Curated playlist
Square Enix people
- Koichi IshiiKoichi Ishii created the chocobo and the moogle. These two characters became fixtures of the Final Fantasy universe, recognized by players across decades of games. Ishii built them at Square, where he also directed or produced the entire…
- Shinji HashimotoShinji Hashimoto helped create two of the most beloved franchises in video game history, and one of them was born in an elevator. A producer who spent decades at the heart of Square Enix, Hashimoto served as brand manager for the Final…
- Mitsuto SuzukiIn the early 1980s, Mitsuto Suzuki's life changed when his older brother brought home a synthesizer. The instrument became a playground for the young boy who would later shape video game soundscapes. He enrolled at Yamaha Music School to…
- Naoshi MizutaNaoshi Mizuta grew up in Kochi, Japan, and by the time he was in second or third grade, something had already taken hold. Not law. Not economics. Music. Yet when it came time for university, he enrolled at Chiba University to study exactly…
- Yoshinori KitaseYoshinori Kitase was eleven years old in July 1978 when he saw Star Wars for the first time. The film left such an impression on him that he tracked down the making-of video, becoming fixated not on the spectacle itself but on how it was…
- Hiroyuki ItoHiroyuki Ito joined Square in 1987 as a debugger, tasked with finding bugs in the original Final Fantasy. Few entry-level jobs in gaming feel more invisible, yet that starting point would eventually lead to one of the most consequential…
- Daisuke WatanabeDaisuke Watanabe wrote the dialog for the Zanarkand Ruins in Final Fantasy X almost entirely in a single night. That moment of compressed creativity stands as a small emblem of a career defined by tight deadlines, dropped story ideas, and…
- Masashi HamauzuMasashi Hamauzu was born in Munich, Germany, into a household where music was not an elective subject but a household language. His mother taught piano. His father, Akimori Hamauzu, sang opera. By kindergarten, Masashi had already…
- Yusuke NaoraYusuke Naora returned from Bali, Indonesia, carrying images that would reshape his work for years. He had seen seaside towns, temples, and people in distinctive clothing handing out tropical flowers. Those impressions became Besaid Village…
- Kazushige NojimaKazushige Nojima has written some of the most emotionally charged scripts in video game history, yet most players who wept over Cloud Strife or Tidus have never heard his name. Born in 1964, Nojima entered the industry at Data East before…
- Akihiko YoshidaAkihiko Yoshida has spent decades shaping how players see the worlds they inhabit. Born in 1967, he joined Square in 1995 and spent nearly two decades building some of the most distinctive visual languages in Japanese role-playing games.…
- Junya NakanoJunya Nakano was three years old when his parents signed him up for electronic organ lessons through the Yamaha Music Foundation. That early start set the course for a career that would stretch from Kyoto to the arcade halls of the early…
- Hiroshi MinagawaHiroshi Minagawa, known by the nickname Nigoro, began his career at Quest Corporation in 1991. He worked alongside colleagues Yasumi Matsuno and Akihiko Yoshida during this early period. The trio collaborated on projects like Magical Chase…
- Hitoshi SakimotoHitoshi Sakimoto was born on the 26th of February 1969 in Tokyo, Japan, and by the age of 16 he was already being paid to compose music for video games. Not just the music itself, but also the underlying program to play it. His debut as a…
- Kumi TaniokaKumi Tanioka grew up in Hiroshima listening to video game music, not because she was a gamer herself, but because her younger brother was. That childhood exposure planted something unexpected. She would go on to study at Kobe University,…
- Hironobu SakaguchiHironobu Sakaguchi named the lead character of his debut film after his dead mother. Aki Ross, the protagonist of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, carried the name of the woman who died in a house fire while Sakaguchi was away, arriving…
- Yoko ShimomuraYoko Shimomura was born on the 19th of October 1967, in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, and started taking piano lessons "at the age of four or five". She graduated from Osaka College of Music as a piano major in 1988, intending to become a piano…
- Kazuko ShibuyaKazuko Shibuya was born in 1965 in Japan. She would go on to spend decades contributing pixel art and design work to Square's games, including the Final Fantasy series. Before any of that, she spent her teens drawing for animated…
- Naoki YoshidaNaoki Yoshida, known to millions of players as Yoshi-P, inherited one of the most troubled games in the history of Japanese role-playing: a massively multiplayer online title so poorly received at its 2010 launch that players and critics…
- Nobuo UematsuNobuo Uematsu was born on the 21st of March, 1959, in Kochi, the capital city of Kochi Prefecture, Japan. He never took a single formal piano lesson. He started teaching himself at age twelve, and by the time he was a young man working in…
- Masayoshi SokenMasayoshi Soken composed the music for an entire expansion of Final Fantasy XIV from a hospital bed. For most of 2020, while his colleagues were working on Shadowbringers and planning the next chapter of one of gaming's most beloved online…
- Tetsuya NomuraTetsuya Nomura was born in 1970 and applied to Square after seeing a job advertisement featuring artwork by Yoshitaka Amano. He had gone to vocational school to study magazine and advertising, then looked for work at a publishing company.…