#geoff follin

[johntayjinf]

i thought this would be really fucking stupid but pico-8 turned out to be a little more versatile than i thought

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 14/04/2024

Thwâmpröck Desert

Season 8 No Album Release (Read More)

Ripped by Madinstance

So you know how yesterday's post was about a ripper with a very clearly defined niche of work, with Jamangar and Locked In The Underground? And earlier in the week I was covering the sheer prowess of ripper Madinstance, the raw power he exudes with I will Never be a Redneck? And just a few more days before that, where I talked about how much Mario Kart Wii's music means to me with Sweatpants Select? Well amidst my lineup of possible future posts, I slowly realized how perfectly Thwâmpröck Desert fit all three categories - a great way to end the week, and another Season 8 rip to boot.

Madinstance is an exceptionally skilled ripper, that much I hope I've made clear over my past posts on him. But with a few exceptions from time to time aside, he's also a ripper with a rather particular focus - a lot of his greatest rips, such as Every Mob Wants to Rule My World, Fell From a High Place (Reprise) and M​-​O​-​O​-​G City, are all focused on paying respects to Minecraft and its legendary original composer C418, wheras recently Initial Deluxe (I've Just Raced on this Course Before) appears to reveal a newfound love for the Mario Kart series. You may think at first thumbnail glance that Thwâmpröck Desert is an extension of that, a rip of a Mario Kart game, but there's one more field of his expertise that I'm yet to cover on here. C418 is beloved by many, yes, but within those privy to video game music history, particularly in the chiptune community, few composers are as revered and celebrated as the Follin brothers, Tim Follin and Geoff Follin.

To VGM aficionados, they need no introduction - but then, its those same aficionados who would know such things as that Robocop on Game Boy of all games has amazing music, as I discussed in Viva La Robocop. Most others, those who are primarily video game fans, will simply choose their favorite composer based on their own favorite games. That's completely valid too, of course, many long-running franchises like Kingdom Hearts, Sonic the Hedgehog, Dark Souls and so forth have key people composing for them that are incredibly distinct, to where you KNOW what a Kingdom Hearts game will sound like, what a Dark Souls game will sound like, and so on. Yet what makes the Follin brothers so fascinating in contrast, is that their soundtracks were attached to all kinds of games from all sorts of places: Ecco the Dolphin on Dreamcast, Silver Surfer on NES, Pictionary on NES, Plok! on Super Nintendo - practically the entire spectrum of games of the 80s and 90s, from shovelware to all-time classics, the Follins contributed to. Yet to them, the individual game quality hardly mattered! Be it Pictionary or Plok, Tim and Geoff Follin composed every soundtrack like it was their life's greatest achievement, creating full-on chiptune prog-rock in games that had NO business going that hard (I know that's a bit of an overdone and reductive turn of phrase, but really - PICTIONARY???) The brothers knew how to make any platform they were working on positively sing, and their obscure weirdo games have become titans amidst VGM enthusiasts as a result. An underdiscussed side of video game history, still cherished by a specific subset of nerds yet today.

Which, then, brings us back to Thwâmpröck Desert - an arrangement of one of Tim Follin's most insane pieces, the title screen music for NES game Solstice. It deserves a listen all of its own - the way it fakes you out with the most barebones little ditty of all time before switching into a rock masterpiece is an absolute work of art, and the piece just keeps growing from there, at once impossibly layered yet incredibly cohesive. Madinstance LOVES ripping the Follins' work, he's made a name for himself in part for ripping the SNES game Plok! in particular during Season 6 and Season 7, yet even still I was unsure how well Thwâmpröck Desert could really work. Its not a rip of a Follin composed game like the aforementioned Plok! rips - its arranging this impossibly dense piece of music into a song that already sounds like the violin version of pure, yet elegant, panic. Yet I suppose that also makes it the perfect fit for the Solstice title theme's sheer density - and when actually listening to Thwâmpröck Desert, its hard to imagine that Thwomp Desert ever sounded any different.

