PLOK! OST (SNES) ▶【Oscilloscope View】

Whenever someone asks me my 2 cents about what SNES game (or 16-to-32-bit-era videogame) has the best soundtrack, Plok is the answers that comes to mind without even a second of hesitation. The game may be nothing special gameplay-wise by today's standards (or back then), but it does have some of the most creative, inspiring and colourful pixel-art of any 16-bit game (rivaling, maybe even outshadowing visually stunning gems such as Yoshi's Island, Chrono Trigger, Terranigma, Kirby Superstar, DKC Trilogy, SM RPG or the MMX series) and the soundtrack is just plain out of this world. Each and every single song is like a real song you would find on commercially released records, not just a 30-ish-second audio loop, and the game has so many of them, it is just a marvel of computer and sound engineering. It only goes to show how much untapped potential the SNES really had and the pure technical and musical genious of Tim Follin, who is imho up there with VGM virtuosos like Chris Hülsbeck, Koji Kondo, Hajime Wakai, Nobue Uematsu, Yozo Koshiro, Jeremy Soule or Jerry Martin. These songs give each stage they play in as much (arguably: even more!) identity as the graphics, the layout and the gameplay mechanics employed. #bringbackPlok

Aside from the title theme, the rest of the soundtrack only used 5 of 8 channels to allow for more robust use of sound effects. The Follin brothers basically did the equivalent of winning a weightlifting competition with a hand tied behind your back, delivering one of the greatest SNES soundtracks using just over half of the sound chip's capabilities

SNES Progressive Rock

It sounds so clean. It's almost on n64 levels.

I don't even know how this music was POSSIBLE on SNES.

I love that Plok still has this dedicated fan base who recognize it for the masterpiece it was. What an OST.

Beach has gotta be the best pre-2000s video game music I've ever heard

Not only was Plok's OST ahead of its time, the whole game was. If modern social media existed when Plok was released, it probably would have become a cult classic instead of just fading into relative obscurity. It's got that mixture of fantastic and just ok parts that prevented it from ever being popular but makes a few people really like it.

Now i know why the title theme is so good, the only song that uses all of the 8 channels of the snes

This gives me chills, how the waves shift into completely different instruments in a matter of seconds.

I love how this effortlessly balances between progressive rock, fuga, and circus music. Rather amazing actually.

I'm sure in an interview with Ste and John pickford ( creaters of plok) they said most of the games file size was made up of the audio files lol

Not only is this music really impressive for being on the SNES, but it only uses 5 OF THE 8 CHANNELS. I know chording and programming magic makes it sound tons more full (I mean Tim did somehow manage to have bass and white noise on the same channel with the NES soundchip), but the fact that he had such perfect samples to use to make this sound so incredible and almost like it couldn't even run on a SNES chip. If you look at another game that uses only 5 channels (F-Zero, in this case), that soundtrack in itself is extremely well done, but it still feels just a little bit empty. This is absolutely not the case with Plok!'s OST. Amazing job as always, Tim. Your work may not satisfy you all of the time, but it definitely passes in your fans eyes.

Dude, the way the laugh looks in this is fucking cool. Nice jo

45:11 always a guaranteed bop lol

This music is LEGENDARY, & the game is pretty good as well. Finally nice to see Tim Follin compose for a great game for once.

the fact these soundtracks only used a little over half of the channels in the snes soundchip is so insane

this OST has no right going this hard 😩

can't believe i listened to this the whole way through and didn't realise. mad how good this soundtrack is

Supposedly, when Plok came back from Nintendo with its QA approval for release, it was sent with a letter from either Miyamoto or Iwata (unclear which) requesting the specifications of the sound expansion chip they used in the cartridge :) can you imagine higher praise