Just thought I'd appear and say thank you to everyone saying nice things about this!! FYI regarding the playback speed - yes I composed at 50hz but I was always conscious that it'd be heard at 60hz in the US so I let things be a little slower than I'd have liked on PAL. I think the ideal speed is probably somewhere half way between the two! Also someone mentioned how the 'high energy' stuff I did like this went away when I moved away from chip music - I totally agree! I always preferred doing the chip stuff and wish I'd had more chance to write for that FM chip. The problem used to be that there was no reason to write chip music once the consoles went away and there was certainly no reason to write chip-sounding music, but things are different these days - chip-sounding stuff is everywhere now, my kids listen to it and I keep telling them that I used to write stuff like that, but they don't care!! Brats. Maybe I just need to train them up and get them composing... ;)
If you wanted to compose chiptunes, there is still software available online to create songs! Things like DefleMask and TFM music maker can be used to emulate the FM sounds the Genesis/Mega Drive makes. I have used these before to make small songs, and DefleMask is easy to pick up and works really well.
Thank you for your work. You've influenced a lot of people. I'm going to be writing my own game soundtrack in the next coming years and you can bet I'll be looking at your work for inspiration. p.s.: Teach your kids like you taught us, just do what you enjoy and they'll take notice.
Holy smokes it's you! I am such a fan of your work Mr. Follin! your music was the best exploitation of consoles' sound chips that I've ever heard, I sometimes listen to your music while drawing!
He did, sort of. Ford Racing 3 on PS2 had music composed by him. From what I've heard of that OST, it was okay at best in my opinion, but certainly not his best.
That's because the SNES version didn't have Tim Follin involved. The opposite effect happened with Spiderman and X-Men: Arcade's Revenge, with the SNES version having its soundtrack handled by Follin.
Nitrate900 Agreed. The SNES only really shines in its orchestral symphonics, such as your standard RPG music (or anything by Nintendo like DKC or Yoshi's Island). They put a limiter on the soundchip so it didn't clip or something, and as a result -- what it outputs sounds a lot more tame than the Megadrive, although files ripped directly from the SNES are gorgeous in their full form. Buuuuut I still prefer the SEGA because FM synthesis, so there 💁.
I see the appeal of the 60Hz versions but Follin obviously composed this for 50Hz and it definitely sounds more natural and all around better that way. In my opinion anyway.
Temporal Mix Productions Now if only someone would do an audio hack on the rom so I can play this on my NTSC Genesis with its originally intended 50 Hz soundtrack! *fingers crossed*
Dan Root Tim Follin is probably the best composer in video game industry. I have never heard a single track of his that sucks. I'm a fan of Squaresoft's composers (Uematsu, Mitsuda, Shimomura, even Jeremy Soule debuted in Squaresoft), but they always have one or more tracks that I don't like. Not Tim Follin. From Ghouls and Ghosts (a Commodore 64 can create a better ambient than Chrono Trigger), to Solstice (8 seconds of usual fantasy theme, 3 minutes of awesome prog rock that ate 1/10 of NES cartridge), to Ecco the Dolphin on Dreamcast (immaculate ambience tracks).
OMG, THIS SOUNDTRACK IS AMAZING. IT"S LIKE A PROG ROCK ORGY COMING OUT OF THE GENESIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! **EDIT** This was Tim Folin? No fucking wonder it's amazing.
Music 05: Hey look, it's the Beach track from Plok~ You know you have an excellent soundtrack when even your Game Over jingle is enjoyable to hear. Follin took what would have been the Genesis release of yet another TV show tie-in game and turned it into something magical. Maybe in 2193, someone can go back in time to two decades ago and convince the developers to release it. :P Thank you so much for uploading this for us.
Yep, drums are all FM! If you open it in a player that allows channel muting, you can see that they've even shared a single track for kick+hihat and snare+hihat sounds. I've never seen that in genesis music before.
Turns out that this game is actually a licensed title based on a sci-fi show from around the same time period. It's about a cop from 200 years in the future trying to find 100 escaped prisoners who went 200 years into the past.
Soundtracks like this make you realize that the Megadrive sound chip really was pearls before swine. Incredible potential that most people were too untalented to make full use of. Only a few people like Tim Follin, Yuzo Koshiro and Hitoshi Sakimoto really brought it to its full potential. FM synth usually sounds like shit but in the right hands it's amazing.
I don't think it was a lack of talent, so much as the fact that a majority of games developed for the genesis were made by game studios who were churning out multiple titles for the two major platforms of the era (SNES and Genesis) and would generally resort to using standardized composition packages like GEMS for handling game music on the Genesis. And because GEMS was total garbage that was made to simplify the composition process, you had tons of games coming out that sounded awful when compared against the SNES. Not to mention, alot of composers of the time probably hated the fact that the Genesis didn't have quite the amount of range as the SNES, so they hardly ever bothered to learn how to make it work to their advantage (unlike Japanese developers who had the advantage of having worked with Yamaha FM chips for almost a decade prior, and knew it's strengths and weaknesses). So you combine those two factors, and it's easy to see why the Genesis gets a bad rap for having inferior sound. It was a lack of people who cared to actually push it to the limit.
And of course, British composers like Follins had years of experience with computer soundchips and knew just how to get it working for them. But you're not wrong, there's a large swath of Genesis games that sound terrible, but I think the blame is mostly on the console war of the era and how most developers slagged off the FM and PSG chip capabilities.
