Toby Fox is having quite the exciting year!
Not only has the developer of Undertale created new music for Super Smash Brothers and Game
Freak’s Little Town Hero, but he’s also composed a brand new piece for Pokemon Sword
and Shield.
So how did Toby earn such an honour?
What did he do to convince Game Freak to let him make music for Pokemon?
Simple: he asked them politely.
In a short post on the Pokemon.com website, Toby has explained the series of events that
led to his inclusion within Sword and Shield.
It turns out this collaboration was borne from eager friendship.
Following the creation of Undertale, and its unexpected explosion in popularity, Toby Fox
found himself with a lot of new followers on Twitter.
One follower, Go Ichinose, is a composer who’s worked on almost all of the main series Pokemon
games ever since Gold and Silver.
Goichi is one of Toby’s idols, so he having spotted that he’d been noticed, he eagerly
sent the veteran musician a message.
The pair started chatting, and became long-distant friends.
Goichi was the first person at Game Freak to try out Undertale, and he eagerly encouraged
all of his colleagues to play the game as well.
By the time the game launched officially in Japanese, there were more than a few fans
at the studio.
It was at the launch party for the Japanese release that Toby and Goichi met in person
for the first time.
They hit it off immediately, quickly solidifying their friendship.
It was at this party that Toby and a few of Game Freak’s representatives started talking
about getting Toby to make the music for an upcoming project, Little Town Hero.
The plan was to try and make an RPG for mature audience.
No, the other kind of mature – the kind of grown up who has to pay bills and stuff.
Said director Masao Taya: “We grew up playing these really expansive
RPGs where you’re on huge adventures that take you all over the place.
But now you’re an adult, and maybe you don’t have as much time to play so many games like
that.
Condensing all the fun of those large-scale RPGs into a smaller, shorter, compact package
was the initial idea for the game.”
Toby’s work on the game was praised by everyone at Game Freak.
Leading up to the release of Little Town Hero, Pokemon series compose Hitomi Sato said that
he worried the game’s soundtrack would outsell the game itself, the music is just that good!
Toby toured around Japan, making friends with other noteworthy games developers.
He met Earthbound creator Shigesato Itoi, and even visited Masahiro Sakurai in his home,
where the pair played Super Smash Brothers against each other (and where Toby beat Masahiro
a good proportion of the time).
With his work on Little Town Hero, visiting Game Freak regularly made a lot of sense.
It was on one such visit that he saw an opportunity, and took a chance.
According to Toby: “After eating sukiyaki with members of the
company one day, we went to a cafe.
There, I ordered a bottled green tea and selfishly, randomly asked if I could make a song for
Pokémon someday......
They said yes!
Right there in the cafe, they immediately told me a concept for a song I could make…”
Toby was thrilled!
He stumbled home in a daze, wandering through the streets, and passing salarymen in the
dark.
He was already hard at work, composing music in his head, humming a melody to himself over
and over.
Said Toby, “my heart was burning with inspiration…
“It's a fierce track full of explosive power.
I wanted to show the energy and passion I felt when asked to create a song for Pokémon!”
Toby’s creation is motivated entirely by love.
He’s passionate about the Pokemon series, and he’s worked hard to make the best music
that he can.
The moral of the story is that when you’re passionate, and when you try your best, you
never know who you might end up befriending as a result of your hard work.
After all, the whole point of Pokemon is that when you really try, you’ll end up making
all sorts of friends along the way.
Sure, we all want to be the very best, like no one ever was.
More important, though, is to simply be the best that you can be.