SirPsycho Composer Compendium bloody roar, final fantasy tactics, gauntlet 4, gauntlet iv, japanese composers, kingdom grand prix, magical chase, magical chase ost, magical chase songs, magical chase soundtrack, ogre battle, ost, radiant silvergun, revolter, soundtrack, super back to the future, sword maniac, tactics ogre, terra diver, treasure hunter g, video game composer, video game music, x-kalibur

Hitoshi Sakimoto has had quite a long and storied career. Unlike many in this series he was able to land a job in the video game composition world quite early in his life. He began creating his own games while in Junior High with a group of close friends after taking a big interest in the growing video game industry. At the age of 16 he was enlisted along with his friend Masaharu Iwata to compose the soundtrack for the shooter Revolter for the popular Japanese PC-8801, which released in 1988. Its easy to see how this game could easily make a career.

The sheer number of games that Sakimoto and Iwata worked on early in their career is hard to gauge, some of the more popular games they worked on were more PC-88/98 games like Carat and Starship Rendezvous. By himself Sakimoto composed the Game Boy port of Bubble Ghost.

1991 was the first sampling of what the Sakimoto and Iwata combo could produce. Devilish released with a solo Sakimoto soundtrack, but the duo combined for other games like Verytex, King Breeder, Metal Orange and the Turbografx-16 Holy Grail Magical Chase. Magical Chase is one of those examples of a rare game that is actually an insanely good game that should have sold well.

Not much happened the following year, but 1993 was a year which greatly diversified his resume. He got to work on his first licensed property, Super Back to the Future. No, not the version you played, but the good, Japanese exclusive Super Famicom version! Throw in Gauntlet IV and Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen and this year makes good montage material.

The following year he worked on a handful of games, one with a new teammate Hayato Matsuo, who he first worked with on Ogre Battle. Sword Maniac, or as we might know it X-Kaliber 2097 released in 1994 for the SFC and SNES. With his old buddy Iwata he worked on the arcade game Kingdom Grand Prix, an interesting shooter and racing hybrid. It was ported to the Saturn 2 years later but remains a Japanese exclusive. By himself he composed the soundtracks to Pile Up March and Moldorian: Hikari to Yami no Shisutaa.

The Ogre Battle trio came back to work on Quest’s newest game, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. He did not leave the older Super Nintendo behind though, composing with a big team on the Japanese exclusive Sting developed game Treasure Hunter G. RPGs were not his only genre however, as he would compose the soundtrack for Terra Diver, a game that was on basically everything out in 1996 and ’97.

The next couple years was another gold plated run by Sakimoto and Iwata. They worked with a few others on the original arcade compositions for Bloody Roar. They followed that up with Final Fantasy Tactics, going with the mostly intact remnants from Quest over to Squaresoft. Solo he composed the soundtrack for the consistently expensive Radiant Silvergun!