|
Alongside Radiant Silvergun Sakimoto composed the arcade shooter Armed Police Batrider before moving over to the Nintendo 64 for Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber, working with the Quest Trio alongside Hayato Matsuo and longtime colleague Masaharu Iwata. The following year, rounding out the 20th century. The new millenium started with a bang, with a solo composition for the much beloved game Vagrant Story.
The follow up to Vagrant Story included Iwata and Sakimoto composing the soundtrack for Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis, a solo composition for Kuusen, and then moving onto Legaia 2: Duel Saga with Yasunori Mitsuda and Michiru Oshima. Next was Tekken Advance before he got to work with Capcom on Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. At about this time Sakimoto, Iwata, and Manabu Namiki founded their own company called Basiscape, which has grown into the largest company of freelance composers.
In 2003 Sakimoto worked with Squaresoft once again on the long awaited follow up to Final Fantasy Tactics, FFT Advance for the Game Boy Advance. He got the chance to work with Ayako Saso, Kaori Ohkoshi, and the legendary Nobuo Uematsu on this project. The next year he worked with Treasure and Konami on Gradius V, then on Stella Deus for Atlus along with Iwata. With is Basiscape crew he helped compose the Cave shooter Mushihimesama, making 2004 a busy year.
His schedule let up a bit in 2005, but then kicked into full gear in 2006. For the former year Basiscape composed Wizardry Gaiden: Prisoners of the Battles, Bleach: Heat the Soul 2, and Zoids: Full Metal Clash. By now many of the games would be credited to the quickly growing Basiscape. In the latter year the list just gets longer, with the Basiscape credits including Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner, Digimon Battle Terminal, Digimon World Beta Squad, Battle Stadium D.O.N., and Fantasy Earth: Zero. Last but certainly not least was his contribution to the soundtrack of Final Fantasy XII along with the rest of the Quest Trio, Taro Hasuke, Yuji Toriyama, and Uematsu once again!
Basiscape continued to get many contracts in 2007, and Sakimoto is credited on Bleach: Heat the Soul 4, GrimGrimoire, Odin Sphere, Opoona, Deltora Quest, and continued with his Final Fantasy compositions with Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, the PSP FFT remake War of the Lions, and the sequel to FF Tactics Advance, Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift. His days beyond the PS2, GBA, and PSP would include the PS3 instant classic Valkyria Chronicles in 2008.
This year would continue with some different games that Basiscape worked on. The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road for the DS was one of them, along with Elminage, and Coded Soul. The following year saw the company work on Elminage II, Tekken 6, Lord of Vermillion II, and Muramasa: The Demon Blade.
2010 saw a return of the old, as well as some newer faces in Sakimoto's life. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together was remastered and re-released for the PSP late in the year. But there was also Lord of Arcana that he worked on with Uematsu, and Valkyria Chronicles II as a solo effort. Valkyria Chronicles III released in the following year along with Rikishi: Legend of Paper Wrestling.
I want this game translated so bad.
Most recently he has worked on games such as Dragon's Crown, Crimson Shroud, and The Denpa Men series. An upcoming game with his compositions listed is Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians.
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!
|
|
|
|
