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  • 21 Aug, 2019

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Toby Fox
Robert F. "Toby" Fox (born October 11, 1991) is an American video game developer and composer. He is best known for developing the role-playing video game Undertale, which garnered acclaim and has received nominations for a British Academy Game Award, three Game Awards and D.I.C.E. Awards. He is also the creator and head of the ongoing development of Deltarune, which contains many characters and features from Undertale, and has garnered significant praise.

Fox's early work consisted primarily of composing music, notably for the webcomic Homestuck. Following the success of Undertale, he went on to compose music for a number of other indie games. Other notable works include contributing to the soundtracks of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and the Pokémon video games.

Early life

Robert F. Fox was born on October 11, 1991, in Manchester, New Hampshire. Along with his three brothers, he is the son of Robert Fox, a financial planner, and Barbara Fox, a retired paraprofessional. Fox was raised an Episcopalian. He studied environmental science at Northeastern University and graduated in 2014.

Career

Inspiration

Fox has stated that as a child, he was mesmerised by the music and atmosphere of Final Fantasy VI. Other Japanese role-playing games, such as EarthBound, Secret of Mana and Super Mario RPG served as major inspirations; Fox looked up to Yoko Shimomura's works in particular. Her song "Megalomania" for the game Live A Live was particularly inspiring for Fox, and he originally intended to use an EarthBound-themed cover of the song in a game, but he got tired of transcribing it and eventually made a new song called "Megalovania".

In middle school, he discovered the Touhou Project series when he downloaded the demos for the sixth and seventh games in the series. He played a piano rendition of the Touhou Project track "Necrofantasia" at his church's summer camp. He was inspired by Touhou's philosophy of not giving up on a game simply to hear the music. Fox later conducted an improvised Touhou music session on Tumblr, in which he created "improvised Touhou music that doesn't actually exist" including a boss track named An Apple Disaster.

Early work

Toby Fox's earliest well-known work is the EarthBound Halloween Hack, a Halloween-themed ROM hack of EarthBound, which released in 2008. He then moved on to compose a variety of music for Andrew Hussie's 2009 webcomic Homestuck during his senior year of high school. Though he did not initially respond when Hussie started a Music Contribution Team in April 2009 and put up a news post asking composers to participate, Hussie took note of his work when Fox started uploading piano covers of the webcomic's music on the MS Paint Adventures forums.

Fox created many of Homestuck's iconic tracks until its conclusion in 2016, including pivotal themes such as: a version of Megalovania, Descend and Oppa Toby Style, as well as comedic songs such as The Nick Cage Song. He has stated in a tribute post to musician George Buzinkai that tracks such as the unused Homestuck theme called "Patient" inspired Undertale themes such as Another Medium. In particular, his remix of Buzinkai's song Doctor, titled Savior of the Waking World, was a "turning point" in his musical journey; it was used as the background music for a major moment in the fifth act of Homestuck.

Undertale

Main article: Undertale

Fox's most well-known work is the 2015 role-playing video game Undertale, which he also composed the soundtrack for. The game sold more than 1 million copies, becoming a "breakout hit" and "pop-culture phenomenon". Fox worked on the entire game independently, besides the art assets—which he asked Temmie (Tuyoki) Chang to help with—to avoid relying on others. He had some experience in game development before Undertale, using RPG Maker 2000 with his three brothers to make role-playing games and EarthBound ROM hacks in high school, the most notable of which was Earthbound: The Halloween Hack. He thought of the character designs and ideas for Undertale while in college, where he drew them in his notebook.

Following its release, Undertale garnered an extensive fanbase. Fox commented that he did not mind if people stated that they did not like the game, saying that it was "not for everyone". Despite Undertale's awards and widespread acclaim, Fox wrote that his personal opinion was that the game was still "niche" and deserved an "8/10" review score.

In 2016, Fox released a number of unused musical tracks from Undertale. He also became a contributor to the A Profound Waste of Time magazine. Fox was then chosen to be part of the 2018 Games Forbes 30 Under 30 list for his role in creating Undertale; by then the game had sold over 2 million copies.

The success of Undertale, especially in Japan, afforded Fox the opportunity to visit Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai at his home, where they discussed the series and played Super Smash Bros. Ultimate against each other, and the two reportedly had a very similar skill level, trading wins and losses equally. Sans, a character from Undertale, was later included in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as a Mii costume available through downloadable content, along with an instrumental composition "Megalovania", for which Fox provided a new arrangement.

