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Koji Kondo is a Japanese composer and pianist at the video game company Nintendo. He is best known for his contributions for the Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda series, with his Super Mario Bros. theme being the first piece of music from a video game included in the American National Recording Registry. Kondo was hired by Nintendo in 1984 as their first dedicated composer and is currently a senior executive within their Entertainment Planning & Development division.
Ensemble Studios was an American video game developer. It was founded by Tony Goodman in 1994 and incorporated the following year. It borrowed the name of Ensemble Corporation, a consulting firm founded by Goodman in 1990. It was acquired by Microsoft in 2001 and operated as an internal studio until 2009, when its development capabilities were officially disbanded. Ensemble developed many real-time strategy games, including the Age of Empires game series, Age of Mythology, and Halo Wars. In addition to game development, Ensemble Studios also made the Genie Game Engine used in Age of Empires, Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. The studio sold 20 million games and was worth an estimated $500 million.
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.
Halo is a military science fiction video game series and media franchise, originally developed and created by Bungie and currently managed and developed by Halo Studios, part of Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios. The series launched in November 2001 with the first-person shooter video game Halo: Combat Evolved and its tie-in novel, The Fall of Reach. The latest major installment, Halo Infinite, was released in late 2021. Spinoffs include real-time strategy and twin-stick shooter games.
Age of Mythology is a real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released on October 31, 2002 in North America and on November 14, 2002 in Europe.
Age of Empires is a series of historical real-time strategy video games, originally developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Xbox Game Studios. The first game was Age of Empires, released in 1997. Nine total games within the series have been released so far as of October 28, 2021.
Martin O'Donnell is an American composer, audio director, and sound designer known for his work on video game developer Bungie's titles, such as the Myth series, Oni, the Halo series, and Destiny. O'Donnell collaborated with his Michael Salvatori for many of the scores; he has also directed voice talent and sound design for the Halo trilogy.
The Halo 2 Original Soundtrack is the soundtrack for Bungie's 2004 video game Halo 2. The soundtrack was released as two separate volumes, released almost two years apart. Volume 1, released at the same time as Halo 2 on November 9, 2004, contains arranged instrumental pieces written by Martin O'Donnell and his partner Michael Salvatori, as well as "inspired-by" tracks from bands Incubus, Hoobastank and Breaking Benjamin. Volume 2 was released on April 25, 2006, and contains all the game music arranged in a suite form.
Inon Zur is an Israeli-American composer of soundtracks for film, television, and video games. He has composed soundtracks for over 80 video games, which include Dragon Age, EverQuest, Fallout, Prince of Persia, Star Trek, the Syberia series, and Starfield. He has received multiple nominations, including three BAFTAs, and has won several awards, including an Emmy. Various music awards for his soundtracks on Men of Valor (2004), Crysis (2008), Dragon Age: Origins (2009), The Elder Scrolls: Blades (2019), Syberia: The World Before (2023) and Starfield (2024).
Tetsuya Shibata is a Japanese video game music composer and sound director. He is credited for over twenty musical scores produced for Capcom's video game releases including the Monster Hunter and Devil May Cry series, as well those in the Darkstalkers, Power Stone and Resident Evil Outbreak series. His later works with the company involved organizing orchestral recordings for Resident Evil 5 and Monster Hunter Tri. In 2009, Shibata left Capcom and began his own music studio, known as Unique Note, with colleague Yoshino Aoki.
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.
Halo 3 Original Soundtrack is the official soundtrack to Bungie's first-person shooter video game Halo 3. Most of the original music was composed by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori, but also includes a bonus track, "LvUrFR3NZ", which was the winning entry in a contest held before the soundtrack's release. The 2-CD set was released on November 20, 2007.
Dave Pottinger is a video game programmer and designer. He formerly worked at Ensemble Studios, where he worked on game engines and AI. He now heads BonusXP, an independent video game studio which has produced two mobile games, and has an RTS game called Servo in Early Access on the Steam platform.
Age of Empires (AoE) is a real-time strategy video game based on history, developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft, and the first game in the Age of Empires series. The game uses the Genie Engine, a 2D sprite-based game engine. The game allows the user to act as the leader of an ancient civilization by advancing it through four ages, gaining access to new and improved units with each advance.
Halo Wars is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 video game console. It was released in Australia on February 26, 2009; in Europe on February 27; and in North America on March 3. The game is set in the science fiction universe of the Halo series in the year 2531, 21 years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. The player leads human soldiers aboard the warship Spirit of Fire in an effort to stop an ancient fleet of ships from falling into the hands of the genocidal alien Covenant.
The Halo 4 Original Soundtrack is the official soundtrack to the first-person shooter video game Halo 4, developed by 343 Industries and published by Microsoft Studios. British record producer Neil Davidge was Halo 4's main composer and producer. The soundtrack was released on October 19, 2012 in Australia and New Zealand, and October 22 everywhere else. A second volume containing more of the score was released digitally on April 8, 2013.
Tony Goodman is an American video game executive and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Ensemble Studios and Robot Entertainment.
Gareth Coker is a British composer. He has composed work for video games, including Ori and the Blind Forest, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, ARK: Survival Evolved, ARK: Survival Ascended, Halo Infinite and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
The music of the Dead Space media franchise, created by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts around a series of survival horror video games, was mainly composed by Jason Graves. Graves composed the music for all mainline entries in the series and the majority of spin-off titles. Other composers have been involved in the series; Grave's recurring collaborator Rod Abernethy acted as an early advisor for the titular first game, James Hannigan co-composed the score for Dead Space 3, while the 2023 remake of the first game combined original music with contributions by Trevor Gureckis. Scores for the movies Dead Space: Downfall and Dead Space: Aftermath were respectively composed were Seth Podowitz and Christopher Tin.
References
- ↑ "About". Stephen Rippy's official website. Retrieved August 27, 2023.
- ↑ Connelly, Richard (February 25, 2009). "The Pride Of Spring, TX, Doesn't Blow It For Halo Fans". Houston Press . Archived from the original on May 24, 2011. Retrieved February 26, 2009.
- 1 2 3 Wilonsky, Robert (February 26, 2009). "Stephen Rippy Sets 'Halo Wars' High Score". Dallas Observer . pp. 1–2. Archived from the original on January 31, 2013. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
- ↑ Staff (February 2, 2009). "Behind the Music of Halo Wars: Interview with Composer Stephen Rippy". Music4Games . Archived from the original on February 5, 2009. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
