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Great video game composers that when missing in action

A

Aru

Member
What great composers have gone missing from the video game scene for a long time?

I can think of Motoaki Takenouchi. Great composer of SEGA games during the Megadrive days, I can remember his work on Shining Force II and CD, but also Landstalker. Man, I really miss his style.
According to Wikipedia, he was an active VG composer between 1989 and 1996.

A few tracks from the earlier mentioned games:
Shining Force 2: Wandering Warriors
Shining Force 2: Promoted Attack
Landstalker: Lyle Heads Out
Landstalker: Mysterious Island
Lanstalker: Guardians of the Treasure

More recently, Michiko Naruke. I remember her for her amazing work on the Wild Arms series.

Wild Arms: Into the Wilderness
Wild Arms 3: Gunmetal Action

Anyone else?

EDIT: Sorry, typo in the title. I meant "went" not "when".
 
Aru said:
What great composers have gone missing from the video game scene for a long time?

I can think of Motoaki Takenouchi. Great composer of SEGA games during the Megadrive days, I can remember his work on Shining Force II and CD, but also Landstalker. Man, I really miss his style.
According to Wikipedia, he was an active VG composer between 1989 and 1996.

A few tracks from the earlier mentioned games:
Shining Force 2: Wandering Warriors
Shining Force 2: Promoted Attack
Landstalker: Lyle Heads Out
Landstalker: Mysterious Island
Lanstalker: Guardians of the Treasure

More recently, Michiko Naruke. I remember her for her amazing work on the Wild Arms series.

Wild Arms: Into the Wilderness
Wild Arms 3: Gunmetal Action

Anyone else?

EDIT: Sorry, typo in the title. I meant "went" not "when".
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Takenouchi is great as he's a Zappa fan, and it shows in his music.

Naruke blessed us with Nora & The Time Studio but it sold like ass in Japan and we were denied more goodness. :(
 
Normand_corbeil.jpg

May he rest in peace.
 
SatelliteOfLove said:
Takenouchi is great as he's a Zappa fan, and it shows in his music.

Naruke blessed us with Nora & The Time Studio but it sold like ass in Japan and we were denied more goodness. :(
Click to expand...
I love everything that I've heard from this game, wish I could play it.

Is Toshiharu Yamanishi doing anything any more? He used to work for Tecno Soft but seems like it has been years since I've even heard of him.
 
Yamanishi, unfortunately, has been stuck in the VN musician ghetto for 10+ years, as has Hyakutaro Tsukumo. I hope someone gets them a better gig before they both die from lung cancer (working on arrangement albums with doujinshi musicians does not count). Meanwhile, Tomomi Ohtani almost died from a brain hemorrhage some time back, and he's a computer technician these days. Naosuke Arai was still working at Tecno Soft when they got swallowed by that pachinko company, but I bet he's working at some studio somewhere.

Takenouchi plays in a local band and, apparently, does music for theater productions. Who knows what his deal is...you can check a piano suite he composed and performed on his SoundCloud. Really awesome stuff. I agree that he loves Zappa, but King Crimson shows up in his work just as often. He should partner with Fripp and Ian McDonald on a soundtrack, the results would be rad.
 
Dragoon En Regalia said:
Yamanishi, unfortunately, has been stuck in the VN musician ghetto for 10+ years, as has Hyakutaro Tsukumo. I hope someone gets them a better gig before they both die from lung cancer (working on arrangement albums with doujinshi musicians does not count). Meanwhile, Tomomi Ohtani almost died from a brain hemorrhage some time back, and he's a computer technician these days. Naosuke Arai was still working at Tecno Soft when they got swallowed by that pachinko company, but I bet he's working at some studio somewhere.
Click to expand...

Well that's depressing. At least there's a few songs in the Gunhound EX OST from Tsukumo and some doujin albums. I really need to start looking around to see if there's anything I should be listening to.

I had absolutely no idea about the brain haemorrhage.
 
I think Koji Kondo is a good candidate (although I am cheating a little). He just sits on his ass up in EAD, twiddles his thumbs, and says "yay" or "nay" to whatever his composer worker bees come up with for any given game.

He last full score was Ocarina of Time. His last score where he did the majority of the compositions is Majora's Mask (or Super Mario Sunshine - we never got a composition breakdown for that game's entire score, but I'm certain Tanaka did most of that).
 
The majority of western composers active in the 80's and 90's seemed to phase out of the game industry as it became clearer that mainstream games aimed for movie-like music, which didn't quite jive with the unique identity that had been set by the prior era. A few made the transition like Jesper Kyd.
 
