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Tim Follin - appreciation thread of a musical GOD

J

jett

D-Member
C64 fans may remember him from games like Ghouls 'N Ghosts and LED Storm...or maybe not, those games sucked ass. NES fans may know him from Solstice and Silver Surfer...Solstice was a wonderful puzzle/platform game, but again, Silver Surfer sucked ass. SNES fans may know him from Plok, Equinox and Rock 'N Roll Racing...this time those games were great, though. :p And hell, Sega fans may know him from Time Trax on the Genesis and Ecco: Defender of the Future on the Dreamcast. Ecco is awesome...Time Trax, who the hell knows.

So what's the deal with those games and Tim Follin? All their soundtracks were composed by him, and they were all freaking FANTASTIC. Genius, even. His ability to pump out guitar-based music with synthetic instruments is just the stuff of legends. You just have to check out the great covers of rock 'n roll classics like Black Sabbath's Paranoid and Deep Purple's High way Star, featured in Interplay's Rock 'N Roll Racing. Amazing sounding guitars for the SNES. Or Time Trax for the Genny...he only worked on that one game for the console, but me managed to make it sing anyway.

Rock isn't the only music he's capable of making, just listen to the incredibly moody and creative music of Ghouls 'N Ghosts on the C64, Solstice on the NES and Equinox on the SNES, or the higly evocative and emotional tunes of Ecco: Defender of the Future on the Dreamcast.



Here's some of my favorite work by him, straight from his website straight from youtube cuz eight years later his website is now dead:

Solstice
Just excellent and so freaking original. Bonus: Check out an arrangement made with real guitars by a fan: Ryan8bit - Solstice - Catacombs Beneath the Twilight

Silver Surfer
Fucking ass-kicking tune.

Time Trax
Guitar greatness.

Ghouls 'N Ghosts
So freaking great. SiD :>

Plok - Title Theme
Awesome harmonic and guitar work for the SNES.

Plok - Stage tune
Electronica with more guitar goodness.

Rock 'N Roll Racing:
Deep Purple - Highway Star
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Man are those badass or what. Insane guitar instrumentation for the SNES.

And finally, his last video game project, Ecco The Dolphin: Defender of the Future.
Ecco - Theme
Ecco - The Tick
Those are just soooooooooooo good. He could've done incredible things if he had worked on more current hardware.

I've always been a big fan of his, ever since I got my C64 when I was 6 years old...unfortunately this old chiptune master is leaving the industry to pursue a career in TV advertising and filmmaking. I wish him the best of luck, and will truly be missed by his fans. Have fun, Tim.

His official site: Dr. Follin's Home Surgery

A freaking great Tim Follin fansite: The Follin Drome Website's dead now.

Please give a listen...and appreciate!
 
J

jett

D-Member
FateBreaker said:
Ecco was not his last.

You're forgetting Future Tactics: The Uprising, which had a great, yet very short, soundtrack
Click to expand...

Oh. Never heard of the game, heh. Interesting. *goes search*
 
R

R0nn

Member
I remember those Plok tunes. Didn't mind them much back then as I was rather young. But listening back to them now, it DOES sound impressive for SNES indeed. Those drums in the Rock 'n Roll racingtracks sound really bad-ass too.

Appreciation thread approved.
 
V

VNZ

Member
The Follin brothers had an unusual jazzy soulfulness to their tunes, they sometimes sounded like real performances rather than the overly quantized sequences that were the norm in the 8/16-bit days. I must also stress the wizardry that lay in the player code they wrote for every machine they created music for. I never heard anyone else get such complex timbres out of the NES sound circuitry. Silver Circuit is indeed awesome.

Tim & Geoff were most prolific on the C64 though, and for me (as a european, ie. Commodore-land) that's were the memories lie.
 
L

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
I still fire up Ghouls and Ghosts on C64 every now and then to listen to that damn amazing Level 1 music. Much like Commando, I prefer C64 version of the game over the arcade for the music alone! (OK, there's a couple of other reasons why I prefer C64 Commando). Tim was indeed one of Gods of 8-bit music hardware.
 
eso76

eso76

Member
Amen.

I noticed i'm probably the only one constantly mentioning him here: i've always been in love with this guy.
I've bought every single game Follin has composed music for, including titles i perfectly knew were going to stink and i loved pretty much everything he has done and converted all his tunes to mp3's to listen to on my ipod.
From bionic commando to agent x and led storm all the way up to starsky & hutch funky soundtrack.
Genious, by far the most original musician who has ever worked in the gaming industry, his style and creativity always amazed me.

Unfortunately, after starsky & hutch he decided not to compose music for videogames anymore...i believe he's writing and directing short movies now, being quite succesfull too.
 
L

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Just listened to it, the Ghouls & Ghosts tune linked in Jett's post is great, but not the one I was talking about. Looks like Tim doesn't have that music on his site.
 
J

jett

D-Member
Marconelly said:
Just listened to it, the Ghouls & Ghosts tune linked in Jett's post is great, but not the one I was talking about. Looks like Tim doesn't have that music on his site.
Click to expand...

You can always download the SiD file from the follindrome and listen to the whole thing.
 
eso76

eso76

Member
neopokekun said:
The PSP version of Lemmings is Follins last video game project.
Click to expand...