That's exactly it. It was fairly easy to make mediocre sounding music for the Genesis / Mega Drive, using the mediocre tools that were provided And that's what most developers did - probabliy without knowing any better. But many of the Japanese, British and European developers already had years of experience with the low level technical nature of making great music for more primitive computers, and dealing with the constraints of their limited sound chips. A combination of programming and art. Bringing that wealth of knowledge, technical skills and exprience to this comparitively advanced hardware, they had a great deal of freedom with what they could achieve. Combine that with genuine musical talent, and an understanding of what the hardware was actually capable of, and you have a select few masters, able take full advantage of the sound capabilities of this console. They were the ones who created the best music for it, and showed us its true potential.
Yes only those three people made good music for Genesis. Well, aside from: -Yoshino Nagumo (Dangerous Seed) -Noriyuki Iwadare (Steel Empire, Gleylancer, Gynoug, Langrisser) -Nobuyuki Aoshima & other M.A. staff (Alisia Dragoon) -Kozou Nakamura & other Konami staff (TMNT: Hyperstone Heist) -Michiru Yamane & other Konami staff (Castlevania: Bloodlines, Rocket Knight Adventures, Sparkster, Contra Hard Corps) -Motoaki Furukawa & other Konami staff (Sunset Riders) -Toshiharu Yamanishi & other Technosoft staff (Thunder Force IV) -Naosuke Arai & Tomomi Ōtani (Herzog Zwei) -Motoaki Takenouchi (Shining Force II, Jewel Master, Landstalker) -Kazuo Okabayashi (Chiki Chiki Boys) -Norio Hanzawa (Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy, Alien Soldier) -Hiroto Kanno (Decap Attack) -Chris Huelsbeck (Mega Turrican) -Matt Furniss (Second Samurai, Bubble & Squeak, Mortal Kombat) -Masato Nakamura (Sonic 1 & 2) -Michael Jackson (Tracks incl. Launch Base Zone and Ice Cap Zone in Sonic 3) -Sachio Ogawa & Tatsuyuki Maeda (Most of the rest of Sonic 3 + S&K)-Howard Drossin (S&K title theme and mid-boss theme) And many others...
Everytime i hear song 5 i get so sad because there's such an Incredible buildup to one of the best songs on the genesis but then it abruptly ends and goddamnit
I think the 60hz version actually sounds better for the Genesis console. It fits that style of Genesis games better just by that ever-so-slight increase of energy into the tune. Especially given how the genesis is seen more as an "authetic arcade experience" console. Though I completely see why Follin says it's meant to be heard in 50hz. The tempo that these songs have in 50hz is by far more reminiscent of the typical style of music on Amiga & Commodore games of the time (as well as his own typical style of composition). It just makes sense, seeing as how he was more used to composing for those platforms. :p
I think the most impressive thing about this soundtrack is how Tim managed to get such good sounds out of the Genesis' sounchip and mix them so well. Almost every game on the console has music with sounds that are either very mellow or very harsh, but rarely anything inbetween. It was kind of a signature thing about Genesis music and music on FM chips in general, and I really dislike it. This soundtrack doesn't do that. The sounds here are so full, and only harsh or mellow when intended to be. Oh yeah and also the composition and arrangement rocks!
Seriously? Almost every game in the Genesis? That is one DISGUSTING overestimation if I’ve ever seen one, there is a plethora of Genesis games that make brilliant use of its 2 excellent sound chips and really show what the system can do.
@@sweetpataterz8738 I wasn't as careful with wording two years ago as I am now. It would be more accurate to say "A vast majority of the games on the console whose soundtracks I've heard" rather than "Almost every game on the console". It was an uninformed generalization and I'm sorry about that. My point is that this soundtrack is unique in how well it utilizes the FM sound hardware in the Genesis. FM synthesis is notoriously difficult to "tame", so to speak, especially with such limited hardware as that of the Genesis. Tim did a very good job carefully designing the sounds in this soundtrack, so it sounds very unlike a typical Genesis game. To me that's a good thing, since I personally don't like the "Genesis" sound, or that of any computer/console whose primary sound chip was FM for that matter, for the reasons I explained in the original comment. That's not to say that Genesis games had bad soundtracks, no more than any other system. For example, some of my favorite songs from video games are in the Sonic 2 and 3 soundtracks. But the sound design in those soundtracks is distinctly harsh throughout. That's simply not the case for the Time Trax soundtrack. If you have any examples of other Genesis soundtracks whose sound design is as distinctly "un-Genesis-like" as this, I'd love to hear them.
@@OllAxe I’d also like to apologize for coming across as rude as I did in my reply. I don’t mean you specifically when say this; of course people are entitled to their own opinions but it annoys me to no end whenever I see people (mainly Super Nintendo diehards who refuse to lay the console wars to rest) brush off the entire Sega Genesis sound library without ever giving it a fair shake. I’m tired of it which is why I sound so aggravated in my reply. The Sega Genesis easily has my favorite sound of any cartridge-based home console, I seriously can’t get enough of it it’s heaven to my ears so I don’t think I can honestly provide any examples of “un-Genesis-like” music. In all honesty, I don’t really hear what sets Time Trax apart from other soundtracks on the system, it has that distinct Genesis synth and twang that I embrace with open arms.
@@sweetpataterz8738 I think what makes it "un-Genesis-like" isn't that it lacks the typical sounds that the Genesis is good at. The soundtrack relies heavily on instruments like electric guitars, bells and organs, which are very easy to make with FM synthesis, but it combines those sounds with a wide variety of mellow and natural sounds that I haven't heard very often on FM systems like the Genesis. So it for sure has the twang, but it's not all twang. The soundtrack feels like it's crafted with clear intent in every detail, like all of Tim's soundtracks.
