Hitoshi Sakimoto

• 1. Introduction

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  Hitoshi 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 professional composer came in 1988 with a shooter called Revolter, published by ASCGroup for the NEC PC-8801, scored alongside his friend Masaharu Iwata. Along the way, Sakimoto built a synthesizer driver he named "Terpsichorean" to enhance Revolter's sound quality, a piece of technology that would spread through much of the Japanese game market in the early 1990s.

  How does a self-described "computer, games, and music geek" who taught himself piano and electronic organ in elementary school become one of the most prolific composers in the history of video games? And what led him to walk away from a staff position at Square to found his own studio? Those are the threads this documentary follows.

• 2. The Early Geek

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  Before he composed a single note professionally, Sakimoto was absorbed in two worlds simultaneously: music and games. In elementary school he taught himself piano and electronic organ and played in brass and rock bands. In junior high school he and some friends built their own games from scratch. By his senior high school years, he was writing for the computer magazine Oh!FM and cataloguing music he admired.

  When he started composing at 16, it was the first time he had ever written music for any instrument at all. Those early paid commissions covered both the composition and the software to play it back, which pushed him toward programming as much as melody. Though Revolter's success attracted attention from the industry, Sakimoto's original intention was to become a game programmer, not a composer. His colleagues talked him out of it, and the recognition that came from Revolter made the choice for him.

• 3. A Career Built on Volume

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  Between 1990 and 1992, Sakimoto worked on over 20 different video games for companies including Toshiba EMI, Artec, and Data East. His first solo score came in 1990 for the game Bubble Ghost. His synthesizer driver "Terpsichorean" followed him into scores he did not even write himself, spreading his technical fingerprint across the market.

  In 1993 alone, Sakimoto scored 14 titles beyond Ogre Battle, among them Shin Megami Tensei and Alien vs. Predator. Over the following years he worked on over 40 more titles, including Tactics Ogre. By 1997, when he composed Final Fantasy Tactics alongside Masaharu Iwata, his pace had already made him one of the busiest composers working in the medium. Final Fantasy Tactics brought him international recognition and remained the score he was best known for outside Japan until at least 2006. The success led Square to hire him as a staff composer, though he would produce only one score as an employee: Vagrant Story, a game he later named among his personal favorites.

• 4. Basiscape and Independence

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  Sakimoto left Square in 2000 and spent a couple of years as a freelance composer, scoring Breath of Fire V and Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis for Capcom and Quest respectively. In October 2002 he launched Basiscape, a music and sound production company he has credited to his desire for more freedom in choosing projects.

  At founding, Basiscape had only three members: Sakimoto, Iwata, and Manabu Namiki. The company expanded in the mid-2000s with the additions of Mitsuhiro Kaneda, Kimihiro Abe, Noriyuki Kamikura, Yoshimi Kudo, and Azusa Chiba. Members are free to pursue personal work as well as collaborate internally on projects. Basiscape launched a record label in 2009. Through the company, Sakimoto continued working with Square Enix and took on anime and film projects alongside video game scoring.

• 5. Musical Influences and Process

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  Sakimoto composes by playing pieces "briefly on the piano" and then moving to a computer for detailed arrangement work. His compositions are predominantly orchestral, though he achieves that sound through a sequencer rather than a live orchestra, a practical choice driven by the cost of hiring musicians.

  Before scoring a game, he meets with the director or producer to establish the emotional target the music needs to hit, then builds a demo and shapes the final score around that feeling. He says this process does not change for non-game work such as anime; only the tone shifts. His biggest stated musical influences are what he calls "old techno and progressive rock" groups, including the Japanese synthpop group Yellow Magic Orchestra. In his earliest career years he composed under the pseudonym "YmoH.S" as a direct reference to that group. He also names American jazz musician Chick Corea as a major influence. During the creation of Final Fantasy XII, he says his principal inspiration was former series composer Nobuo Uematsu.

• 6. Concerts and Collaboration

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  Sakimoto appeared as a special guest, alongside Yoko Shimomura and Michael Salvatori, at a Play! A Video Game Symphony event held at Orchestra Hall in Detroit in July 2006. He built a sustained relationship with the Australian-based Eminence Symphony Orchestra, appearing at their Passion event in December 2006 alongside Yasunori Mitsuda.

  In April 2007 he appeared at Eminence's A Night in Fantasia 2007: Symphonic Games Edition, which featured three of his compositions. That July, Sakimoto and Mitsuda collaborated with Eminence to stage Destiny: Reunion, a concert held exclusively in Japan. Eminence released two studio albums from these events: Passion in 2006 and Destiny: Dreamer's Alliance in 2007. In April 2010, "Penelo's Theme" from Final Fantasy XII and a medley from Final Fantasy Tactics A2 were performed at the Fantasy Comes Alive concert in Singapore, extending his concert presence into Southeast Asia.