I think a lot of gaming music composure in general are criminally over looked, even from Tim's time there's Ben Dagleash, Rob Hubbard Etc. But for Plok, the title screen music was so impressive that when Shigeru Miyamoto first heard it, he thought it had come from a modded SNES as he didn't believe the machine was capable of that kind of music.

Worked alongside these guys. Fantastic musicians and such a laugh all through the difficult projects. They seemed to take it all in their stride. Great times.

I disagree: Plok is a very good game. It is also criminally underrated. For those who don't believe me, give this game a try, you won't be dissapointed (especially if you like platformers).

Tim Follin is a mad genius, and his talent exceeds beyond the musical realm. Last year he released an excellent game called Contradiction. :)

Oi, mate, I didn't think Plok was too mediocre. It had a great art style and it was legit fun, though it was pretty difficult~

Treasure Master for NES was probably Tim's most impressive NES soundtrack because of its really nice compositions and atmosphere. The intro screen was even a really good remix of the Starsky and Hutch theme.

On Space Paws, the reason it sounded like a new console because it WAS one. Space Paws was on the ZX Spectum 128k , which had a AY-3-8910( 3 channels of square waves and noise ) while Vectron was on a ZX Spectrum 48k, which only had a 1-bit beeper. The reason they sound differnet was because of the hardware, not one of Follin's drivers.

I'm gonna make the hot take that his "bad luck" wasn't just the universe conspiring against him. Working on low budget games or with bad teams was his own choice, and with his renown, he could've rejected those. If anything, I think he undervalued his immense skill and that's a lesson we should learn from.

Plok is quite an underrated but quite good SNES game. It sucks it never had a save feature though. Don't know much about Follin but the Plok soundtrack is pretty cool. The boss theme is pretty much a dance classic and the fleapit music is awesome also.

Tim's music always tells a story. It's difficult to not become enraptured. Very informative video. Thank you.

The only reason I know who Tim Follin is, is the fact that my brother and I spent so many hours in the early 90s playing Silver Surfer. Back then if a game was hard we didn't pussyache about it, we played it and were thankful that it didn't lose its appeal after finishing it in three hours.

Tim Follin + ZX Spectrum + Chronos = Amazing Music. Also the C64, Spectrum and Amiga are not CONSOLES, They're Computers!

I like how a good majority of these comments are responding to what you said about Plok

TF has always been my favourite video game composer ever since I heard the title track for ghouls n ghosts on the c64.

After this I'm glad to see he at least made a what some may have a cult respect for in the game Contradiction, the music itself always lingers in great underappreciated theme discussions.

Even independent of Tim Follin's awesome soundtrack, Plok is well remembered by those who've played it. Lumping it in with the likes of Silver Surfer is pretty harsh! The Star Paws theme was originally by Rob Hubbard. Follin converted it from the C-64 original theme to the AY-3-8910, so he can't really be credited as the composer in that case (though it was a great conversion). Arguably, it's on the C-64 where Follin's music was best paired up with good games.

Stumbled across this video after stumbling across a Silver Surfer track and looking up Tim Follins. Great video! Thanks for all the info!

God damn that Silver Surfer theme gets me pumped.

Tim Follin, the original Vapor Waver. Equinox had that A E S T H E T I C .

he was recently seen in a webcam chat on a Livestream on his small-scale game, Contradiction. Dude has greyed big time. (oh yeah, that's not Geoff Follin but fellow VG composer Matt Furniss)

Man, did you play Timetrax without mentioning it ? Its simply the greatest of Follin` ever !

Bloody excellent composer!

Wow, I've never heard of this guy, thanks for the hidden gem!

another suggestion for composer spotlight: Frank Klepacki

I LOVED his Ecco the Dolphin Defender of the Future soundtrack

You know, instead of hiring Jake Kaufmann for your next soundtrack...how about Tim Follin? That might propel him to the fame he deserves.

R.I.P. Geoff Follin (1966-2024)

Did you mention Time Trax for the Genesis? I know the tune is playing at the start of this video.... but not a mention?

Nice video. I didn't realise many Americans were aware of Follin. I noticed most of the stuff you featured was from the NES. Bionic Commando on the Commodore 64 is an example of a good game he soundtracked. Chronos on the Spectrum was also very good, considering the hardware.

Thank you so much for creating this video. Been listening to Follin's tracks recently and they've been blowing my mind. Nice to know more about the man behind the music.

The fact that his arguably best track, «Beach» from Plok!, is not even included here, speaks volumes of Follin’s quality👌

Good job on giving respect where it's due. Nicely done.

