[Music] Tim Follin: Chiptune Wizard Supreme

I was going to write another "Lesser known musicians I appreciate" article just for chiptune artists, but the more I thought about it the more I realized Tim Follon deserves his own dedicated article. Among chiptune artists he is without peer. Even Shirobon, talented as he is, didn't merit inclusion in the same article as Mr. Follin.

Tim Follin was born in England, in 1970. Just in time for the heyday of home microcomputers like the Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amiga. He cut his teeth making music on those machines, and his talent was quickly noticed. He began working at Insight Studios when he was only 15, though the fact that his brother already worked there may have helped.

The most common track used to introduce people to Mr. Follin's oeuvre is the title theme from the NES game 'Solstice'. If you're familiar with Mr. Follin's work you're rolling your eyes now, but it really is one of his standout tracks and a great way to dump newcomers into the deep end of his talents.

All of that on an unmodified NES with no anciliary sound chip (such as the VC7) on the cart! How is it possible? How could sound like that be squeezed out of a machine with such a notoriously rudimentary sound chip? How did Tim manage all that when other developers for the most part reached their limit with tepid bleeps and bloops??

He's a fucking wizard, that's how. Just listen to the level one music from Silver Surfer, also for NES. It's another popular introductory track, albeit not so much as the title theme of Solstice. Follin's soundtrack was easily the best part of this game, which was otherwise sort of a turd.

If he can do all that with an 8 bit machine,, imagine what he could do with a 16 bit machine. Or don't imagine, and instead listen to the opening theme of Time Trax for the Sega Genesis. Keeping in mind, the Genesis is sort of infamous for its metallic, flatulent sounding music. Tim shows us here that it's just a matter of whose hands the Genesis sound chip is in.

Tim's work on the Amiga is better known to Europeans than Americans, who were mostly exposed to his music in console titles. The Amiga 500, roughly on par with the SNES, had impressive sound capabilities for its time which Tim predictably maxed the fuck out with gems like this:

But I've said enough, haven't I? This is enough hand holding. Explore Tim's work for yourself, there's no shortage of it. You've got quite the backlog to eagerly paw your way through, eyes watering at how fucking awesome all of it is. My only regret is that this experience will spoil all other chiptune music for you, as in my opinion very little else even comes close.