Jonathan Nash

One of the complaints from Core about Universe concerned the criticisms of the sound, which were these:

"The sound's awful, with an infinitely repeating bar of music that sort of gets dramatically louder and then sort of gets dramatically quieter and then sort of gets dramatically louder and then sort of gets dramatically quieter and then sort of gets dramatically louder until you mock up a letterhead and fax Core purporting to be from a small music company about to branch out into computer music CD compilations, asking for their musician's home address so you can get him to write some sleeve notes and then going round and shooting his family."

The sound was, it seems, unfinished, though rather than deprive us of that all-important in-game music, Core slipped in the six or seven notes that were available. More than that, though, the musician was highly upset by the reference to gunning down his relatives and presumably not particularly reassured by Steve The Publisher's "hilarious" letter of reply which ended, "Of course it was a joke, though knowing Jonathan I'm not so sure!"

I was bemused that anyone could take the joke as anything other than a grave remonstration over the music's horribleness, but nevertheless felt uncomfortable that someone had. It was the last time I used the line.