Toby Fox

Background

Robert F. Fox, also known as Toby Fox and earlier as Toby ‘Radiation’ Fox, is an American video game composer and developer. Since childhood, he was a fan of video games. He would play video games for hours on end. Role-playing games, such as “Earthbound,” were among his favorites. Fox’s “Earthbound Halloween Hack,” a Halloween-themed ROM hack of the 1994 Super N.E.S. game “Earthbound,” released in 2008, is his most well-known work. He became interested in music during high school and began learning independently. He was then hired to produce music for the popular comic “Homestuck” in 2009 after uploading a handful of his audio samples. Later, he attended Northeastern University and majored in environmental science.

After finishing the demo of the game “Undertale,” Toby started looking for funding and emailed the blueprint to several of his industry contacts and internet communities. In June 2013, he went on Kickstarter to get help with funding the game, with a $5,000 goal. By the end of the campaign, the game had raised $51,124 — 10 times the target amount! The game garnered a positive response from gaming media when it was released in September 2015; some even labeled it a cult game. “Undertale” received a 92/100 rating from aggregate review site Metacritic, making it the third-highest ranked game released in 2015.

The sequel to “Undertale,” “Deltarune,” was published for free on October 31, 2018. After, he composed music for Temmie Chang’s short story game “Escaped Chasm” and Game Freak’s 2019 “R.P.G. Little Town Hero” in the same year, the latter of which was arranged by “Pokémon” composer Hitomi Sato. He also composed a vocal song for Itoki Hana’s “PRAY” album and music for “Pokémon Sword and Shield.” Fox made the second chapter of “Deltarune” available for free on September 17, 2021. He intends to release the remaining three chapters at the same time, at a higher price than “Undertale,” but without a set release date.