a receptionist at a company called Viridis. I only applied because they needed someone who knew how to use a Mac. I used a Mac for music software so I thought ok, I could do this. After pestering Janet, she was the office manager in charge of hiring, with way to many calls asking if they hired anyone, she hired me, probably just to shut me up.

I have to say, I truly sucked at answering the phone and taking messages. Luckily they needed a production assistant on some titles in house. Since I studied music, was familiar with audio software and I just happened to already be there, they keep me on board making sound effects, lots of audio editing, some music for a CD-i title called Draw 50 and assisting in whatever Jim Belcher and Randy Casey needed. Then Viridis was contracted to make Zelda’s Adventure for Phillips CD-i. We all wore many different hats when working on this game. They would use everyone in the office as characters in the game. The receptionist Diane Burns ended up being Zelda in the cut scenes and I ended up being casted as Gaspra.

Mark Andrade as Gaspra

Yeah, Gaspra, the old man narrating the game in the cut scenes is me. It’s even in the IMDB. Not my voice though. They hired Hal Smith from the Andy Griffith Show to do the voice acting. Jim hired an amazing sculptor Jason Bakutis to do all the miniatures for the game. He also created the makeup for Gaspra that you see in these images. He made me look so old. It was great. He had to create a mold from my face. I still have that mold. It’s like a 3D picture of me when I was 23. You can see some photos of the sculptures from the game and read more about Jason’s work on Zelda’s Adventure at NintendoPlayer.com and Zelda Dungeon.

Jason was a beast! I have no idea how he was able to make all those models in such a short period. After filming was done they needed a music composer. Man I wanted to do that so freaking bad. Well, I got lucky and if I remember correctly it was thanks to Anna Roth. Now I’m also credited for “Zelda Theme and Interactive Music Score”. That’s a story for a whole other blog post about writing a sound track using little equipment and in an unimaginable time frame with crippled playback technology.

Mark Andrade as Gaspra with Jason Bakutis who created the Gaspra makeup.

It’s just this year that I was myself in the game. I would never have seen any of the cut scenes or game play if it wasn’t for YouTube and the people who put all that footage online. Thank you. Lastly, I can tell you the game that I remember working on is not the game I see people play on YouTube. Especially the music. Something changed after everyone was laid off. I’m sure Jim has the dirt on all that. He stayed at Phillips for a short time after. You can read some of his story at Zelda Dungeon.

So, my long story short, Viridis laid off most of the people that worked on Zelda’s Adventure game. I moved onto freelancing and started to code games for Disney, Nickeodeon and Warner Bros. to name a few. The reason why I chose to code and move away from music was because I witnessed Eric Milota, Gavin James and Randy Casey’s amazing programming. Those guys inspired me.