I didn't know this !
I can't stand lemmings anymore, but i'll have to buy the damn game because of this.
Unfortunately, Tim Follin almost always composes music for low profile games : \
 
F

Farmboy

Member
Amen to that. Fine tunes all around. Solstice featured some of the best music ever to come out of a NES, and Plok did the same for the NES. What helps, by the way, is that all the games you mention were very good and highly memorable, even aside from the music... although the tunes no doubt enhanced the experience.
 
L

lazygecko

Member
Rise and serve once more.

There's one particular (or two, technically) Follin soundtrack that I think is overlooked and doesn't get its due and that's Gauntlet 3. Both on the C64 and Amiga with completely different soundtracks respectively, though the Amiga one is a lot less known.

Gauntlet 3 Title - Nevermind that the awesome arpeggio ending is totally ripped from an obscure Yes album.

The rest of the ingame soundtrack is rather sparse and very atmospheric with wind effects and such, much like his Ghosts & Goblins work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx5kvqM6JcY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtA7XLq6v8Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bc89xnSNt0

The more well known C64 version is equally brilliant. Those lovely trill melody lines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHg14wwgtbY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWlc8ig-fEI

And of course long after the inception of this thread, the rest of the Time Trax soundtrack was made available through a prototype ROM discovery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vSdT9vNdWI
 
J

jett

D-Member
That's uh quite the bump. :p All the links in my OP are dead, how sad. Seems Follin now produces TV commercials and such. Hopefully he's happier with his current career direction than he was working on games. Here are a couple of awesome fan remixes of his music:

Silver Surfer

Solstice
 
A

Aeana

Member
I'm confused that I never posted in this thread over the years. Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge Tim Follin fan, I have sent him so much fan mail gushing about how much I adore his talents. It's such a tragedy that he left the industry, but then he wasn't getting the best kind of work and it takes a lot of effort to get ahead in the industry, so I guess I can't blame him too much.
 
L

lazygecko

Member
There's Tim Follin fan compositions too

Kulor - Tim Follin tries curried eggs

Aeana said:
I'm confused that I never posted in this thread over the years. Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge Tim Follin fan, I have sent him so much fan mail gushing about how much I adore his talents. It's such a tragedy that he left the industry, but then he wasn't getting the best kind of work and it takes a lot of effort to get ahead in the industry, so I guess I can't blame him too much.
Click to expand...

Best part is how he sometimes didn't even get to know what kind of game he was scoring. That's how we end up with stuff like the greatest Pictionary soundtrack of all time.
 
M

Mr. Poolman

Member
Aeana said:
I'm confused that I never posted in this thread over the years. Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge Tim Follin fan, I have sent him so much fan mail gushing about how much I adore his talents. It's such a tragedy that he left the industry, but then he wasn't getting the best kind of work and it takes a lot of effort to get ahead in the industry, so I guess I can't blame him too much.
Click to expand...

Someday there will be a Tim Follin tribute concert.

Believe.
 
J

Jarate

Banned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJwh3erQlyE

IT'S TIME FOR SOME MUTHERFUCKING PICTIONARY MUTHERFUCKERS

I wonder why no kickstarters have tried to get him to make music for their games. I'd love to see some more Follin music pop up, I understand he said he's "done" with the industry, but the big cash sign might be too big to pass up
 
P

petghost

Banned
tim follin clearly listened to a lot of prog rock and jazz fusion cuz his shit sounds like some kind of 8 bit Yes or Billy Cobham album.
 
E

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Solstice is the best example, it's all "Yo wtf is this this shit, it isn't even impre--HOLY FUCK"

Edit: That timetrax tune is giving Koshiro a run for his money yo. Dat FUNK
 
C

Cess007

Member
The first song i ever heard from him was the Main theme of Skyshark. Amazing song and amazing soundtrack; maybe for nostalgia, but one of my favorites of all time.

Edit. Didn't notice this was a bumped thread. Now i wondered how the hell i missed this thread the first time!
 
Z

Ziffles

Member
jett said:
That's uh quite the bump. :p All the links in my OP are dead, how sad. Seems Follin now produces TV commercials and such. Hopefully he's happier with his current career direction than he was working on games. Here are a couple of awesome fan remixes of his music:

Silver Surfer
Click to expand...
<-- (Midee)

I'm glad you like it :)
 
J

Just take it with you.

Member
To be honest, I never played a game he composed for, but nonetheless I cannot deny his musical talents. He really brought the most out of those chips.

petghost said:
tim follin clearly listened to a lot of prog rock and jazz fusion cuz his shit sounds like some kind of 8 bit Yes or Billy Cobham album.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Follin is a total proghead.
 
J

jett

D-Member
I updated all my links in the OP. It's amazing that eight years ago I didn't even know what youtube was. :p
 
A

Aokage

Pretty nice guy (apart from the blue shadows thing...)
Holy shit. That fan cover of the Solstice theme is the best Final Fantasy last boss track ever.

I've always been so in love with the "technical genius+great composer" combination. You can point to many, but for me it's the Follins and Koshiro. S-Rank. Nobody else comes close. Mmmmaybe Konami Kukeiha Club.

Wait. Wait. Guys. Girls. It's time for a Kickstarter:

FOLLIN VS. KOSHIRO: THE ALBUM

The two would rearrange their most famous tracks on various sets of vintage hardware. Yuzo takes Tim's and vice-versa.
 
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