I kinda wished Shimomura came back to Street Fighter for SFIV. Her SF2 tunes are so iconic but the SF4 soundtrack was totally forgettable.
 
Ryo Yonemitsu was Uematsu-tier. I actually think he's better than Uematsu, myself, and many people of the era compared him as such. He still makes stuff, but his output is basically nothing now compared to his INCREDIBLE work in the 90s. He just doesn't make much music anymore, really.

His Dawn of Ys Perfect Collection trilogy was a god damned masterpiece:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T-wNIyRRoY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_LsTeCE4Cs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip7Jn-e9wAA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IehWUs_RioQ

And so was his work on the second CD of the Perfect Collection for Legend of Heroes: Dragon Slayer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Is8kQ0InFfs#t=2042
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ05wInpvU4
 
Up until this year, David Wise seemed to completely disappear. Before Topical Freeze/Tengami, the last thing I remember him doing was Starfox Adventures and the GBA port of DKC3.

Nice to have him back though.
 
This thread reminds me that Michiru Yamane has been reduced to a featuring act. Her last full score must have been one of those PS2 Castlevania games. I wonder what she's up to these days.
 
While not necessarily missing in action I am baffled that Namco hasn't given Go Shiina more work. The tracks that he has produced for their games have been excellent and the two games which he scored completely sounded incredible (Mr. Driller Drill Land and Tales of Legendia).

Since then he's mostly just contributed tracks here or there to various games.

It does appear that he's working on the next big Tales games, though, which is encouraging.

This thread reminds me that Michiru Yamane has been reduced to a featuring act. Her last full score must have been one of those PS2 Castlevania games. I wonder what she's up to these days.
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Is she independent now? Konami hasn't exactly been producing many games over the past few years so there haven't been many opportunities for people like her.
 
Otani (SotC) was an anime composer right? AFAIK he hasn't composed for any game since.

edit: apparently it looks like he did one song for the North American version of Sengoku Basara 3.
 
cj_iwakura said:
Hideki Naganuma.

Jet Set Radio, Jet Set Radio Future, Sonic Rush, and... nothing.
Click to expand...

I see this all the time when its not true
He did the music for Ollie King, the anime Air Gear, a track for one of the Sega Rally games, Monkey Ball Smooth Moves and whatever the 3DS one was called, ocassionally does a track or two on the Yakuza games, did a track for Beatmania, recently did the entire soundtrack for Deadheat Riders and is currently composing the soundtrack for Hover. He's lower key now I guess, but he hasnt stopped working- it just looks that way because he went under the pseudonym Skankfunk for a while

Dude uploads a lot of his rarer stuff personally onto this youtube channel
 
Keiji Yamagishi (Ninja Gaiden, Captain Tsubasa, Techmo Bowl) for me.

However, A guy named Mohammed Taher from Kuwait got in touch with him and did an interview in 2012 plus make a track on a chiptune album with other MIA composers as well.

I highly recommend you guys to give the albums a listen and support it.

Link 1, Link 2
 
Those Atlus composers who were there in the 90s/early 00s: Tsukasa Masuko, Toshiko Tasaki, Misaki Okibe, and Masaki Kurokawa.. Aside from Kurokawa, who died, I believe, I think all of them worked on a handful of games each after leaving Atlus, but what have they been doing lately?
 
Just take it with you. said:
Those Atlus composers who were there in the 90s/early 00s: Tsukasa Masuko, Toshiko Tasaki, Misaki Okibe, and Masaki Kurokawa.. Aside from Kurokawa, who died, I believe, I think all of them worked on a handful of games each after leaving Atlus, but what have they been doing lately?
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Toshiko Tasaki worked on Touch Detective, and more recently Akiba's Trip. Not much.
 
One that I can think of that hasn't been mentioned yet is Aubrey Hodges.

He worked for Sierra Online (most notable OST that he worked on completely was Quest for Glory IV), but also did some OSTs for Midway during the N64 era.
He worked on Doom for the PS1, as well.

His QFG4 OST is amazing.
 
cj_iwakura said:
Hideki Naganuma.

Jet Set Radio, Jet Set Radio Future, Sonic Rush, and... nothing.
Click to expand...

He's working on Hover.

animation2_by_digi_matrix_d7dzwtb_by_digi_matrix-d7f6ex5.gif


"It was love at first sight. Hover has hot graphics and a cool worldview. At first glance, I felt like I’d love to make music for Hover. This feeling’s been a long time since Jet Set Radio Future." ~Hideki Naganuma
 
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