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In the middle of the 1970s, there were small game development studios popping up all over the world. In Melbourne, Australia; in 1977, one of those companies was Beam Software. Their initial games were developed for the home computers of the early 1980s, and they scored a whopper of an early hit in 1982's The Hobbit. At the tail end of the 80s, they finally made the move into home console development for the NES. A couple early stinkers in the two Back to the Future games did not slow the company down, and they started to get contracts to port arcade games to the console. In the early 1990s, there was a shift in the company's audio staff which saw Gavan Anderson and Tania Smith working on music and audio, but Tania ended up leaving to go on a world tour, and she asked Marshall Parker to be her replacement. Marshall was already 38 years old when he joined Beam Software in 1990, making him one of the older composers even at that time.
Continue reading Composer Compendium: Marshall Parker
Naoki Kodaka is one of the most listened to 8-bit composers. I'm sure most of you have heard some of the music from the games he worked on, but may not have realized how many classics he had a hand in. Kodaka is known for his work at a company called Sunsoft, and he spent the better part of a decade composing soundtracks for the company. His first one was a shooter for the Famicom Disc System, Dead Zone in 1986.
His next game would also be exclusive to the FDS, Nazoler Land. Sunsoft was stepping up in the world and got the rights to port a couple of popular games to the NES. Activision's PC hit Shanghai and Bally Midway's arcade smash hit Spy Hunter were both ported to the NES by Sunsoft, and the soundtracks were re-arranged by Kodaka.
Sunsoft soon went international as a result of the success of these ports. In 1988 their Zapper game Freedom Force and first international sensation Blaster Master both had soundtracks composed by Kodaka and his fellow associates at the company. Naohisa Morota developed a sound engine that lead to Sunsoft's unique bass heavy sound style. This is now known as Sunsoft bass as a result of how much it stands out and the high quality of the company's soundtracks from the NES era. This year closed out with a port of Platoon and the Japanese FDS exclusive Nankin no Adventure.
The following two years are arguably the golden years of 8-bit soundtracks, with Kodaka and Sunsoft being one of the biggest reasons for this. In 1989 the company released Fester's Quest and Batman. The next year saw the Genesis/Mega Drive version of Batman, as well as the almost Terminator game Journey to Silius, as well as Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Nantettatte!! Baseball was the last of Sunsoft's Famicom exclusive games. All of these games had Kodaka at the musical helm.
Sunsoft was rather slow to convert to the 16 bit systems overall. They did release Batman for the Genesis, but continued pouring a great effort into the declining Famicom. Still, some great games and soundtracks came about from this arrangement. In 1991 Sunsoft released Ufouria seemingly everywhere but North America, they developed an updated version of Spy Hunter called Super Spy Hunter, and followed up on Batman with Return of the Joker. 1992 saw the release of Super Fantasy Zone for the Mega Drive. Again, these are all Sunsoft's games that had Kodaka as the lead composer.
Kodaka's output finally started slowing down when Sunsoft had him start work on their flagship strategy RPG series Albert Odyssey for the Super Famicom in 1993. The following year would have Albert Odyssey II and Sugoi Hebereke release for the SFC.
A two year break would follow before the third Albert Odyssey game released, Sunsoft moving the to the very popular in Japan Sega Saturn. North America had this game released by Working Designs as Albert Odyssey: Legend of Eldean. Kodaka's final composing project before retiring from video games would be Out Live: Be Elimiate Yesterday for the Playstation, and exclusively in Japan.
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Posted on Apr 18th 2014 at 08:38:01 PM by ( SirPsycho) Posted under soundtrack, zx spectrum, commodore 64, c64, amiga, windows, nes, snes, silver surfer, plok, ecco the dolphin, ecco, lemmings |
Tim Follin is one of the most influential Western composers in the history of the industry. He was rather young to be part of the earliest pioneers, but landed his first job in the video game industry working for Insight Studios at the tender age of 15. During his childhood he had no formal music training but attended a year of Liverpool's Sandown Music College. That was all he needed.
