Michael Z. Land is a musician that has worked for LucasArts video games.
Michael Land studied music at Harvard University where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts, and electornic music at Mills College, from which he was awarded a Master of Fine Arts.
Land worked as music technician and composer for Lucasfilm Games, later LucasArts. His first composition was the famous them of The Secret of Monkey Island and worked in all the Monkey Island series.
Land, Peter McConnell and were responsible for the evolution of the iMUSE system, starting with Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. iMUSE is a game engine specifically designed to dynamically synchronize music themes with visual action in a video game, fitting the music with scenes, characters and moods of the game. Predominantly used in all LucasArts adventure games, it has also been used for some non-adventure Star Wars titles such as Star Wars: X-Wing, Star Wars: TIE Fighter, Star Wars: Dark Forces and Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance.
For Star Wars: Rebel Assault, Land had a mostly advisory role whereas Clint Bajakian and Peter McConnell worked as sound engineers. Land was impressed with Lead Designer Vincent Lee's idea to use streaming musical score by John Williams for the game. He considered it a significant breakthrough for the company that would replace the earlier MIDI based iMUSE. Later games such as The Dig made use of iMUSE but utilized digital sound samples; X-Wing Alliance utlilized John Williams's musical score from the Original Trilogy.
- Star Wars: Rebel Assault: Sound advice
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II: Manager of Sound Development
- Star Wars: Rebel Assault: The Official Insider's Guide
- Dark Forces Official Player's Guide