@@OllAxe I think we may just have to agree to disagree on this one, I can definitely recognize Follin’s style here but it still has that iconic Genesis flavor just like all his other work on other home consoles has their unique sound. If it’s the more mellow sound you like, I may recommend the Ristar soundtrack. Some of the music there is real melodic and beautiful, I’d recommend specifically 2-1, 2-2, 3-1, and 5-2 (I can only remember the level order for Ristar, not the specific track names :P )
+VertX, I know you're getting technical, but I think what +craftrod means is that there were no samples used. Of course there's no "DAC/No DAC" dichotomy in digital music
What you are referring to is a separate DAC that the software itself can control to play 8-bit PCM audio. The "other" DAC is just to get the summed the output from the entire chip and convert that to analog. It's like ok... you have written your handwritten letter, but if there is no postman to take it, it would be useless.
Not on this one, all Tim. Geoff did over 50% of Plok however, and composed some games himself like Spot, Terminator 2, Wolverine, Incredible Crash Dummies, Sly Spy (C64), the list goes on.
If you drop the speed to 0.9x at 60Hz, or raise the speed to 1.1x at 50Hz, I believe you'd get more of what Tim Follin was envisioning when composing this piece. As per Tim's own comment on this video, he had to slow the tempo down on the 50Hz PAL version more than he would have liked, because of the speed hike with 60Hz NTSC. He also went on to say that the ideal tempo is somewhere in-between, and since both 60Hz @ 0.9x and 50Hz @ 1.1x sound nearly identical, they might be closer to what he had originally wanted.
Do we REALLY have it better now? This would've just been an average release in the early 90s. Now you have to truly hunt for anything that sounds as good as this.
This is such a cool soundtrack, shame the game never came out. Still, Tim Follins never disappoints and this soundtrack has quickly become one of my new favs!
It is both a blessing and a shame that the comparatively limitless potential of today's cheap sound and memory chips has created a situation in which the chiptune/tracker sound is kept around purely as a style choice. To use Genesis or NES style sound in a new game for example, would be a self-imposed limitation in all practical cases today. The farther we get from the early home computer and console days, the more chiptune becomes kind of a weird niche genre.
I'm seventeen but grew up with games such as terraria, cave story, shovel-knight, undertale and even Mega Man 9. The chiptune aesthetic has been carried onward by a ton of indie developers and THOSE games will inspire, and have inspired the chiptune artists of today.
I wish he could have composed more on the genesis/mega drive because this is godlike👍🏾✨ ( Also how did he compose such good quality music on G.E.M.S? I’m literally out of words on how amazing this is. )
Oh fuck yes! Lemme tell you something, I fucking turned this thing on expecting nothing, and This song blew me the fuck right out of the water, I'm fucking High on adrenalin, I'm gonna go nuts! My eyes, all i see if fucking Red. I can feel the blood in my arms burning, I'm gonna smash something!
This soundtrack is bloody amazing. Music 00 is the best. After having played the prototype of the game and reading about both it and Follin, makes me wonder: Why exactly was the game not released?
Oh, wow. And now, Marvel was bought by Disney. How ironic. Well, dang, I haven't watched the Time Trax series, but if this game had hit the shelves, both it and the series could've been a high success.
Why you don't know this OST? Because it is an unreleased game! A cool info about this: "The game is notable for its use of a relatively advanced sound driver designed by Dean Belfield for Follin - one which was never used in any other Mega Drive games neither before or since."
Really wish this game would have come out. Looks like it could have been one of the best games Tim worked on, at least according to my preferences for games. May have to play the proto. Not quite the same as a finished game, but perhaps worth a look.
I deeply appreciate the soundtrack on both 50hz and 60hz, but I'm partial to some of the tracks on 50hz, and others on 60hz. fantastic soundtrack either way though!
I like the 60hz version better, it just seems like a better fit for the pacing of the gameplay. Granted, it's possible the PAL version might actually have slower gameplay if they didn't optimize it for 50fps, many Genesis games didn't. Either way, I think this OST may actually be Follin's masterpiece, every track rocks and this is perhaps the best utilization of the Genesis soundchip in any game. How appropriate that after a career of making great OSTs for terrible games his best work would be for a game that never even came out at all!
Terotrous It would have been designed to be a PAL game so no optimisation would have been done for PAL regions. Keep in mind companies in PAL regions make games too! :)
Terotrous It's not very difficult to make both regions play at (roughly) the same speed. NTSC is 60Hz, therefore 60FPS, PAL is 50Hz - 50FPS. By slowing down the NTSC (making the console idle in every 6th frame) to 50FPS, you can make them almost idenctical. This is what Thunder Force 4 does.
za909returns That would be a little trickier for music, it's main time base would be from vertical blank, at 50 or 60hz. You can get away with dropping the 6th frame for graphics but your ear isn't fooled that easily. The Amiga had a timer interrupt you could program independant of ntsc or pal video mode to get around this problem, I have no idea if the MD had something similar.
