Bob Rice, who teamed with Journey to launch a groundbreaking rock music online game and represented top-notch composers like Steve Ouimette, Sascha Dikiciyan and Inon Zur within the trade, has died. He was 79.
Rice died Wednesday evening of COPD at an assisted residing facility in Santa Clara, California, publicist Greg O’Connor-Learn informed The Hollywood Reporter.
Rice created and government produced what was maybe the primary rock online game, “Journey Escape.” Launched by Knowledge Age in 1982 for the Atari 2600 console and narrated by Casey Kasem, it featured band members Steve Perry, Neal Schon, Jonathan Cain, Ross Valory and Steve Smith as primitive digitized avatars.
Players had been tasked within the directions with guiding every musician “previous hordes of Love-Crazed Groupies, Sneaky Photographers and Shifty-eyed Promoters to the security of the Journey Escape Car in time to make the subsequent live performance. Your mighty supervisor and constant roadies are there to assist, however the escape is as much as you!”
In 1992, Rice based 4 Bars Intertainment, which championed online game music as each a inventive and business artwork type. His composer purchasers included Ouimette (Guitar Hero), Dikiciyan (Borderlands), Zur (Fallout), Jack Wall (Mass Impact), Cris Velasco (God of Warfare) and Tom Salta (Ghost Recon).
“The world of music for media misplaced a exceptional large,” Zur wrote in a press release. “Bob Rice was a brave visionary within the video video games world and a relentless energy within the music trade who had the deepest understanding of what it means to be a composer and what it takes to be an actual human being. Bob by no means stopped hustling and by no means gave up hope.
“His life classes had been all the time priceless, and his instructing elevated whomever was open and able to be taught. It was sufficient simply to listen to his deep voice, and also you knew there was an actual energy behind you. Each dialog we had throughout these 25 years of friendship and partnership was a mentoring session. And I used to be all the time thirsty to listen to extra, to be taught extra, to be worthy of his perception in me. The heartaches and the soul are crushed, however I DO know that his being will stay with us eternally. … Bob WAS and all the time would be the very essence of music for video games. He envisioned this world and made it actual.”
On Twitter, Velasco called him “the primary agent to see a future [in music] in video games.”
Rice began out at age 15 as a live performance promoter in Cleveland, and at 16 he was operating his personal report label and publishing firm.
Ten years later, he moved to California to affix GRT Corp. as vp gross sales, advertising and marketing and promotion. GRT owned 30 report labels and had fairness in one other 80. Whereas there, Rice obtained greater than 30 Gold and Platinum report awards that includes artists corresponding to Three Canine Night time, Steppenwolf and Tower of Energy.
After a 30-year run with GRT, Rice moved into the movie enterprise to work together with his late sister, Hollywood music contractor Patti Zimmitti, and their purchasers included Danny Elfman, Elliot Goldenthal and Michael Kamen.
As 4 Bars CEO, Rice’s mantra was to ship to his recreation studio purchasers “nice music delivered on time and inside finances.” He ultimately bought the corporate to the composer company COOL Music Group in 2013, when he retired.
Survivors embody his daughter, Lisa.
