Hiroki Ogawa is the director of Nobuo Uematsu’s recording studio Dog Ear Records. Together with the Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy orchestral concert, he has traveled outside Japan and encountered firsthand the enthusiasm that international audiences have for Uematsu’s videogame music. Now more than ever, the director says, the staff of Dog Ear Records [...]

Since the website opened late last year, the stated goal of VGMdb has been to comprehensively archive the world’s videogame music albums. Other resources predate the work undertaken by the database’s countless contributors, but few have managed to cast as wide a net while keeping translated track lists, scans and release information as well organized. [...]

Since Uraken first began DJ’ing, his electronic music has been described as powerful and uplifting. In addition to appearing at live performances, beginning in 1996 he organized a monthly event called “Hardcore Kitchen.” The first of its kind in Japan, it introduced Tokyo to the UK Hardcore scene. The musician has since toured Britain and [...]

When looking at the magnitude of music composed by Yuzo Koshiro for the Etrian Odyssey series of role-playing games, its breadth amounts to a small kingdom of sounds. The original soundtracks for the first two titles make up five discs. In addition, a drama CD, two Super Arrange records, a piano collection and an album [...]

In May of this year, the Tokyo-based band The Outer Rim published their self-titled debut album. Composed primarily by bassist Jeff Curry, the musician imagined the spoken drama that bookends the music tracks, which are performed by professional videogame voice actors, as a dark and brooding outer space tale reminiscent of James Cameron’s Aliens. Over [...]

Akihabara is a hub retro games, used consoles and videogame music albums. At the Super Potato store located just a short walk from the JR train station you can find copies of 8-bit era original and arranged soundtracks along with rows of Super Famicom strategy guides.     In terms of online destinations where those [...]

  While working for Capcom, Ippo Yamada participated in composing music and designing sounds for Mega Man 7, credited under the codename IPPO. He currently serves as the lead sound designer for the game developer Inti Creates, contributing to the music of Mega Man Zero and ZX. Here he discusses the process behind creating the [...]

Baiyon is a DJ, art director and graphics designer based in Kyoto, Japan. Several years ago he released the album “Like a school on lunch time,” an experimental approach to minimalistic electronic sounds. He has collaborated on a variety of visual design projects and museum exhibitions, which can be sampled on the website wetside.jp. For [...]

Otograph is the group name of Sachiyo Oshima and Takashi Iura, the artists behind the original soundtrack to PixelJunk Monsters. Their music to the tower defense title by Q-Games was included in the first album available for purchase on the Playstation Network. Titled Dive Into PixelJunk Monsters, it can be listened to on PS3 and [...]

In chronicling protagonist Kazuma Kiryu’s journey into Japan’s underworld of organized crime, the musical score to Yakuza 2 brings together a number of videogame composers. Among them, Sega’s Hidenori Shoji maintains the kinetic energy he brought to the original game score, while, joining him for the sequel, Hideki Sakamoto contributes his background as a classical [...]

In attendance at last night’s Press Start Symphony of Games taking place at Shibuya’s Bunkamura Orchard Hall were a number of Japan’s videogame music luminaries. Koji Kondo took the stage to introduce Super Mario Galaxy, Nobuo Uematsu offered a pre-Final Fantasy Square medley, Motoi Sakuraba was there to represent Baten Kaitos, and for a surprise [...]

There are a few surprises to be found upon delving into the original soundtrack for Rockman 9: The Ambition’s Revival!!, beginning with removing the disc from the jewel case, which reveals the joke retro Mega Man 9 cover art that was on display at E3. The liner notes alone help answer a number of lingering [...]

Fifty judges comprised of industry experts were asked by the organizers of the Penny Arcade Expo to select ten outstanding independent games for this year’s PAX 10 showcase. The finalists ranged from ambitious takes on familiar genres like 3D action adventure and RTS to off-the-wall story and gameplay ideas.   Dylan Fitterer created a rhythm [...]

Last year, 5pb Records organized a concert during which prominent videogame composers performed renditions of their own compositions and remixed their favorite tunes from the history of videogame music. The free range of the selections at the Extra – Hyper Game Music Event has made a planned DVD release unlikely due to licensing issues, but [...]