SerBallister The thing is, the two sound chips don't stop generating their waveforms in that idle frame, and the idle frame will very likely not happen in the same frame a new note is supposed to trigger. Even if it does, it's not very noticable. Now for arpeggio effects, it does produce a huge difference because the frame will still be 1/60th of a second, but every 5th frame will be 1/30th of a second (because no changes will be made to the output in the 6th one)
I was referring only to the instrument triggering, not the waveform playback. I'm not sure, dropping 1 in 6 seems like it would add a lot of timing issues. Any instrument not triggering on a multiple of 6 frames will have a kind of rolling interruption effect also. A skilled composer might get around that limitation.
Until now I thought that Tiny Toons Buster's Hidden Treasure and Batman & Robin were the only ones that did not use these extra channels and only the FM chip without DAC/PCM samples, until I discovered this incredible soundtrack by master Follin.
Listening to this at 0.875x on the 60Hz versions of the music seems perfect. Unfortunately, YT only comes as close as 0.75x, which is too slow. Instructions for doing 0.875x here: Setting custom speed requires going to browser's Javascript console while on this video's page and issuing this command (valid arguments are .0625 to 16): $('video').playbackRate = .875
![Tim Follin - “Time Trax (PAL MD/Genesis)” Full Soundtrack [Improved Oscilloscope View]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Cb8bEGqQWVA/mqdefault.jpg)
Just thought I'd appear and say thank you to everyone saying nice things about this!! FYI regarding the playback speed - yes I composed at 50hz but I was always conscious that it'd be heard at 60hz in the US so I let things be a little slower than I'd have liked on PAL. I think the ideal speed is probably somewhere half way between the two! Also someone mentioned how the 'high energy' stuff I did like this went away when I moved away from chip music - I totally agree! I always preferred doing the chip stuff and wish I'd had more chance to write for that FM chip. The problem used to be that there was no reason to write chip music once the consoles went away and there was certainly no reason to write chip-sounding music, but things are different these days - chip-sounding stuff is everywhere now, my kids listen to it and I keep telling them that I used to write stuff like that, but they don't care!! Brats. Maybe I just need to train them up and get them composing... ;)
If you wanted to compose chiptunes, there is still software available online to create songs! Things like DefleMask and TFM music maker can be used to emulate the FM sounds the Genesis/Mega Drive makes. I have used these before to make small songs, and DefleMask is easy to pick up and works really well.
You're a legend among VGM connoisseurs Tim
Thank you for your work. You've influenced a lot of people. I'm going to be writing my own game soundtrack in the next coming years and you can bet I'll be looking at your work for inspiration.
p.s.: Teach your kids like you taught us, just do what you enjoy and they'll take notice.
Holy smokes it's you! I am such a fan of your work Mr. Follin! your music was the best exploitation of consoles' sound chips that I've ever heard, I sometimes listen to your music while drawing!
😂😂 your kids like chiptune sounding stuff but don't realise their old man is the greatest chiptuner to walk the earth 😂😂
Timeless Trax
Best and original comment
Based
I want Follin to make music for at least one modern game.
+ᅚᅚᅚᅚᅚᅚContradiction, look it up
+thronecode I only see ᅚᅚᅚᅚᅚᅚ
kdreamland That's it, exactly!
He did, sort of. Ford Racing 3 on PS2 had music composed by him. From what I've heard of that OST, it was okay at best in my opinion, but certainly not his best.
He probably sees boxes with hexadecimal character codes because he never installed any international fonts.
wow, this music is quite incredible.
wipes the floor with the SNES version, and thats a rarity.
+Stewart Fullerton Agreed. The Genesis really shines with that dark and dirty synth stuff
That's because the SNES version didn't have Tim Follin involved. The opposite effect happened with Spiderman and X-Men: Arcade's Revenge, with the SNES version having its soundtrack handled by Follin.
Not a rarity at all. The Mega Drive sound was way better than SNES in many fields (heavy metal, techno, industrial, etc.)
Nitrate900 Agreed. The SNES only really shines in its orchestral symphonics, such as your standard RPG music (or anything by Nintendo like DKC or Yoshi's Island). They put a limiter on the soundchip so it didn't clip or something, and as a result -- what it outputs sounds a lot more tame than the Megadrive, although files ripped directly from the SNES are gorgeous in their full form. Buuuuut I still prefer the SEGA because FM synthesis, so there 💁.
The composer of Boogerman did better with the Genesis soundcard over the SNES version
I see the appeal of the 60Hz versions but Follin obviously composed this for 50Hz and it definitely sounds more natural and all around better that way. In my opinion anyway.
Agreed!
Temporal Mix Productions Agreed. But @ 60Hz, you could admit that it is some good workout music.
Temporal Mix Productions Now if only someone would do an audio hack on the rom so I can play this on my NTSC Genesis with its originally intended 50 Hz soundtrack! *fingers crossed*
Music 00, Music 01, Music 02: Better in 60 Hz
Music 03, Music 04, Music 05: Better in 50 Hz
It's only my opinion.
I personally really like 04 in 60hz, sounds pretty SORish to me.
0:39 - my face when i'm listening to this
Stanky face
Molten beyond recognition
my face is folding in on itself
OKAY I'M ABSOLUTELY IN LOVE WITH THIS SOUNDTRACK THAT I'VE SOMEHOW NEVER HEARD BEFORE
That's Tim Follin for ya ;)
You should look for his other pieces, you won't be disappointed
MundoComic I think I might well have to
Dan Root Tim Follin is probably the best composer in video game industry. I have never heard a single track of his that sucks. I'm a fan of Squaresoft's composers (Uematsu, Mitsuda, Shimomura, even Jeremy Soule debuted in Squaresoft), but they always have one or more tracks that I don't like. Not Tim Follin. From Ghouls and Ghosts (a Commodore 64 can create a better ambient than Chrono Trigger), to Solstice (8 seconds of usual fantasy theme, 3 minutes of awesome prog rock that ate 1/10 of NES cartridge), to Ecco the Dolphin on Dreamcast (immaculate ambience tracks).
budakbaong siah I'm totally going to listen to more of his stuff!
