Board 8 > Best Video Game Composer?...

(+) Yeah! (+)

I left out composers that are known more for films like Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams so shout out to them, but let me know some of your guys obscure favorites as well!

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Akira Yamaoka

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Keiichi Okabe (Nier guy)

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Wow, doesn't even include Nobuo Oematsu or Koji Kondo.

(Yes, I see the disclaimer up above.)

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azuarc posted...

Wow, doesn't even include Nobuo Oematsu or Koji Kondo.

Please tell me this is sarcasm.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

Please tell me this is sarcasm.

The answer is still "other," although of the ones you listed, my strongest respect is for Wise and Shimomura. (And Sakuraba has composed like every game that's ever existed.)

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azuarc posted...

The answer is still "other," although of the ones you listed, my strongest respect is for Wise and Shimomura. (And Sakuraba has composed like every game that's ever existed.)

What's your 'Other' pick?

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Mega Man 2 dude Takashi Tateishi


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BetrayedTangy posted...

What's your 'Other' pick?

I'll probably give you a different answer every day of the week. The composer of my favorite soundtrack is Hiroki Kikuta, but there are other composers who are much more prolific.

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Not listing Uematsu, huh? Bold move.

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trdl23 posted...

Not listing Uematsu, huh? Bold move.

I gave him and Kondo shout outs in the poll title, I mostly wanted to see some of the lesser discussed composers get some action.

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Takahiro Unisuga (Falcom Sound Team jdk) (Ys, Trails, Tokyo Xanadu)

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Yuzo Koshiro

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hmm i'm kinda bothered by the way the poll frames itself:
-Junichi Masuda is one of like 10 pokemon compoesrs even within mainline pokemon, and hasn't been the 'main' pokemon composer on really any game since the gb era.
-Jun Senoue's contributions to the sonic franchise are spread pretty thin across all the games he's contributed to. he did like 5 songs for sonic 3 and they're not ones people talk about mostly. plenty of sonic games since then haven't had his influence at all.
-kenji yamamoto's the most prominent metroid composer i guess but only by a slight margin and he wasn't even on the original. minako hamano contributed some of the most well-recognized tunes to the series and she's always overshadowed by him just due to name recognition (and i like minako hamano a lot)
-why Martin O'Donnell and not Michael Salvatori?
-not even going to get into how all my favorite castlevania composers are... various castlevania composers that are not yamane..and how i've been listening to non-yamane castlevania soundtracks like all day (yamane is great tho)

anyway i don't want to get nitpicky and sound like i'm picking on you obnoxiously. that's not what i'm going on about that for. i just feel it's a bit damaging that these composers seem chosen as the most well-known name to rep their series when there's so many other people who contribute to the sound most people know these series for, maybe even moreso than these quickly listed names. winds up becoming unintentionally misleading information that denies the credit that the other composers who worked on those games also deserve!

anyways my favorite vgm composer is Kimihiro Abe; almost all his soundtracks involve other collaborators, but some songs I like specifically credited to him from those soundtracks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpJbCReKaBQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqbKBg9NEjQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-5xPGV4OCQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uy3-DiP8Gs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXnuL7Hfe7M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1osbrRdEWA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SibS_nAfeyg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvBQelE78gA

note: some of these list other composers than him in the credits in most places, but they're songs now known to be abe's specifically

anyways. abe has a pretty quirky style, but it's exactly what i look for in so many ways it's overwhelming to explain. Crazy unique sense of harmony, and he's in no way avoidant of the kinds of ambiguous rhythms i look for either. He ranges from super goofy cartoony synth stuff to Epic Orchestra soaring in the sky music. Wide range of style in terms of what the music represents in broad aesthetic, but compositionally, always full of detail and oddities, even if subtle about its presentation of those things. the exact details i find the most interesting and seek out personally anyways.
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David Wise, whether or not you included Uematsu or Kondo.