I just came here to say that Equinox is an incredible SNES game and Tim's influence on the "take time to figure things out" style in easily manifested in the Equinox OST. This game.. i won't spoil it, but if you haven't played it, please find it and play it. It will challenge your perspective of perspectives, and Tim's ambient music is second to none.

I don't understand why people even dislike videos like this he didn't do anything overly spectacular that would cause me to like the video or make me want to watch it again yet he didn't do anything stupid or dumb or was it badly named or composed or acted in any anyway to the point to where I would dislike the video that's just rude

You should have mentioned Time Trax! That's one of my favorites from Tim, it's an unreleased Genesis title

What I wouldn't give to hear Tim Follin do another video game soundtrack like he did in the 80's and 90's...

Favorite game with Tim Follin music? Definitely Future Tactics. I even still own it for the PS2.

Ive always liked Plok >:(

right now tim follin has a game on steam he wrote and directed called contradiction if anyone cares. he may even be in it, i havent played it.

An unsung hero of our creative lineage.

Vectron's music is just awesome . . . The atmosphere it creates is just unbelievable.

Man, I grew up with Equinox and only just beat it a couple of years ago. I remember feeling scared any time I went into a new dungeon just because of the music. The dripping in Tori was especially unnerving, but the Quagmire was probably the worst for me. I'm glad Tim Follin's getting some appreciation and I hope more people find his work.

His departure from hard rock to ambient was unregrettable. From being the only man playing "electronic hard rock" to being one of the thousands men making ambient... and of course, I never heard of him, before 1987.

FANTASTIC COMPOSER!

Hey I'm glad somebody made a video.

That screenshot for Pictionary is actually from Anticipation, a similar game from Rare with great music by David Wise. He's pretty well-known for the legendary Donkey Kong Country soundtracks, but his early chiptune work on the NES is similarly underappreciated.

Tim Follin also wrote the music for Sky Shark, a game that somehow had five levels but only four gamemplay songs written. Perhaps that's due to the fact that levels 2-5 repeat in perpetuity once you've beaten the game, but play it long enough and it's easy to forget which level had which music. The "Continue?" countdown music was also carried over into Abobo's Big Adventure, where the saw gradually lowers onto him after losing all your lives in the platforming levels.

Very glad to have stumbled upon this video to present a nice slice of Tim's work. I'm going to be doing a play through of Plok on my channel and I'm going to link here.

Simply a-m-a-z-i-n-g!!! I knew a few especially Plok. But the other stuff is incredible.

Wow you actually made a video on the Follin's. Fucking AWESOME man. This guy made some incredibly weird and dissonant music.

Ghouls 'n' Ghosts for the C64 is Follin's best work

What an amazing show! just discovered it right now, very well made and clever informations, GREAT

Awesome video! Just subbed. I'm loving your channel :)

Fantastic as always.

Silver Surfer OST to me is one of the best all time SID produced Sound Tracks. [certalinly top 5 in the 8 bit world] Infact I'm just working on the Silver Surfer Title Screen music remix as I'm writing this :D Every time I listen to this soundtrack it just blows my mind how much "next level" it was back then compared to other NES sound tracks production wise.... also the songwriting is fenomenal - you can really hear the rock influences :) but at the same time the guy is amazingly technical when it comes to sound shaping.

Lumping Solstice in with games like Silver Surfer? HOW COULD YOU?! ;) Solstice is one of my favorite NES games of all time! It's an underrated masterpiece, if you ask me, and can easily hold its own against the Marios and Zeldas of the world... at least, in my mind! Still, glad to see Follin getting a little love here. He definitely deserves it.

Target Renegade introduced me to his work. Amazing tracks he made!

Holy fuck, how could it possibly slip my mind that he also did Agent X II? I've always thought that song and the Solstice title theme to be like how it would sound if Joe Satriani wrote a collaboration with Dream Theater and Yes. I've definitely seen his name on both, but I don't know why it never clicked that he was the same guy.

Yay a new video!!!

Good Video, Thanks :)

He made a damn good Ford Racing 3 main song

I appreciate that you say "it's British, so it's zed, not zee". I'm Canadian, so it's "zed" here too. But while I haven't yet developed anything for the "zed"X Spectrum, I'm quite familiar with the Zilog "zee-80". I do my best to call it that, since it was American.

I have def heard of this fellow. ty for video

Plok has incredible music

For some reason when I saw the title, even though I didn't know his name, I just knew it had to be the guy who made the soundtrack for Solstice.

Cool video bro! Just doing my part to contribute to the algorithm

Have you seen this ? His new game and new music ! itunes.apple.com/gb/app/id953844528

What no mention of Agent X? Note the ZX spectrum 128 had a massively upgraded sound chip over the 48K, thats why Star Paws sounds so different. Agent X was on the original hardware and is easily the not only the best for the system but impressive in its own right.