+Dan Root Well, 7 months have passed. I think you've had quite the time to hear some of Tim Follin's full of 'tube tunes. So, Dan, what do you think?
Music 04 in 50hz is everything I've ever wanted from a game soundtrack.
reminds me a bit of the bar section in streets of rage 2
+Sunder At 50Hz it sounds so LEWD! Omg
It's pretty good.
hi
00 and 04 are gorgeous, the others are just Follin standard stuff, but already awesome!
OMG, THIS SOUNDTRACK IS AMAZING. IT"S LIKE A PROG ROCK ORGY COMING OUT OF THE GENESIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
**EDIT** This was Tim Folin? No fucking wonder it's amazing.
Music 01 is madness. Follin is just on a different level. He just goes bonkers on everything. It's not even fair.
Agreed!
I'm so glad Tim could watch people rediscover his amazing work and give it the praise it deserves, time thankfully was kind to him in this regard
It's a crime for this game to not be released. The music in this game rocks!!! 🤘
Noah Rentsch totally fucking agree there!! 👊😎
You can still play it if you really want to.
This soundtrack sounds like a a brilliant space rock/progressive album from the 80's! Amazing soundtrack.
This thing at 50 Hz is addicting as hell. I keep coming back here every day to listen, and I don't even know this game.
Tim Follin is a god.
Music 02 at 60 Hz is hilarious and awesome. The synth-shredding is out of control! Follin is so awesome
Music 05: Hey look, it's the Beach track from Plok~
You know you have an excellent soundtrack when even your Game Over jingle is enjoyable to hear. Follin took what would have been the Genesis release of yet another TV show tie-in game and turned it into something magical. Maybe in 2193, someone can go back in time to two decades ago and convince the developers to release it. :P
Thank you so much for uploading this for us.
both speeds sound absolutely amazing, that's just how good tim follin is
Music 0 on 60hz makes me feel like I'm living every possible future at once.
I know it's supposed to be played at 50Hz, but the title theme sounds great at 60Hz.
Yep, drums are all FM! If you open it in a player that allows channel muting, you can see that they've even shared a single track for kick+hihat and snare+hihat sounds. I've never seen that in genesis music before.
Damn, the quality of how well these songs were made gives Thunder Force IV a run for its money.
Indeed, if Tim Follin made more FM stuff (and he wished that to happen) he'd probably blow up the sound chip
imagine tim follin meets thunder force
Thanks for sharing! Looks and sounds awesome.
the 60hz version isn't faster due to the higher number... it's just MORE BLAST PROCESSING
Hello me
I was totally enthralled by that story.
Turns out that this game is actually a licensed title based on a sci-fi show from around the same time period. It's about a cop from 200 years in the future trying to find 100 escaped prisoners who went 200 years into the past.
Soundtracks like this make you realize that the Megadrive sound chip really was pearls before swine. Incredible potential that most people were too untalented to make full use of. Only a few people like Tim Follin, Yuzo Koshiro and Hitoshi Sakimoto really brought it to its full potential. FM synth usually sounds like shit but in the right hands it's amazing.
i dont think "untalented" is the correct word to use here.
I don't think it was a lack of talent, so much as the fact that a majority of games developed for the genesis were made by game studios who were churning out multiple titles for the two major platforms of the era (SNES and Genesis) and would generally resort to using standardized composition packages like GEMS for handling game music on the Genesis. And because GEMS was total garbage that was made to simplify the composition process, you had tons of games coming out that sounded awful when compared against the SNES.
Not to mention, alot of composers of the time probably hated the fact that the Genesis didn't have quite the amount of range as the SNES, so they hardly ever bothered to learn how to make it work to their advantage (unlike Japanese developers who had the advantage of having worked with Yamaha FM chips for almost a decade prior, and knew it's strengths and weaknesses). So you combine those two factors, and it's easy to see why the Genesis gets a bad rap for having inferior sound. It was a lack of people who cared to actually push it to the limit.
And of course, British composers like Follins had years of experience with computer soundchips and knew just how to get it working for them. But you're not wrong, there's a large swath of Genesis games that sound terrible, but I think the blame is mostly on the console war of the era and how most developers slagged off the FM and PSG chip capabilities.
That's exactly it. It was fairly easy to make mediocre sounding music for the Genesis / Mega Drive, using the mediocre tools that were provided And that's what most developers did - probabliy without knowing any better.
But many of the Japanese, British and European developers already had years of experience with the low level technical nature of making great music for more primitive computers, and dealing with the constraints of their limited sound chips. A combination of programming and art.
Bringing that wealth of knowledge, technical skills and exprience to this comparitively advanced hardware, they had a great deal of freedom with what they could achieve. Combine that with genuine musical talent, and an understanding of what the hardware was actually capable of, and you have a select few masters, able take full advantage of the sound capabilities of this console. They were the ones who created the best music for it, and showed us its true potential.