It's just - GAAHH!!! Its fucking mind-boggling how good it sounds, how this odd song I'd barely thought about from Mario Kart Wii wound up being the perfect template to arrange Follin's music into. The melody's string instruments are perfect for the Solstice title theme's pure distilled chaos whilst still capturing that sense of elegance and flow, and the most quirky instruments still present in Thwomp Desert add a delightful texture to the arrangement. I have to pause it every 10 or so seconds I listen to just process all that I've heard - the percussion, lead, backing, the progression of the song, its all handled absolutely masterfully, I cannot BELIEVE this was just dropped on us on a normal tuesday! I will Never be a Redneck was at least a season premiere!!

Whew...well, alright, I hope you get the picture - The Follin brothers' music fucking rocks, and I am SO glad that a ripper as amazing as Madinstance has taken it upon himself to pay regular tribute to their work. Games like Mario Kart Wii are leagues more mainstream than the games that the Follins typically worked on, and the idea of SiIvaGunner getting less VGM-savvy viewers to find out about these legendary composers - it just makes me really happy! Madinstance's rips are bangers to be sure, but much like Beautiful! ~ Curveball of Sean Kingston, like Beyond the Floating Isles, like Gate Happy: they're bangers that can also open up a whole new world of musical interests to viewers like you and I. And isn't that just the coolest way for SiIvaGunner's art of subversion to live on in?

(oh, also, its called Thwâmpröck Desert because the Solstice NES game takes place in "Kâstleröck" and I just found that very funny)

[theinashow]

[insanaquarium]

what the fuuuuuuuuck

[shujinacademyvgmclub]

The soundtrack for the NES game based on Goncharov has been lost, because LJN thought they could put out another of their crappy shovelware licensed games, but then it got involved in a rights dispute and it was shelved before hitting production. The sad thing is that it was a Tim and Geoff Follin soundtrack, so you know that it was incredible.

To show you what the Follins could do with a crappy NES shovelware game, here's the NES Silver Surfer soundtrack. I featured it on episode 12 of my show, along with several other great soundtracks from mediocre games.

[miximagic256]

An Interview with Geoff Follin: 5 Years Later

5 years ago today I published an interview with former video game composer Geoff Follin, it’s by far the biggest thing I’ve ever done online as at the time of my interview there wasn’t much known about him so the interview got a lot of attention and got shared around everywhere.

As someone who had a massive Tim and Geoff Follin craze growing up, actually being the one to bring Geoff, someone who was mysterious for decades, into the public spotlight was absolutely incredible and it’s definitely one of the things I’m most proud of. So I decided to give a “director’s cut” on the interview and look back on how the interview holds up today.

As I mentioned on my original TwitLonger post I managed to secure an interview with Geoff over trying an old email of his, then trying to email his brother Mike, before eventually managing to get a response to a comment I left on Geoff's YouTube account that he was fine to do an interview and provided me an email to use where we arranged a time and date.

...But I do have to be honest, going back through that interview (especially the original TwitLonger post) made me cringe at parts. I don’t normally do interviews (hence why this is the only one I’ve ever done) but in hindsight I could have done a lot of things differently.

For one I ask too many questions relating to Geoff’s experience as a video game composer when the answer was always the same – He was okay doing it at the time but it wasn’t something he was really interested in and was happy moving away from it while doing something he was passionate about instead.

Furthermore instead of drawing attention to the fact that typos happened I should have just fixed them [like this] which is exactly what the republished version of the interview did (which I'll go into later) it looks incredibly rude honestly calling them out like that and this wasn't just with the typos either but in other sections as well, such as when I added "[In hindsight I should have guessed he meant to say “I” not “U”, also at this point he starts taking a long time to respond to my questions, so I ask if he’s alright, and that’s why his next response starts with “I’m doing other things too” I did ask if he’d like to finish the interview another time, but he wanted to keep going]" which is REALLY awkward to read and makes me glad that the republished version got rid of this entirely.

