Rob Hubbard

What’s your favourite song from a video game?

If you’re a gamer it’s an easy question to answer. Heck, you can probably name several.

But it wasn’t always as easy as that.

In the 8-bit era, music wasn’t always a strong point in games.

Rob Hubbard is one of the pioneers who changed all that.

A musician by trade, Rob learned to code in the 1980s in the hope of developing educational software which he thought would be the next big thing.

That of course wasn’t the case, and he ended up trying his hand at making a video game. The title wasn’t ever released but he says the people who saw it said the gameplay was poor. But the music? That blew them away.

This sparked an incredible career spanning decades. Rob reached out to every game company he could find to see if he could develop tunes for them.

He’s behind iconic tracks on titles like Skate or Die, International Karate, Desert Strike and Road Rash.

These days he’s semi-retired but still lives a very active musical life. He’s held in high regard by the jazz community in his native Yorkshire and has inspired a new generation of musicians who’ve come to his music through games.