Yes only those three people made good music for Genesis. Well, aside from:
-Yoshino Nagumo (Dangerous Seed)
-Noriyuki Iwadare (Steel Empire, Gleylancer, Gynoug, Langrisser)
-Nobuyuki Aoshima & other M.A. staff (Alisia Dragoon)
-Kozou Nakamura & other Konami staff (TMNT: Hyperstone Heist)
-Michiru Yamane & other Konami staff (Castlevania: Bloodlines, Rocket Knight Adventures, Sparkster, Contra Hard Corps)
-Motoaki Furukawa & other Konami staff (Sunset Riders)
-Toshiharu Yamanishi & other Technosoft staff (Thunder Force IV)
-Naosuke Arai & Tomomi Ōtani (Herzog Zwei)
-Motoaki Takenouchi (Shining Force II, Jewel Master, Landstalker)
-Kazuo Okabayashi (Chiki Chiki Boys)
-Norio Hanzawa (Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy, Alien Soldier)
-Hiroto Kanno (Decap Attack)
-Chris Huelsbeck (Mega Turrican)
-Matt Furniss (Second Samurai, Bubble & Squeak, Mortal Kombat)
-Masato Nakamura (Sonic 1 & 2)
-Michael Jackson (Tracks incl. Launch Base Zone and Ice Cap Zone in Sonic 3)
-Sachio Ogawa & Tatsuyuki Maeda (Most of the rest of Sonic 3 + S&K)-Howard Drossin (S&K title theme and mid-boss theme)
And many others...
I wish, with all of my heart, that Music 05 were a full track. It starts off AMAZINGLY.
same
Everytime i hear song 5 i get so sad because there's such an Incredible buildup to one of the best songs on the genesis but then it abruptly ends and goddamnit
The hellllllllllllllllllll bro it's my destiny to finish music 05.
This music is awesome Tim. Thank you for sharing your talent.
I think the 60hz version actually sounds better for the Genesis console. It fits that style of Genesis games better just by that ever-so-slight increase of energy into the tune. Especially given how the genesis is seen more as an "authetic arcade experience" console.
Though I completely see why Follin says it's meant to be heard in 50hz. The tempo that these songs have in 50hz is by far more reminiscent of the typical style of music on Amiga & Commodore games of the time (as well as his own typical style of composition). It just makes sense, seeing as how he was more used to composing for those platforms. :p
50Hz fits more.
holy fuck this is good
Ho-lee-shit. This is from the same guy who did the OST for Plok? This is by far Genesis music at its sexiest.
Rashad Moore Yup Tim Follin.
He also did Silver Surfer for the NES
And Solstice!
Don't forget Ghouls n Ghosts! (Amiga)
L.E.D. Storm on ZX Spectrum is also a masterpiece!
I really want a long mix of the first 60hz track. Hell all of these could use long mixs, they're all really good.
Excellent music for doing my programming work, even here in the far future of 2020.
How does it feel man, we're nearly out of this covid thing
うほっ！センスいい！メガドラでこんなサウンド作れるんや。
Holy hell, that first song had me hooked. It's astounding.
My My this is still Amazing! It never gets old. 50hz all the way!
I think the most impressive thing about this soundtrack is how Tim managed to get such good sounds out of the Genesis' sounchip and mix them so well. Almost every game on the console has music with sounds that are either very mellow or very harsh, but rarely anything inbetween. It was kind of a signature thing about Genesis music and music on FM chips in general, and I really dislike it. This soundtrack doesn't do that. The sounds here are so full, and only harsh or mellow when intended to be.
Oh yeah and also the composition and arrangement rocks!
Seriously? Almost every game in the Genesis? That is one DISGUSTING overestimation if I’ve ever seen one, there is a plethora of Genesis games that make brilliant use of its 2 excellent sound chips and really show what the system can do.
@@sweetpataterz8738 I wasn't as careful with wording two years ago as I am now. It would be more accurate to say "A vast majority of the games on the console whose soundtracks I've heard" rather than "Almost every game on the console". It was an uninformed generalization and I'm sorry about that. My point is that this soundtrack is unique in how well it utilizes the FM sound hardware in the Genesis. FM synthesis is notoriously difficult to "tame", so to speak, especially with such limited hardware as that of the Genesis. Tim did a very good job carefully designing the sounds in this soundtrack, so it sounds very unlike a typical Genesis game. To me that's a good thing, since I personally don't like the "Genesis" sound, or that of any computer/console whose primary sound chip was FM for that matter, for the reasons I explained in the original comment.
That's not to say that Genesis games had bad soundtracks, no more than any other system. For example, some of my favorite songs from video games are in the Sonic 2 and 3 soundtracks. But the sound design in those soundtracks is distinctly harsh throughout. That's simply not the case for the Time Trax soundtrack.
If you have any examples of other Genesis soundtracks whose sound design is as distinctly "un-Genesis-like" as this, I'd love to hear them.
@@OllAxe I’d also like to apologize for coming across as rude as I did in my reply. I don’t mean you specifically when say this; of course people are entitled to their own opinions but it annoys me to no end whenever I see people (mainly Super Nintendo diehards who refuse to lay the console wars to rest) brush off the entire Sega Genesis sound library without ever giving it a fair shake. I’m tired of it which is why I sound so aggravated in my reply. The Sega Genesis easily has my favorite sound of any cartridge-based home console, I seriously can’t get enough of it it’s heaven to my ears so I don’t think I can honestly provide any examples of “un-Genesis-like” music. In all honesty, I don’t really hear what sets Time Trax apart from other soundtracks on the system, it has that distinct Genesis synth and twang that I embrace with open arms.