Actually, Tim Follin was "famous" among gamers, video game and demoscene composers of the 80s and 90s in Europe (especially for C64, Spectrum and Amiga users). So the title of your video seems historically out of context.. Star Paws by the way, is originally by Rob Hubbard. Follin adapted it from the C64 version.

I worked with Geoff Follin, and also Tim, but where did you get that photo of Geoff from? He's changed a lot since I last saw him if it is him!

Plok and Equinox are amazing games.

Ooooh your channel is great! Subscribed! And of course well aware of Follin brothers, but i guess you have to come from the ZX Spectrum corner for that to be the case. I think that was simply the way of British videogame industry at that stage - publishers received (often shitty) submissions from aspiring developers, polished them up if they weren't too terrible, and sold them on for a couple of pounds. They had their graphics artists and musicians, and ironically, the games with best music are often the shittiest because they were simple and small submissions, where there was plenty of RAM and tape length left over to pack the music into from the lack of programmer skill and time. It's not like nice sprites and tiles take up more room than shitty ones, you're not gonna have more colour or anything, because there's only one display mode. Similar things happened on C64. It's not like you can cut costs by making a smaller ROM cartridge, the RAM is already there. As to you missing the fact that later Follin tracks run on a different soundchip, well, perhaps you can involve some of your viewers into research, like find a nice place to poke us with questions. Some of us may know a guy who knows a guy who knows THE guy, or may have experienced some of these things as they were happening. Oh i was wondering, there was this particular SNES game, that had FM synth like music? But i can't remember which >.< It's not Follin's, i was just hoping someone in the audience here might have an idea. It was recommended to me in KZfaq comments, but i can no longer find it.

Seriously, Pictionary does NOT need the soundtrack it got. Minigame Theme 2 is such a banger!

Never Heard? Timetrax, Plok and Rock 'n Roll Racing soundtracks rules!!!

Just made it 333 likes on channel major third. Today was a good day.

Ghouls n Ghosts was brilliant. Some of the best tunes on the 64, ever.

Tori from Equinox. You picked the right track from that game for this vid, for sure.

I liked the Silver Surfer game play.

And his Amiga soundtracks where amazing as well. You forgot to mention Amiga games.

Tim and Geoff had left Software Creations by the time Ken Griffey Jr. Presents was being made. They ended up credited on a few soundtracks they didn't actually work on, because the sound designers/composers used old samples of theirs. I still haven't worked out how the hell they ended up credited on the Acclaim/Probe mess, Batman Forever, in 1995.

ecco the dolphin on Dreamcast is the most meditative music you can listen to while reading and relaxing. Sleep on some Tim and you'll see what I mean. :3

we need him back...the C64 is also coming back , so he should think about...

Plok's soundtrack fucked me up... goddamn it was so good!

He stopped in 2005? OH NO! ;~;

Completely skipped over Treasure Master (NES). One of his best OSTs.

Target Renegade has awesome music

I loved his theme for ultraverse Prime

Batman Forever --Arkham Asylum Thanks, man!

It should be a crime that you didn't include any music from the greatest video game soundtrack that the Follin brothers ever composed and which is arguably the best game soundtrack of all time not composed by Koji Kondo: Spider-Man and X-Men in Arcade's Revenge. If you have any appreciation for Jazz, Funk, or Rock, you will know what I'm talking about. (If you don't, then you have zero musical taste.) That soundtrack is TOO good to be limited to a video game. Yes, it's that awesome.

You didn't mention the game but used its best track: Future Tactics The Uprising's Enemy Attack 1

I came here to see all the comments from people who had already heard of him.

4:10 isn't the middle picture from anticipation? Not pictionAry? (Anticipation is another fun game to try when you're drunk).

could you make a video of chris hullsbeck work?

FANTASY MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can you do a video on Jun Ishikawa

Genesis album* :DAlso you started on the part that sounds like the really rhythmic almost polymeter portion of the title track to Close to the EdgeWhere you could have started at 0:55 where it goes straight Early 70s Tony Banks off the ass 10/10 mode ;) Akrillic may be my favorite piece of game music ever at this point lol

I see King Crimson, oh mama

I always wondered who was the genius behind these brilliant compositions, because that the game could be shitos but what made the game amazing was just the music.

Nice review! I always liked, how Tim used his arpeggio effect in some C64 and NES titles, especially in LED Storm. The master nowadays actually working on a game called Contradiction which is a murder mystery, and it looks like a movie. You can see some updates about his project on his Facebook page: facebook.com/tim.follin.9?fref=ts

His masterpiece was Target Renegade, in my opinion.