Deltarune

Main article: Deltarune

On October 30, 2018, Fox tweeted a request for fans of Undertale to check the game's official Twitter account in 24 hours. The following day, Fox released the first chapter of the followup to Undertale, named Deltarune, (an anagram of undertale) for free under the guise of a "survey". On November 1, Fox shared more details regarding the game, including that the rest of the chapters were expected to release simultaneously, but work had not yet started, and there was no estimated timeframe for completion. Fox also stated that he had been working on the project since 2012, and that the idea for Undertale developed from Deltarune during production. On June 12, 2019, as only the first chapter of Deltarune had been playable for several months, Fox expressed on his Twitter account he had hope he would complete the rest of Deltarune, saying: "Slowly I'm writing and drawing it all out." He stated that he had written "about 50 songs past Chapter 1".

On September 17, 2021, Fox released the second chapter of Deltarune for free since "the world has been really tough for everybody recently", referring to the struggles of the COVID-19 pandemic. He plans to release the next two chapters simultaneously, with a price greater than Undertale, in 2025.

Composing

Fox has composed music for the 2017 Homestuck video game Hiveswap, Undertale artist Temmie Chang's short narrative game Escaped Chasm, and Game Freak's 2019 RPG Little Town Hero, the last of which was arranged by Pokémon composer Hitomi Sato. He also composed a track for Pokémon Sword and Shield, a vocal song for Itoki Hana's PRAY album, and multiple tracks for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.

In 2024, he partnered with Japanese game developer ZUN for the game Touhou Danmaku Kagura Phantasia Lost, which included a track that combined the Touhou song "U.N - Owen Was Her?" with the Undyne battle song "Battle Against a True Hero" from Undertale as "U.N. - Owen Was Hero?". In September of the same year, he announced a new partnership for the same game on YouTube. The video contains a very brief preview of the song, which appears to be based on "Megalovania".

Personal life

Fox is secretive and does not typically do interviews. He has chronic wrist and hand pain that regularly disables him from programming and composing. In September 2020, Fox cited a flareup of this pain as a factor in the delayed development of Deltarune's second chapter.

Works

Ludography

Year Title Director Composer Writer Platforms Ref
2008 EarthBound: Halloween Hack (romhack) Yes Yes Yes Super Nintendo
2015 Undertale Yes Yes Yes Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One
2016 Rose of Winter No Yes No Windows
2017 Hiveswap: Act 1 No Yes No Windows, macOS, Linux
2018 Deltarune Yes Yes Yes Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
2019 Escaped Chasm No Yes No Windows
Little Town Hero No Yes No Windows, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One
2020 Dweller's Empty Path No Yes No Windows
Hiveswap: Act 2 No Yes No Windows, macOS, Linux
2022 Pokémon Scarlet and Violet No Yes No Nintendo Switch

Guest composer only

Other credits

Year Media type Media title Role Notes Ref
2009–2016 Webcomic Homestuck Composer
2010 Album The Baby is You Writer, composer, vocalist Album made for Homestuck
2012 Album I Miss You - EarthBound 2012 Composer
2012 Website tane.us Guest arrangement Metronomy - Black Eye Burnt Thumb (Toby "Radiation" Fox CHIP MIX)
2018 Album PRAY Guest composer, lyricist and vocalist
Video game Black Bird Game testing
2020 Comic Hobonichi Mother Project "Pollyanna" comic Contributor
Music video Chip Tanaka/Hammerhead Shark Song Director/animator (music video)
2021 Video game Get in the Car, Loser! Credited for providing guest items and stories
Song "Myths You Forgot" Featured artist
2022 Album "Skies Forever Blue" Composer, writer In collaboration with Itoki Hana
2023 Song "The Greatest Living Show" Composer, writer
Song "Prelude" Composer In collaboration with bo en
Animated television series We Baby Bears Voice actor (2 episodes)
Animated television series Pokémon Horizons Original composer
2024 Song "Fallen Wing" Composer As a guest composer for Hololive VTuber Amane Kanata's Unknown DIVA album
Song "Dead Ma’am’s Chest" Composer In collaboration with Hololive VTuber Houshou Marine

References

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  68. ^ 猫塚きてぃ; 武藤先輩 (March 15, 2024). 【ホロライブ】天音かなた1stアルバム『Unknown DIVA』インタビュー。『片羽』はトビー・フォックスからの逆オファー！ 自身が作詞した曲への想いや裏話を語る | ゲーム・エンタメ最新情報のファミ通.com [【hololive】Kanata Amane's 1st album "Unknown DIVA" interview. "Kataha" is a counteroffer from Toby Fox! He talks about his thoughts on the songs he wrote and the story behind them.]. famitsu.com (in Japanese). Retrieved March 15, 2024.
  69. ^ Lada, Jenni (July 30, 2024). "New Hololive Vtuber Houshou Marine Song Written by Toby Fox". Siliconera. Retrieved August 1, 2024.

Media related to Toby Fox at Wikimedia Commons

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