Speaking of, when I talk about the "republished" version, I mean this one on VGArc[dot]org, from what I remember this was the first website to republish my interview along with adding in a lot of new snippets of context (such as links and screenshots to whatever Geoff and I were talking about) and by cleaning it up a little making certain sections better to read (which is something I should have done in the first place). If you haven't read the interview yet I strongly recommend reading the version on this website since it's honestly a lot better than my original post (there was another website that republished my interview as well however the site seems to be gone since I can't find it).

Another thing to mention is at the time of the interview, there was a website called SongTreasure[dot]com which was the first time Geoff had put himself and his family in the public spotlight (excluding his YouTube channel where he posted his music) the purpose of this website was that your child would sing a song that they'd have available and then you would send the recording of the song the child sang to SongTreasure, they would then give the song back as a "personalised gift" by including an instrumental to the recording and also do any editing / sound mastering if required. A KickStarter was setup but it didn't reach its funding goal, you can listen to some of the original songs on Geoff's YouTube channel but otherwise there's nothing else (I should note my explanation of how SongTreasure worked probably isn't the best as the site doesn't exist anymore so I apologise if that's the case).

However while SongTreasure wasn't a success, you may notice that throughout this post I've regularly brought up Geoff's YouTube channel as it's not only still up but music is still posted to this day! whether they're soft piano pieces, the original songs he made for SongTreasure or even a song where his family is involved!

Interviewing Geoff Follin 5 years ago was such an interesting experience, being just 19 at the time and despite never doing an interview before I wanted to try to arrange one with him, and while I've mentioned things I would have done differently overall I'm so happy to have done this interview back then I'm really proud of doing it :)

Thanks for reading!

[art--hee]

Shoutouts to Plok! and the Follin brothers

[smsggsts]

(1995) Batman Forever

The Follins???

oh yeah I think they wrote the arrangements and gave them to others to implement. I didn't care for the MD version.

I enjoy this one a bit more. it's some nicely done psg orchestral.

[pixelatedaudio]

Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge - PA167

The music of Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge on the SNES, Genesis, GameGear and GB. Take a listen!

The hotly anticipated Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge is here for your listening pleasure! The game saw several releases between 1992-1994 on the SNES, Genesis, Game Boy and Game Gear. It was developed by UK games company Software Creations Ltd., published by LJN on Nintendo systems and by Acclaim subsidiary Flying Edge on Sega systems. It’s a bad game where you control 5 different…

[steakout-05]

a lotta people say the gay mlm flag looks like toothpaste, but i would like to argue that it reminds me more of the cover of Ecco The Dolphin: Defender Of The Future

like... all the many beautiful shades of green that shimmer down to calmer dark blues.... it checks out! it looks so much like it! to prove this hypothesis i have colour picked the gay colours from the Ecco poster as closely as possible to the OG flag and....

(left: the original "toothpaste" flag) (right: the colour picked flag)

theory proven: Ecco is now a gay dolphin icon and the gay flag is the beautiful glimmering ocean. thank you for reading :)

[pallisia]

what is your favorite absurdly well-produced tim and/or geoff follin SNES track

plok is the only one i've really listened to. i tried to think of a less obvious pick but none of them were snes...anyway, time trax is a favorite.

[datadegroove]

if i was in charge of coachella i would do this line up

Yello

Geinoh Yamashirogumi

Pe'z

Tim and Geoff Follin

Kotaro Nakagawa

Dubmood

the team that did the Monster Hunter 4 score

Virt

John Carpenter

Seatrain

the kid that did the Chug Jug With You song

Masamichi Amano and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra

[yhancik]

Marine Beaufils - La Sentinelle

Marine Beaufils is a French embroidery artist. (...) On embroidery’s matrix, she tries to fit the details of the video games she loves, the vignettes of her favorite movies, the readings that have marked her or the colors of astronomical views that fascinate her.

La Sentinelle is a needlepoint project initiated in 2022. (...) Each needlepoint represents a scene from the video game The Sentinel (1986) created by Geoff Crammond—initially for BBC Micro. Each scene is illuminated by a unique color duo from the game’s eight-shade palette, here in the ZX Spectrum version—ported by Mike Follin.

Project page / Shop

[moththyme]

Plok........