@@sweetpataterz8738 I think what makes it "un-Genesis-like" isn't that it lacks the typical sounds that the Genesis is good at. The soundtrack relies heavily on instruments like electric guitars, bells and organs, which are very easy to make with FM synthesis, but it combines those sounds with a wide variety of mellow and natural sounds that I haven't heard very often on FM systems like the Genesis. So it for sure has the twang, but it's not all twang. The soundtrack feels like it's crafted with clear intent in every detail, like all of Tim's soundtracks.
@@OllAxe I think we may just have to agree to disagree on this one, I can definitely recognize Follin’s style here but it still has that iconic Genesis flavor just like all his other work on other home consoles has their unique sound. If it’s the more mellow sound you like, I may recommend the Ristar soundtrack. Some of the music there is real melodic and beautiful, I’d recommend specifically 2-1, 2-2, 3-1, and 5-2 (I can only remember the level order for Ristar, not the specific track names :P )
No DAC or PCM are used in this soundtrack. Perfect.
***** || It does? Wow, I thought DAC was a PCM-like sound.
***** || So DAC is only for converting the sound signals to it can be heard on a TV???
+VertX, I know you're getting technical, but I think what +craftrod means is that there were no samples used. Of course there's no "DAC/No DAC" dichotomy in digital music
What you are referring to is a separate DAC that the software itself can control to play 8-bit PCM audio. The "other" DAC is just to get the summed the output from the entire chip and convert that to analog. It's like ok... you have written your handwritten letter, but if there is no postman to take it, it would be useless.
alysdexia Irrelevant. His message is clear and coherent with or without that error.
A-tier soundtrack
(Why did i forgor to comment)
I want to say that his brother Geoff Follin helped compose most of what we love. Tim was the guy that helped program it, mostly.
Not on this one, all Tim.
Geoff did over 50% of Plok however, and composed some games himself like Spot, Terminator 2, Wolverine, Incredible Crash Dummies, Sly Spy (C64), the list goes on.
I used to think 50hz was the appropriate speed for this, but after hearing the title theme a few times i feel the 60hz one is more exciting
Music 03 = Lost PANTERA track 12:14! lol
If you drop the speed to 0.9x at 60Hz, or raise the speed to 1.1x at 50Hz, I believe you'd get more of what Tim Follin was envisioning when composing this piece.
As per Tim's own comment on this video, he had to slow the tempo down on the 50Hz PAL version more than he would have liked, because of the speed hike with 60Hz NTSC. He also went on to say that the ideal tempo is somewhere in-between, and since both 60Hz @ 0.9x and 50Hz @ 1.1x sound nearly identical, they might be closer to what he had originally wanted.
music 03 has such a powerful start to it holy shit
Im a Genesis fan that played a lot of it in my childhood, That Soundtrack is truly Amazing, finally some good recomendation from TH-cam.
42:15 S-...Sans?
The sound driver it's amazing, the drums are made purely by FM synth, all OST don't use the DAC from the YM2612 and the SN76489 (PSG)
Tim follin... His music.. makes the game!!! Love it!!
I ended up here from the GDQ music playlist and oh goodness this is so good
12:16 [C O M P L E T E L Y E R E C T E D]
Do we REALLY have it better now? This would've just been an average release in the early 90s. Now you have to truly hunt for anything that sounds as good as this.
There's plenty of garbage from that time period, too. Some of it even survives to this day.
@@BubblewrapHighway Action 52 NES soundtrack, lmao
I like the fast versions of these songs because they remind me of the
Hurry up songs from super Mario Maker 2
Track 4 has wicked Paul Hardcastle vibes!
This is such a cool soundtrack, shame the game never came out. Still, Tim Follins never disappoints and this soundtrack has quickly become one of my new favs!
It is both a blessing and a shame that the comparatively limitless potential of today's cheap sound and memory chips has created a situation in which the chiptune/tracker sound is kept around purely as a style choice. To use Genesis or NES style sound in a new game for example, would be a self-imposed limitation in all practical cases today. The farther we get from the early home computer and console days, the more chiptune becomes kind of a weird niche genre.
I'm seventeen but grew up with games such as terraria, cave story, shovel-knight, undertale and even Mega Man 9. The chiptune aesthetic has been carried onward by a ton of indie developers and THOSE games will inspire, and have inspired the chiptune artists of today.
My absolute favorite work of Tim Follin, in both 60hz and 50hz
Song 4 is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard Omg
This is in a different league to the SNES version’s soundtrack!
I just love that bass line in track 03 and 04!!!
Given Follin lives in England, where the mains frequency is 50Hz, it's likely he composed all these at 50Hz.
Follin's soundtracks sound a bit like Isao Tomita's work. 👍🏻 Fantastic 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
This dude really made strings instrument on a genesis
00:40 face LoL
Охрененно! Лучшая музыка, которую я когда-либо слышал!
Best music I've ever heard!
The 50hz version of track 04 would be nice hold music for a call center to use.
This album just taught me how to dance.
omg sounds Amazing and nice compositions from a Great Composer.
Did anyone notice how Tim the madman leitmotifed the Pictonary moving your piece song into the fourth song in this game?
It sounds good too!
I wish he could have composed more on the genesis/mega drive because this is godlike👍🏾✨ ( Also how did he compose such good quality music on G.E.M.S? I’m literally out of words on how amazing this is. )
this is not G.E.M.S. he was using a driver his colleague's made
すげーオシャレ
That title screen is absolutely trippy.
