Game Music of Japan

When the first electronic games were sold, they only had rudimentary sound chips, with which to produce music, as the technology advanced, the quality of the sound and music these game machines could produce increased gradually. The first game to take credit for its music was the Xevious, which is also notable and it is deeply at those period constructed stories. However several games have had beautiful music to follow their gameplay, one of the most significant games in the history of the video game music is Dragon Quest. Koixhi Sugiyama a composer, who was known for his music for different anime and television shows including Cyborg 009 and a feature film of Godzilla versus Biollante, got involved in the project out of the pure curiosity and proved that games can have serious soundtracks.

source of picture: www.playstationlifestyle.net

Another popular author of video game music is Nobuo Uematsu, even Uematsu’s earlier compositions for the game series, final fantasy, on Famicom (Nintendo Entertainment System in America) are being arranged for full orchestral score. In the year 2003, he even took his rock-based tunes from their original MIDI format and developed the Black Mages.

The tecno/trance music production group I’ve Sound has made a name for themselves first by making themes for eroge computer games, and then by breaking into the anime scene by composing themes for them. Unlike others this orchestra was able to find supporters in other parts of the world through their eroge and anime themes.

Now, hame soundtracks are sold on CD, popular singers such as Nana Mizuki, BoA, Hikaru Utada sometimes sing songs for games as well, and it is also seen as a way for singers to make a names for themselves.

Motoi Sakuraba is also another popular video game composer, he is known for composing the Tales Series, dark Souls, eternal Sonata, Star Ocean, golden Sun, Baten Kaitos, and Valkyrie profile.

Yuzo Koshiro is also noted for his work with games, having composed electronic music-influenced soundtracks for games such as Revenge of Shinobi and the Streets of Rage series.