The Lovely Ladies of Videogame Music
Pictured Above: Michiru Yamane
It’s no secret that I am obsessed with videogame music. I even remix it in my spare time. Working a desk job, I end up listening to soundtracks throughout large portions of the day, and I enjoy sharing music with others who might otherwise not hear the songs I love so much. But there are far too many fantastic composers for me to cover in a single article. So to remedy this, I’m going to focus on my one true love… the ladies!
Michiru Yamane
An obvious choice to highlight is Michiru Yamane. Though the first Castlevania title she scored was Castlevania: Bloodlines, it wasn’t until Symphony of the Night that she became known as a crucial element to the franchise itself. You just can’t have a modern Castlevania game without her music.
Michiru is a talented pianist who takes her inspiration from composers such as Ravel and Bach. These classical influences are very apparent in her work. Her ability to seamlessly change time signatures so many times within a single song while maintaining a perfect sense of flow never ceases to astound me.
Kumi Tanioka
I was first introduced to the works of Kumi Tanioka through Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. The world music styles throughout the game reminded me of Yasunori Mitsuda’s ever famous Chrono Cross, one of my favorite soundtracks of all time. Needless to say, it clicked with me.
But before Crystal Chronicles, Kumi made some very notable contributions to Final Fantasy XI. Years later, she performed in The Star Onions with Tsuyoshi Sekito of The Black Mages (among other musicians) on the game’s widely diverse arrange album, Music from the Other Side of Vana’diel.
Yoko Shimomura
It’s hard to even know where to begin with Yoko Shimomura. Her discography is huge and full of hits. In her early career, she composed nearly all of the Street Fighter II soundtrack and even performed arrangements of the songs from it and other games in Capcom’s in-house jazz band, Alph Lyla.
As time went on, she has focused more on RPGs than anything else. By the time she worked on the Mana (Seiken Densetsu) and Kingdom Hearts series’, her style had become very established, often featuring rapidly sweeping piano accompanied by choir and string ensembles. In fact, her style became so recognizable that I was able to guess that the Smash Bros. Brawl rendition of Tetris A was arranged by her without looking it up.
Akari Kaida
Akari Kaida spent most of her career working for Capcom. Her jazz piano roots show forth in her score for Breath of Fire III. What I like about Akari though, is her versatility. The very underrated soundtrack to the original Mega Man Battle Network is among my favorite scores on the Game Boy Advance platform. The combination of chip tune sounds and electronica infused beats mesh together perfectly.
But the variety doesn’t stop there! Akari also worked on the Okami soundtrack which was made in the vein of traditional Japanese music from ancient times. The music in Okami was beautiful, perfectly complimenting its breath-taking visual style.
Ayako Saso
Finally, we have Ayako Saso. While trying to dig up all the arrange albums Yasunori Mitsuda worked on, I unexpectedly found that my favorite track on each of them ended up being Ayako’s. Thanks to that unusual discovery, I had found a new artist to follow.
Though she started learning piano at an early age, she later studied the Electone, even winning Yamaha’s Electone Festival contest before finally joining Namco and working on titles such as Ridge Racer 2. What draws me to Ayako is the hybrid style of rock and electronica that she often uses. Her Chun Li remix on the Street Fighter Tribute Album is a perfect example of this.
Despite all that, what actually gives me the most respect for Ayako is her arrangement of “Big Blue” found on the second disc of the F-Zero GX-AX Original Soundtrack. I’m a big fan of the F-Zero franchise, but as much as I love “Big Blue”, the theme is sadly done to death. Each remix I heard, while adequate, had the same “paint by numbers” arrangement. Ayako took the overdone theme and created one of the best videogame remixes ever made. Give it a listen, you won’t regret it.
This isn’t a comprehensive list of every female videogame composer of note, but it does contain some of my personal favorites. I hope this article introduces more people to the fantastic music they made over the years. Did I miss somebody you’re especially fond of? Feel free to comment below and let us know who!
Tags: Akari Kaida, Ayako Saso, castlevania, Crystal Chronicles, f-zero gx, Kingdom Hearts, Kumi Tanioka, Michiru Yamane, music, Okami, Street Fighter II, yoko shimomura
This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Articles, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 16th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Michelle says:I had no idea some of my favourite gaming music was composed by women! Be still my beating heart this is seriously affirming for me.
The Crystal Chronicles soundtrack in particular was a stunning piece of work.
I don’t suppose you know the tracks that Kumi Tanioka did for Final Fantasy XI? I’ve made some rough guesses in my head and I’ve love to know for sure.
Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention!
October 16th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:Here’s some of the tracks Kumi did for FFXI:
The Rupublic of Bastok, Gustaberg, Metalworks, Regeneracy, Hume Female, Elvaan Female, Tarutaru Female, Mithra, Ru’Lude, Gardens, Fury, Shadow Lord, and Awakening
Thats for the original and I think she contributed at LEAST one song to an expansion.
October 16th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Rhythmroo says:Great article, man. It was a great to look over those composers again for me.
October 16th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
David says:My personal favorite is Miki Higashino. She worked on Suikoden 1 & 2 (doing most of 2 by herself) as well as the Gradius series back in the 80′s.
October 17th, 2009 at 3:45 am
Michelle says:Jesse – no kidding! They’re actually some of the best songs in the entire game.
October 17th, 2009 at 8:11 am
Rhythmroo says:Ah! I didn’t even realize that Michiko Naruke wasn’t on the list. She worked on Wild Arms and did that awesome arrangement of Bramble Blast from Brawl.
October 17th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:I actually had Michiko Naruke in my draft while writing the article, but it was already in danger of being too long so she got cut. I LOVE her Zelda arrangement on Brawl.
I also wanted to mention Soyo Oka, but I just didn’t know enough about her besides her work on Super Mario Kart at the time. After posting this, Mustin (of The OneUps) shared some more of her works with me and she definitely deserves mention.
As I said, even when narrowing it down to just female composers there’s just too many good ones to cover
October 17th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Rhythmroo says:Ah, true. Yeah there are a good many of them… Definitely need’s a part II in the future of this.
January 4th, 2012 at 5:01 am
Ten 2011 Game Soundtracks Worth Checking Out - WingDamage.com says:[...] Yoko Shimomura strikes again as she has so many times before. Radiant Historia showcases the signature style she’s used as early as Legend of Mana and as late as Birth by Sleep. The sound may be familiar, but that doesn’t make it any less of a joy to listen to. [...]