Game Composer Retrospective: Tim Follin
I felt that it would be best to start this blog with a subject I’m passionate about: video game music composition. The production of video game soundtracks has, throughout the history of the medium, been tied to the same limited capabilities of the hardware that ran the games themselves. But more importantly, the ability of an artist to adapt as both programmer and composer played and incredibly vital role in the early days of computer-based video games. There are several names I will immediately give you when you ask me my favorite “classical” video game composers, but the first to come to mind is always the legendary Tim Follin.
Timothy John Follin, born in December 1970 in Merseyside, England, was a one-year attendee of Sandown Music College in Liverpool before entering a career in video games at age 15. Working alongside his brothers Geoff and Mike, Tim Follin got his start on titles for an Sinclair Research, Ltd. 8-bit home computer system known as the ZX Spectrum (that’s “Zed Ex”). Working for Insight Studios, his early work on this limited, 1-bit multichannel audio hardware included composition (and the creation of the music drivers) for 1985's Subterranean Stryker and Star Firebirds. A notable example of Tim Follin’s early work, one that serves as a perfect introduction to Tim Follin’s roots as a video game composer, is the 1987 ZX Spectrum side-scrolling shooter, Chronos.
Follin later worked full-time for Software Creations in 1987, where the range of his work spanned hardware from the ZX Spectrum to the Commodore 64, Amiga, NES, and Atari ST. Working sometimes as an arranger for arcade ports (Bubble Bobble, Ghouls ’n Ghosts, etc.), Tim also composed original tracks for games such as the 1988 Spectrum and C64 release, Raw Recruit.
At the dawn of the 1990s, Follin’s work was primarily for the NES, and he co-composed many of these titles’ soundtracks with his brother Geoff, a trend that would continue through much of his career in the early half of the 1990s. From this period comes the prog-inspired soundtrack to the 1990 NES isometric puzzle platformer, Solstice.
Enjoying some notoriety today thanks to James Rolfe, another example of Tim’s high-quality rock-inspired work on the NES is 1990's Silver Surfer:
1993 showed the release of both cult SNES platformer Plok, as well as the sequel to Solstice, Equinox. In Equinox, following Tim Follin’s philosophy that game music is an unconscious experience meant to supplement the game itself, Tim and Geoff employed an ambient, mysterious sound with dark, eerie pads which effectively conveys the solo, dangerous-dungeon-diving feel of the game.
Later in 1993, Follin moved on to work for Malibu Interactive, composing (and writing the music driver) for the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) version of the Time Trax video game. The soundtrack is celebrated and displays Tim’s mastery of the FM synthesis sound capabilities of Sega’s hardware, but unfortunately, only the SNES version of the game (Composition by Richard Joseph) was released by Malibu.
Following his departure from Malibu Interactive, Tim continued the remainder of his career as a freelancer. Tim Follin, now independent, composed and arranged (often alongside Geoff) for several titles for different companies from 1994 to 2006. One of these was the 2000 Sega Dreamcast adventure game Ecco The Dolphin: Defender of the Future, with Attila Heger doing composition for in-game cinematics.
In this period, Follin was able to exercise his desire to compose a funky, 70's-aesthetic soundtrack (as he previously had, to an extent, in the music of Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge on the SNES) for the Mind’s Eye Productions multi-platform Starsky & Hutch in 2002.
Follin’s final work as a video game composer before announcing (“with much delight”) that he’d chosen to cease work as a game composer due to dissatisfaction with the frequently unstable release schedule (and pay) associated with the video game industry, was 2006 port of Lemmings for the Sony PlayStation Portable.
Tim Follin now works as co-founder of ABF Pictures Ltd., a television/commercial/music promo production company in Manchester. His work as a video game composer is widely celebrated by his peers and contemporaries as well as many fans (such as, obviously, the writer of this retrospective), and was presented alongside the work of Rob Hubbard in the Barbican Art Gallery’s Game On Exhibition in 2006.
His work continues to influence current composers and his talent with both early and modern hardware is legendary. Though his career was marked with unstable pay and, sometimes, unreleased titles, Tim Follin is unmistakably one of the absolute greats of video game composition.
Next time on Game Composer Retrospective, we’ll look at the work of Japanese game composer Yuzo Koshiro.
