Composer Spotlight: Motoi Sakuraba

With some of gaming's most famous RPG series under his belt, Motoi Sakuraba is one of the finest and most prolific video game composers in the field today. He's composed the music for the Tales series, the Star Ocean series, the Baten Kaitos games, the Golden Sun series, both Mario Tennis and Mario Golf, and a host of others. He transcends not only genre boundaries, mixing pastoral, orchestral sounds with a rock fusion sound, but also company boundaries, as he has worked for as many as ten different developers thus far. But what is it that makes his music so great?

Motoi Sakuraba

Composer Spotlight: Yasunori Mitsuda

Yasunori Mitsuda was probably the first video game composer I became interested in (after Nobuo Uematsu), and he is most likely the reason I've become so interested in game composers at all. When I was in high school and was working at an independent bookstore, my boss's brother lent me the Yasunori Mitsuda tribute album, "Time and Space," along with a copy of Chrono Trigger (which, up to that point, I had not played). Hearing not only Chrono Trigger's original, infectious music, but also the brilliant orchestrations of that music on the tribute album, I knew that I had to learn more about the man behind this score. Mitsuda's been through quite a bit to deliver on these albums that we know and love today, and he certainly deserves these accolades.

Mitsuda, as he appears on his album "Colours of Light"

Composer Spotlight: Yoko Shimomura

Recently, a friend of mine and I had planned to start a video game music Internet show in which we would highlight different games and composers in the industry. Although the plan never really got off the ground due to schoolwork, we did have a few ideas for the show lined up. Our first episode was going to feature Yoko Shimomura, the composer for Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, the Kingdom Hearts series, the Mario & Luigi series, and many other games. She's one of the leading female composers in the field, and she seemed like an appropriate person to kick-start our show with. Since our show didn't become a reality, I'm hoping that this blog can be a source of information on leading video game music composers as well.