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Code Britannia is an ongoing series of interviews with seminal British games designers, looking back over their careers and the changing face of gaming. Previously, Code Britannia has focussed on the programmers who helped to define the British development scene of the 1980s, but they only tell part of the story. There were other innovators as well, such as Tim Follin, a man who managed to get the rudimentary 8-bit home computer systems to pump out honest-to-goodness music, rather than the vaguely melodic farts and beeps that most games mustered.
And, as with so many early games pioneers, Tim Follin got his start in the industry before he'd even finished school. He wasn't alone. His older brother, Mike, was also embarking on a coding career, but where Mike was interested in making games for the ZX Spectrum, Tim's fascination was with the sounds it could make. Already keen on music, he set about writing his own software driver that would allow the chugging system to produce convincing tunes. At the age of 15, he got his first break.
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