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Out of the ones picked I'll give the nod to Michiru Yamane, I think SotN is the most excellent work of anything given as an option

Some composers who I'm extremely partial to with a body of work of more than one game:

Hideaki Kobayashi (Phantasy Star Online, Sonic 06, other various Sonic/Sega)
Jake Kaufman (Shantae, Shovel Knight, a bunch of others)
Danny Baranowsky (Crypt of the Necrodancer, Binding of Isaac, others)
Hiroki Kikuta (Secret of Mana, Trials of Mana, Soulcalibur V)
Noriyuki Iwadare (Ace Attorney from 3 on, a bunch of other stuff)
Ryoji Yoshitomi (Wario Land 4, Metroid II)

probably other stuff I can't think of right now but those were the composers that came to mind that have an actual body of work

Tim Follin

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oh Tim Follin is good too

I also forgot Yuzo Koshiro

FUCK I FORGOT JUN ISHIKAWA (Kirby)

!Paratroopa1 posted...

Ryoji Yoshitomi (Wario Land 4, Metroid II)

i did not expect anyone to list Ryoji Yoshitomi of ALL composers in a list like that lol, one of the strangest vgm composers out there, sets atmospheres absolutely no one else would. great pick (my fav on your list is Hideaki Kobayashi though; pso2's my #1 fav soundtrack these days haha. if I was making a list of my top fav vgm composers instead of just picking my #1 it'd have had Hidekuni Horita in the top 3, who collabed with kobayashi on pso2, and i'd have eventually listed kobayashi if i went further down the list)
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I love looking up some of these names and going "Oh they composed that song? Hell yeah!"

Definitely going to take the time to listen to some of these soundtracks.

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Toxtricity posted...

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i did not expect anyone to list Ryoji Yoshitomi of ALL composers in a list like that lol, one of the strangest vgm composers out there, sets atmospheres absolutely no one else would. great pick (my fav on your list is Hideaki Kobayashi though; pso2's my #1 fav soundtrack these days haha. if I was making a list of my top fav vgm composers instead of just picking my #1 it'd have had Hidekuni Horita in the top 3, who collabed with kobayashi on pso2, and i'd have eventually listed kobayashi if i went further down the list)

It wasn't that long ago that I learned that he did both Wario Land 4 and Metroid II and that like, made an incredible amount of sense when I realized, because they both have extremely similar approaches to music and sound design in general

I love the bizarre palette of sounds that Ryoji Yoshitomi used for Wario Land 4 and the early WarioWare games - they just have a really specific and quirky character to them that is more unique to that specific composer than just about anything else I can think of. He's an unheralded genius of sound design

these days my answer is Takeaki Watanabe (aka.watson/MusMus/NAVA)

Ranticoot posted...

Yuzo Koshiro

This is my personal pick, and I don't even listen to his older FM synth works...

It's an interesting question if we're asking for the most praised composer in video game circles at large. When I would mostly listen to JRPG music through YouTube, the name I always saw thrown around in the comments after Uematsu was Shimomura. Maybe Mitsuda too?

I'd imagine Shoji Meguro is also a big name these days, and Toby Fox counts too...

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Oof I can't believe I genuinely forgot Shoji Meguro. I did consider Toby Fox though

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I didn't list Toby Fox because I could sit here and list people with one really good game under their belt all day, which is not a knock against them, it's just easier to pare down the list to people who have more than one hit

(although that said Toby Fox has contributed his talents to a few different works by now and he's always quite good)

Bobby Prince


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Other: Lena Raine

I'm biased as hell, though.

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Celeste is an excellent work

Snake5555555555 posted...

Akira Yamaoka

Still picked Wise but shoutouts to another great answer

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Yousuke Yasui

Sure hes pretty same-y with a lot of his VGM works when it comes down to it, but man has he refined his craft down to the most polished fucking diamond in the mine, every time I hear those FM powered bangers it lifts my spirits and I can just groove away. Gotta give shoutouts to the runners up Yoshihiro Tagawa/DJ TOTTO and Manabu Namiki though.

