I’ve been listening to game music for years now, and some of it is absolutely amazing. So who are your favorite maestros of the interactive digital realm? Mine are:
Saori Kobayashi
Yayoi Wachi
Masashi Hamauzu
Masafumi Takada
Yasunori Mitsuda
Hiroki Kikuta
Tsuneo Imahori
Yoshitaka Hirota
Akira Yamaoka
Michiru Yamane
Junya Nakano
Hideki Naganuma
Yoko Kanno
Fumie Kumatani
Yuzo Koshiro
what no Nobuo Uematsu, koji kondo,or Chris H?lsbeck, O_O you got to be kidding right…
I think he’s awful now. I still like a lot of his early work, though. FF7 was his last good score, IMO.
I respect him, but he’s not a favorite.
Bleh
I have unusual taste in music. I find most of the popular composers uninspired or boring.
Are those three your only favorites, or do you have more?
Hideki Naganuma
Tsuneo Imahori did game music??What game? (I listen to Trigun’s soundtrack on a regular basis. A masterpiece right there.)
As for my list, apart from the PD composers :
Kurt Harland
Robyn Miller
Yuzo Koshiro
Nathan McCree (for his work in TR1 alone)
Jack Wall (altough I’d like for him to go a little less mainstream, he’s got potential)
Fumie Kumatani
Naofumi Hataya
etc
Marty O’Donnell. The man is a legend.
He did the scores for Gungrave and Gungrave: Overdose.
The former actually had a soundtrack release. I’d recommend giving it a listen if you like Imahori’, as I think it’s a little better than his Trigun music.
I’v watched the Gungrave anime and I still prefer the Trigun soundtrack by a long shot. Don’t know about the games; do they feature music from the anime?
PS: Are the games any good?
To be honest, I’m not that wonderful at recalling the names of various composers in spite of the fact that I find sound design to be of the utmost importance in each game I play. As such, I have favourite soundtracks, but not necessarily composers.
I love Yasunori Mitsuda’s work on Chrono Trigger and Xenogears.
The music in Beyond Good & Evil is glorious, as is the music in The Longest Journey series of games.
Legacy of Kain music has always been wonderful, even in BO2, oddly enough.
Okami’s soundtrack is quite impressive. Also impressive is its obscene size.
Team Ico games have some of the most stirring pieces I’ve ever heard.
Sakimoto’s work on FFT and Vagrant Story have always impressed me.
The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time soundtrack is a wonder.
All of the Panzer Dragoon games have unbelievable music. Good god it’s incredible stuff!
There are more, but those are certainly some highlights.
Trigun has a great score, but Gungrave has more ideas, more variety, and IMHO stronger overall composition. I haven’t seen the anime, so I’m not sure if it recycles anything from the games.
As for the games themselves, they’re decent shooting games. Overdose was released brand new for $15 and can probably be found for cheaper nowadays. I’d say it’s worth the money.
Trigun can be a lot more broad. It has “depressing”, “silly” and “frenetic” music. It’s really varied. That’s what I like most about it. Also, no doubt, part of it is because I loved Trigun while I only liked Gungrave.
I’m surprised Motoi Sakuraba hasn’t been mentioned in this topic yet. He composed the soundtracks for Shining the Holy Ark and Shining Force III, as well as numerous other RPGs (Golden Sun, Star Ocean, etc). A fantastic composer.
My Fav sound staff would be
Hitoshi Sakimoto
Tomoko Sasaki
Hiroshi Miyauchi
Hideki Naganuma
Yuzo Koshiro
Yoshitaka Azuma
Yutaka Minobe
Jun Senoue
Takenobu Mitsuyoshi
Richard Jacques
Noriyuki Iwadare
Scott Branston
Martin Iveson
Kenji Kawai
Spencer Nilsen
Jet Force Gemini - Robin Beanland, Alistair Lindsay, Graeme Norgate
And lots of other Rare N64 games, but JFG stands out in particular.
Sega Rally, Nights and lots of other Sega games - Naofumi Hataya
Panzer Dragoon (original) - Yoshitaka Azuma
The original has the best music
System Shock and other Looking Glass games - Greg LoPiccolo
Works at Harmonix now
Gotta second Richard Jacques.
Actually even though I have still to play Halo 3, Marty should also deserve a spot on my list for his work on Halo 1. Halo 2 went in a different direction, one that didn’t appeal to me as much but the original is a masterpiece.
I found sometime ago that before he scored Halo 1 he kept bugging Cyan (now Cyan Worlds, creators of the Myst franchise) to score their next game. Cyan named a creature in Riven, Ytram (which is Marty spelled backwards) in his honor =)
[quote=“Raizen1984”]
I think he’s awful now. I still like a lot of his early work, though. FF7 was his last good score, IMO.
I respect him, but he’s not a favorite.
Bleh
I have unusual taste in music. I find most of the popular composers uninspired or boring.
Are those three your only favorites, or do you have more?[/quote]
what about final fantasy 9(that was his best soundtrack) or zanarkand from 10(or main from lost oddysse)
and how can you bleh turrican music… that was some of the best 16 bit music everO_O
FF9 is “meh” in every sense of the word. Melodies of Life, in particular, was painful to listen to.
Zanarkand is OK. Hamauzu created better piano music for that game (like “To the End of the Abyss” and “Travel Center”).
Lost Odyssey’s theme is garbage. That’s about it.
Ok. I thought it was repetitive and irritating, but if you liked it, more power to you.
Alexander Brandon (deus ex, unreal tournamnets) - moody and deep or fast paced and exciting, perfect for the games he was involved in
Harry-Gregson Williams (MGS, actual films)
Martin O’Donnell (Halos) - oooooooooooooooohhhohohhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh
Saori Kobayashi, Mariko Nanba (Saga, Orta) - perfect fit for games, from echoey sense of desolation to little pockets of warmth and safety
Umeatsu - obv
Yasunori Mitsuda (trigger, cross) - nice dreamscapes
Michael Hoenig (BG1, BG2, TOB) - epic
People I know for one OST:
Leon Willet (Dreamfall)
Mark Morgan (Planescape) - i heard he composed the soundtrack in the space of 3 weeks
Jeremy Soule (Icewind Dale)
people behind NiGHTS - happy happy music
I’m too lazy to remind myself of all the names that would be on a real list… but I have to mention David Whittaker… since no one else has… since maybe no one here is old enough to… ? 
Not that most of his tracks are very notable, but some of them define what great game music should be, at least for me. The music for Shadow of the Beast, was fully one half of the reason to play the game, the other half was the visuals… since the actual game was basically nothing… very nearly proving that you can indeed polish a turd, sometimes. And I’ve never heard anything - game music or otherwise - quite like the three tracks from the first Xenon. Ahh… the good old Amiga days, so many awful awful games… so much phenomenal music!