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…

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…

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,…

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 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…

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…

 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…

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…

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…

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…