The Underrated Game Composers

When you think of great video game composers do artists like Nobuo Uematsu and Jeremy Soule come to mind? How about Koichi Sugiyama or Tommy Tallarico? Am I now starting to step into obscure territory? Before gaming became a very popular concept, video game composers were indefinitely tied to the titles they worked on. If it was popular, you knew who made the music and if it was catchy - everyone knew who made the music. In regards to their relatively unknown talent, I'm going to list some awesome video game composers from around the world who weren't necessarily tied to popular titles but nonetheless cracked out badass tunes.

Rob Hubbard

Before creating video game chip tunes, Rob Hubbard was already an experienced studio musician. Rob took his talents from the musical field to working on code for the Commodore 64 eventually being picked up by Gremlin Graphics and EA Games. Within his first four years of video game composition he created over 75 chip tunes a few of those being the popular Monty on the Run, Warhawk, and Zoids. Many would concur that Rob Hubbard's signature sound designs were his considerably long tracks and his ability to make the Commodore 64 seem like it was running 4-5 sound channels as opposed to the regular 3 channel capability of the system. His longest running tune is the 17 minute title track to Knucklebusters and his more well known Genesis track is John Madden's Football. Apart from the Commodore 64, Rob's work spanned from the Amiga, Atari ST, IBM PC, and the Sega Mega Drive or Genesis.

To this day his music is being remixed and orchestrated by fans and the European composers of the Symphonic Game Music Concert.



Martin Galway

Martin Galway remains today as one of the best sid chip and ZX Spectrum sound designers ever. His work in gaming began at the early age of 17 creating music and sound effects for his friends and a small company that developed unlicensed games. Martin Galway is the first video game composer to use sampled sounds on the Commodore 64 by utilizing hacked drum synthesizer code and is perhaps the first to ever use sampled music on a video game system. A few of his more popular tracks are Wizball, the rather lengthy Parallax title theme, and his very memorable Rambo First Blood Part II tunes. To this day he refuses to remake any of his SID chip tunes due to a personal belief that the music was suited only for the game system and not real instruments. Today he works for Certain Afinity in Austin Texas.



Jeroen Tel/Maniacs of Noise

Jeroen Tel is a Dutch video game composer who created many tracks from the Commodore 64 to the NES throughout the late 80s and early 90s. Starting as early as the age of 16, Jeroen was making music demos under the name of JT/Scoop later co-founding the Maniacs of Noise with original demoscener, Charles Deenen. The Maniacs of Noise would later make music for Sega, US Probe, and Gold Software before moving away from licensed gaming titles. Today they create their own sid music and remixes which are sold and distributed online so long as you can find them. By the 1990s Deenen moved to the US to work for Interplay composing: Fallout 1+2, Another World, Planescape Torment, The Lost Vikings and Descent 2. Moving away from Deenen, Jeroen Tel's library of music under The Maniacs and Noise ranges from catchy to the simply outstanding with his most memorable works being: Robocop 3, Rubicon, Cybernoid 2, Nighthunter and Hawkeye. Along with a vast list of licensed game music, Jeroen Tel creates his own original music tracks through the sid chip.

Jeroen Tel is still quite active today as a musician and can be found commenting thanks to those who upload his old music through youtube and making several interviews on his perspective of music and composition.



Ryu Umemoto

Ryu Umemoto was a brilliant FM-Synth composer primarily focusing on PC engine titles early in his career. Many still compare his works to audio programmer and video game music designer's, Yuzo Koshiro. Without any musical training of his own he jumped into vgm design simply out of interest utilizing only his self taught experience with synthesizers and in no time became a freelance tune designer for many different game companies. His earliest works range from PC action games to several visual novels by C Ware and Elf. I guess back then when you wanted to buy some digital softcore porn you'd bank on the Japanese to give you the best sound design. Out of his eroge works, Xenon, Eve Burst Error and Desire were easily the best compositions of his career. Later on Ryu Unemoto became an arranger and conductor for bullet hell games Akai Katana and Espgaluda II both featuring heavy trance themes. Sadly, in 2011, Ryu Umemoto died of illness at the age of 37 making NIN2-JUMP the last game he ever worked on.



Tim and Geoff Follin

Video game design was initially a venture only Geoff Follin wanted to partake in, but eventually Tim fell into the business after the third brother, Mike Follin, showed him how to program music on the ZX Spectrum. They both began making simple tunes for Insight Studios at an early age and progressed quickly at evolving the sounds for the systems they worked on. Their music design was notable for being highly imaginative - using samples to create the effects of instruments on 8-bit and 16-bit systems. Both brothers were heavily influenced by the progressive rock peak of their time period; their contemporary influences can easily be noticed from the tunes they cranked out. Probably their most interesting accomplishment made on the ZX Spectrum was forcing the system to play six channels of sound off of one beeper noise ala LED Storm. Many current musicians, such as Jesper Kyd, cite the Follin Brothers as being one of their influences for video game music design and for good reason. Their works spanned from the ZX Spectrum era all the way to the PS2. It was until 2005 when Tim Follin resigned entirely from video game design due to its stressful and irregularly successful nature. Geoff later became a primary school teacher.

Tim and Geoff Follin created an extensive list of enjoyable music during their time as composers. On the Commodore 64 there was Bodyslam, Agent X 2, Bionic Commando, and Sly Spy Secret Agent. On the NES there was the explosive Solstice, the intense Silver Surfer, Pictionary, and Wolverine. Closing the chip tune era the Follin Bros worked on the GBC's Cool Spot, the later canned video game Time Trax for the Genesis, and finally my favorite SNES soundtrack next to Donkey Kong Country, Plok. A few good examples of their redbook works are: Ultraverse Prime, Ecco the Dolphin (because fuck it I'll link the whole beautiful thing), Starksy and Hutch, and Future Tactics.

Honorable mentions:

Chris Hülsbeck - Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams (in collaboration with Machinae Supremacy, and Fabian Del Priore) and Shades

Matt Gray - The Last Ninja 2 and Driller.

Tony Crowther - Phobia