At first he was making arrangements for ports of arcade games with his first work being on his brother Mike's game Subterranen Stryker for the ZX Spectrum. He kept working with his brother for the first part of his career. Their second game was a Galaxian inspired shooter called Star Firebirds for the Spectrum, in which he learned how to use a 2 channel driver. His first 3 channel driver game was Vectron. For his fourth game, he also programmed one of the mini games, as well as the sound for Future Games.
After these first four games Tim and Mike were hired on at Software Creations. There he worked on arrangements for Spectrum and Commodore 64 games such as Agent X I and II, Chronos, Scumball, The Sentinel, Bubble Bobble, Renegade, Bionic Commando and various others. Many of these were nothing more than arrangements to fit onto the ZX Spectrum or C64 for ports of popular arcade games. One exception is the Agent X games.
This trend would mostly continue as the various computers of the late 80s were filled with arcade ports, and Software Creations did a lot of them. He worked on arrangements for ports such as Peter Pack Rat, Ghouls'n Ghosts, and got his first experienced on the NES with the arrangement for Flying Shark which we know as Sky Shark.
Tim Follin was still spending most of his time with the C64 and Spectrum despite his work with the ever popular NES. This could have something to do with the NES not being as popular in Europe as it was in Japan and North America. These PCs of the time were reigning supreme. He did compose the music for Target: Renegade for the NES, then composed for Chester Field, Magic Johnson's Fast Break, and Qix before his last PC game, until later Windows compositions, came in 1991, Gauntlet III for the C64, Amiga, and Spectrum.
A little bit before this he finally moved to the NES full time, composing the soundtrack for Solstice and one of the best for the entire system, Silver Surfer. Say what you will about whether or not the game is actually good, you cannot say anything bad about the soundtrack. He also worked on Kiwi Kraze, Treasure Master, Pictionary, and the Taito version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade before mostly moving onto the Super Nintendo.
One last game he worked on before going to the Super full time were the handheld and Master System ports of The Incredible Crash Dummies. For most of the Super Nintendo titles he worked on he was assisted by another one of his brothers, Geoff Follin. His first SNES game he composed for was Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge. Next he would create music for Leland's Super Off Road, Plok, Equinox, Silicon & Synapse's (Early Blizzard) Rock N' Roll Racing, Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, the completed but unreleased Moto-X, and Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball. For the Genesis he also composed the unreleased Time Trax, which managed to leak onto the web in 2013.
After this incredibly busy period of his career it took a downturn. He left Software Creations in 1993 and began freelancing. Despite this incredible resume work was slow and sporadic, with the most done in the following two years. He finished his 16 bit days composing the soundtracks for Batman Forever for Genesis and SNES, and Ultraverse Prime for the Sega CD, then a cancelled PC game Firearm. Afterwards he had a few years off before coming back for the Playstation's Batman & Robin, in which he only arranged pieces from the film's score. The 20th Century would end with arrangement for Bust-A-Move 4's Game Boy Color port.
The 21st Century started with Tim working with Appaloosa Interactive for their revival of the Ecco the Dolphin series, with Defender of the Future for the Dreamcast and later Playstation 2. It would take another few years before his next piece of work, Starsky & Hutch in 2003 for all 3 major systems and PC of the time. Ford Racing 2 and 3 were composed by him as well as Future Tactics: The Uprising. His very last game before he officially retired from video game composition, citing irregular work patterns, was the remake of Lemmings for PSP, released in 2006. His work, from its earliest days, inspired many other European composers, as he was able to do things with early soundchips that nobody thought was even possible.
When it comes to retro arcade sticks there are a few which everybody knows about, the NES Advantage, Super Advantage, Sega's Genesis Stick & Saturn Stick, and then the Capcom Fighter Power Stick. But, it has been 20 years since this bulky controller has released so does it hold up?
You'll just have to stay tuned and find out!
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