I really like music 00 in 60hz, is rockin af
3:50 is just a work of art. ❤
Music 03 is a fricken banger!
who r the nut jobs who gave this a thumbs down
A SNES kiddy
CyberRonin Most likely
From the land down under
Oh fuck yes! Lemme tell you something, I fucking turned this thing on expecting nothing, and This song blew me the fuck right out of the water, I'm fucking High on adrenalin, I'm gonna go nuts! My eyes, all i see if fucking Red. I can feel the blood in my arms burning, I'm gonna smash something!
60hz is WAAAAAYYY too fast for this soundtrack!
Either way, Tim Follin is a musical genius.
This one is also awesome soundtrack, thanks Brother.
The track 4 was astonishing!
remind me another god from genesis music, Yuzo Koshiro from Street of Rage
メガドライブ版はお蔵入りになったそうで残念。かっこいい！どんなゲームだったのでしょうね。
アップロードありがとうございます。
Fantastic soundtrack!
Music00、どう聞いてもＦＭ７音鳴ってる気がする（笑）
まさかメロディの音ＰＳＧ重ね合わせでやってるとか？
それともこの厚みのあるバックコードが１音？
ティムフォリンもゴンザレスさんに負けず劣らず凄腕の音職人だなぁ。
50hz sounds best
This soundtrack is bloody amazing. Music 00 is the best.
After having played the prototype of the game and reading about both it and Follin, makes me wonder: Why exactly was the game not released?
Oh, wow. And now, Marvel was bought by Disney. How ironic.
Well, dang, I haven't watched the Time Trax series, but if this game had hit the shelves, both it and the series could've been a high success.
Holy hell, this soundtrack is fucking flame. Thanks Game Sack for cluing me in!
Just incredible !
Awesome guitar Lead !
00:00
Whaaaaaaaaat !!!!!! This is amazing !!!!! WHY DIDN'T I KNOW THIS OST ???????????? THIS IS AWESOME !!!!!!!!!!!!
hi
Why you don't know this OST? Because it is an unreleased game!
A cool info about this: "The game is notable for its use of a relatively advanced sound driver designed by Dean Belfield for Follin - one which was never used in any other Mega Drive games neither before or since."
this has just blown my mind
60Hz the best!!
Really wish this game would have come out. Looks like it could have been one of the best games Tim worked on, at least according to my preferences for games. May have to play the proto. Not quite the same as a finished game, but perhaps worth a look.
beautiful vibes ✨
I know Tim Follin said this trax is not meant to be heard at 60hz... but it's still damn good! 50hz version rather drags now.
50hz sounds way too slow, 60hz is insanely good.
If yall love this tim guy so much why dont you marry him
The wedding is this Saturday, you comin'?
@@BubblewrapHighway yes
I deeply appreciate the soundtrack on both 50hz and 60hz, but I'm partial to some of the tracks on 50hz, and others on 60hz. fantastic soundtrack either way though!
I like the 60hz version better, it just seems like a better fit for the pacing of the gameplay. Granted, it's possible the PAL version might actually have slower gameplay if they didn't optimize it for 50fps, many Genesis games didn't.
Either way, I think this OST may actually be Follin's masterpiece, every track rocks and this is perhaps the best utilization of the Genesis soundchip in any game. How appropriate that after a career of making great OSTs for terrible games his best work would be for a game that never even came out at all!
Terotrous It would have been designed to be a PAL game so no optimisation would have been done for PAL regions. Keep in mind companies in PAL regions make games too! :)
Terotrous It's not very difficult to make both regions play at (roughly) the same speed. NTSC is 60Hz, therefore 60FPS, PAL is 50Hz - 50FPS.
By slowing down the NTSC (making the console idle in every 6th frame) to 50FPS, you can make them almost idenctical. This is what Thunder Force 4 does.
za909returns That would be a little trickier for music, it's main time base would be from vertical blank, at 50 or 60hz. You can get away with dropping the 6th frame for graphics but your ear isn't fooled that easily. The Amiga had a timer interrupt you could program independant of ntsc or pal video mode to get around this problem, I have no idea if the MD had something similar.
SerBallister The thing is, the two sound chips don't stop generating their waveforms in that idle frame, and the idle frame will very likely not happen in the same frame a new note is supposed to trigger. Even if it does, it's not very noticable.
Now for arpeggio effects, it does produce a huge difference because the frame will still be 1/60th of a second, but every 5th frame will be 1/30th of a second (because no changes will be made to the output in the 6th one)
I was referring only to the instrument triggering, not the waveform playback.
I'm not sure, dropping 1 in 6 seems like it would add a lot of timing issues. Any instrument not triggering on a multiple of 6 frames will have a kind of rolling interruption effect also.
A skilled composer might get around that limitation.
The title track uses 6 FM voices without PSG and samples. Even the drums are 100% FM.
Actually I think he even used only 5 channels
Until now I thought that Tiny Toons Buster's Hidden Treasure and Batman & Robin were the only ones that did not use these extra channels and only the FM chip without DAC/PCM samples, until I discovered this incredible soundtrack by master Follin.
Listening to this at 0.875x on the 60Hz versions of the music seems perfect.
Unfortunately, YT only comes as close as 0.75x, which is too slow.
Instructions for doing 0.875x here:
Setting custom speed requires going to browser's Javascript console while on this video's page and issuing this command (valid arguments are .0625 to 16):
$('video').playbackRate = .875
i had to admit, the entire 50hz ost is the best.
Nah, 60hz master race!
this is dope