Nobuo Uematsu is a Japanese musician and composer, best known for his contributions to the Final Fantasy video game series by Square Enix. A self-taught musician, he began playing the piano at the age of twelve, with English singer-songwriter Elton John as one of his biggest influences. Uematsu joined Square in 1986, where he first met Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. The two later worked together on many titles at the company, most notably in the Final Fantasy series. After nearly two decades with Square, Uematsu left in 2004 to create his own production company, which included the Dog Ear Records music label. He has since composed music as a freelancer for other games, including ones developed by Square Enix and Sakaguchi's development studio, Mistwalker.
Hans Florian Zimmer is a German film score composer and record producer. Zimmer's works are notable for integrating electronic music sounds with traditional orchestral arrangements. Since the 1980s, he has composed music for over 150 films. His works include The Lion King, Crimson Tide, Gladiator, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and Blade Runner 2049. He has received four Grammy Awards, three Classical BRIT Awards, two Golden Globes, and an Academy Award. He was also named on the list of Top 100 Living Geniuses, published by The Daily Telegraph.
Koji Kondo is a Japanese music composer, pianist, and music director who works for the video game company Nintendo. He is best known for his involvement in numerous contributions in the Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda series of video games, among others produced by the company. Kondo was hired by Nintendo in 1984, becoming the first person hired by them to specialize in musical composition for video games. Shortly after, Kondo was assigned as the sound designer on the 1985 game Super Mario Bros. His work on the game, especially the overworld musical theme, has often been cited as among the most memorable in video games.
Hiroki Kikuta is a Japanese video game composer and game designer. His major works are Secret of Mana, Trials of Mana, Soukaigi, and Koudelka, for which he also acted as producer and concept designer. He has composed music for seven other games, and worked as a concept designer in addition to composer for the unreleased MMORPG Chou Bukyo Taisen. He became interested in music at an early age, but earned a degree in Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Cultural Anthropology from Kansai University. He spent the next few years working first as a manga illustrator, then as a composer for anime series, before coming to work for Square in 1991.
Frank Klepacki is an American musician and video game composer, best known for his work on the Command & Conquer series. Having learned to play drums as a child, he joined Westwood Studios as a composer when he was 17 years old. He has scored several games there, including the Lands of Lore series, Westwood Studios' Dune games, The Legend of Kyrandia series, Blade Runner, and the Command & Conquer series. His work in Command & Conquer: Red Alert won two awards.
Timothy John Follin is an English former video game music composer who has written tracks for a variety of titles and home gaming systems, including the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, Nintendo Entertainment System, Mega Drive, Super NES, Game Boy, Dreamcast, and PlayStation.
Hitoshi Sakimoto is a Japanese video game music composer and arranger. He is best known for scoring Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII, though he has composed soundtracks for over 80 other games. He began playing music and video games in elementary school, and began composing video game music for money by the time he was 16. Sakimoto's professional career began a few years later in 1988 when he started composing music professionally as a freelancer, as well as programming sound drivers for games. Five years and 40 games later, he achieved his first mainstream success with the score to Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen. In 1997, he joined Square and composed for his first international success, the score to Final Fantasy Tactics.
Fabian Del Priore is a composer, arranger and sound designer. He has become an established tracker musician, going by the stage name "Rapture".
Yuzo Koshiro is a Japanese music composer and president of the game development company Ancient. He is often regarded as one of the most influential innovators in chiptune and video game music, producing music in a number of genres, including various electronic genres, experimental, symphonic, hip hop, jazz, and synth-rock. Koshiro and his sister Ayano also founded the game development company Ancient in 1990.
Jeremy Soule is an American composer of soundtracks for film, television, and video games. He has composed soundtracks for over 60 games and over a dozen other works during his career, including The Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars, Icewind Dale, and the Harry Potter series.
Martin O'Donnell is an American composer known for his work on video game developer Bungie's series, such as Myth, Oni, Halo, and Destiny. O'Donnell collaborated with his musical colleague Michael Salvatori for many of the scores; he has also directed voice talent and sound design for the Halo trilogy. O'Donnell was Bungie's audio lead until April 11, 2014.
Inon Zur is an Israeli-American composer. Originally writing for movies and television, he later moved into composing for video games. He has been described as being "internationally recognized as one of the A-list orchestral composers in the video games industry". Zur has composed the music to over 50 video games, 15 television shows, and 10 films, as well as film trailers. He has been nominated for numerous awards, and has won three—a Telly Award in 1997 for Best Score on Power Rangers: Turbo, a Game Audio Network Guild award in 2004 for Best Original Instrumental track for Men of Valor, and a Hollywood Music in Media Award in 2009 for Best Original Song – Video Game for Dragon Age: Origins.
Jack Wall is an American video game music composer. He has worked on video game music for over 20 games including the Myst franchise, Splinter Cell, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and Call of Duty. Wall earned a degree in civil engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and, after a brief stint working in civil engineering, transitioned into music production. He worked with musicians such as John Cale, David Byrne, and Patti Smith, and, after performing increasingly complex production and sound engineering tasks, moved into music composition in 1995.
Michael C. Salvatori is an American composer best known for his collaboration with colleague Martin O'Donnell for the soundtracks to the Halo video game series. Salvatori became acquainted with O'Donnell in college; when O'Donnell was given a job offer to score a colleague's film, Salvatori and O'Donnell formed a partnership and eventually created their own production company, TotalAudio. Salvatori continued to manage TotalAudio and worked on his own music for clients such as Disney and Wideload Games. He most recently co-composed the soundtrack to the 2014 video game Destiny and its expansions, The Taken King (2015) and Rise of Iron (2016). He also composed music for Destiny 2 (2017) and its expansions, Forsaken (2018), Shadowkeep (2019), and Beyond Light (2020).
Chance Thomas is an American composer, author, and entrepreneur. As a composer, he creates original music for animation, video games, movies, television, and virtual reality. His music has underscored both critical acclaim and commercial success, including an Oscar, an Emmy, and billions of dollars in sales worldwide.
Garry Schyman is an American film, television, and video game music composer. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in music composition in 1978, and began work in the television industry, writing music for such television series as Magnum, P.I. and The A-Team. By 1986, he was composing for movies such as Judgement and Hit List. At the request of a friend in 1993, he composed the music for the video game Voyeur, but after creating the music for two more games he left the industry, citing the low budgets and poor quality of video game music at the time. He continued to compose for film and television, only to return to video games for 2005's Destroy All Humans!. Finding that in his absence the quality and perceived importance of video game music had risen substantially, he has since composed for several games, writing the scores to BioShock and Dante's Inferno among others. He still composes for film however, his latest being Brush with Danger directed by young Indonesian director Livi Zheng. He has won numerous awards for his video game scores, including several "soundtrack of the year" awards. During his career, he has worked on over 25 television shows, 10 films, and 13 video games.
Raphaël Gesqua is a French composer, arranger and sound designer.
Andrew Hulshult is an American video game music composer and sound designer. He is best known for his work with 3D Realms as well as his scores for several first-person shooters, such as Dusk, Quake Champions, and Doom Eternal.
Maclaine Diemer is a multimedia music composer. He worked on sound design and composing music for the Rock Band game series, and massively multiplayer online game (MMO) Guild Wars 2.
Christian Henson is a British composer, primarily working on television and film soundtracks. He has also soundtracked video games, and is the co-founder of Spitfire Audio with fellow composer Paul Thomson. Henson's work has been nominated for a BAFTA and an Ivor Novello Award.