I don't even know any of David Wise's works besides DKC/DKC2 (which are great) and Battletoads (which is battletoads)

(correct thread this time)

Paratroopa1 posted...

It wasn't that long ago that I learned that he did both Wario Land 4 and Metroid II and that like, made an incredible amount of sense when I realized, because they both have extremely similar approaches to music and sound design in general

I love the bizarre palette of sounds that Ryoji Yoshitomi used for Wario Land 4 and the early WarioWare games - they just have a really specific and quirky character to them that is more unique to that specific composer than just about anything else I can think of. He's an unheralded genius of sound design

i feel like i probably had a similar experience but i can't remember. I think I looked up "what other stuff did ryoji yoshitomi do besides metroid ii?" one day, and had already known wario land 4's music direction was cool and it all just clicked and made perfect sense at that moment. I think it shows that his typical role is more as a sound than music guy--i do not mean this as a knock on musical ability obviously, I mean this in the sense that I think he does an astounding job at blurring the lines between the two things. So many times in his music there's ambiguity on what is 'music' and what is 'sfx', and i think it's deliberately unclear, which results in some very cool effects musically and atmospherically!

one soundtrack he's on that I think is cool (but without individual composer clarification so it's not certain which contributions are his) is Mario Paint.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-5BVb7hrvw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4YReqDLzBM

and i feel like you can tell hahaha

mario artist polygon studio has a similar direction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M5lpU6QeaM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPe0_Coy3Mo

though in this polygon studio case it's only kazumi tokata credited; but it wouldn't surprise me if yoshitomi had uncredited influence. at the very least you can tell what brand of uniqueness in previous soundtracks led to this point!

UF8 posted...

watson

pokemon : ) gym leader composer: )

banshiryuu posted...

Manabu Namiki

i almost just said 'basiscape' instead of Kimihiro Abe specifically in my original post. but decided that would be cheating since i have a clear favorite basiscape member at this point anyways. BUT obviously this means that I like Manabu Namiki too!!!! You Already know this!!!!
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Ranticoot posted...

Yuzo Koshiro

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First thought was Yuzo Koshiro and Shoji Meguro and neither made the list.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

I gave him and Kondo shout outs in the poll title, I mostly wanted to see some of the lesser discussed composers get some action.

I... somehow managed to miss that. Whoops!

EDIT: Should probably say I put Meguro as my "Other."

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Shoji Meguro

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Michiko Naruke (Wild ARMs)

Because even though she hasn't done much beside Wild ARMs, and even though the other people listed in this topic have done amazing work, she made To the End of the Wilderness and they didn't, so she wins.
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Am I really the first one to mention Darren fucking Korb

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Mitsuda

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Selected other thinking of Shoji Meguro.

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i can't name a single one but i'll give a shoutout to geoff follin. he always gets unjustly overshadowed by his brother :-/

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LOLIAmAnAlt posted...

Mega Man 2 dude Takashi Tateishi

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Hamauzu Mitsuda DM DOKURO Kobayahsi Horita Fukuyama Jindo Unisuga Ishibashi Sonoda Achiwa Nakagawa Nekomata Kudo Namiki Abo

why even have a poll

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Masayoshi Soken probably deserves to be mentioned here for FFXIV and all its expansions. Even if it's "only one game".

Also I admit I haven't heard anything besides Tales of Legendia, but probably Go Shiina as well.

surprised that for a list with old school composers Mitsuda isn't in there.
Yuzo Koshiro is probably #1, ahead of Uematsu and Kondo at that. i'm not sure anyone touches him when it comes to longevity, variety, and quality.


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Off the top of my head, Jeremy Soule also has no business being omitted.

Hitoshi Sakimoto at least deserves mentioning, too.

Wanglicious posted...

surprised that for a list with old school composers Mitsuda isn't in there.
Yuzo Koshiro is probably #1, ahead of Uematsu and Kondo at that. i'm not sure anyone touches him when it comes to longevity, variety, and quality.

he's not even on my list, and I think the poll should be "Koshiro" and "Other"

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