Greatest Video Game Composers: Yasunori Mitsuda - Article
by Taneli Palola , posted on 09 March 2016 / 8,477 Views
For most composers working in the video game industry, success and recognition doesn't come quickly or easily. More often than not it takes many years and requires them to have numerous games under their belt before they can claim to possess any kind of fame as composers. However, sometimes things just happen to line up in such a way that the very first game a person makes music for is also the one that makes them famous. This is exactly what happened to Yasunori Mitsuda.
As was the case with many of the Japanese composers who began working in the industry in 80s and 90s, Mitsuda first entered the video game business straight after school. He applied to work as a sound producer for Square after seeing an advertisement in Famitsu magazine. The demo he sent in got him an interview, and despite what he described as a “disastrous” interview with Nobuo Uematsu and sound programmer Minoru Akao, he was offered the job in April of 1992.
As an aside, Mitsuda actually trained as an intern under composer Motoi Sakuraba at Wolf Team as part of one of his school courses. We covered Sakuraba in one of the previous articles here.
For the first two years working for Square, Mitsuda didn't actually compose any music. Instead, he worked as a sound engineer, creating sound effects for a variety of games. These included the likes of Final Fantasy V and Secret of Mana, among others. However, this wasn't what Mitsuda had really signed up for, and after a while he realized that unless he took some drastic measures he was unlikely to ever get to work as a composer. With this is mind, he went to the then Square vice president, Hironobu Sakaguchi, and presented him with an ultimatum: let Mitsuda compose music for a game or he would resign. Sakaguchi agreed to give him a shot and assigned Mitsuda to compose the music for Chrono Trigger.
I can't stress enough just how rare it is for a composer to create a masterpiece with his or her very first soundtrack, but that is exactly what Mitsuda did on Chrono Trigger. He was initially supposed to be the sole composer for the game, but he worked so hard on it that he often worked on the score until he passed out due to exhaustion. Eventually he was hospitalized as a result of developing stomach ulcers and this led to Uematsu taking over the reins for the remainder of the soundtrack. Of the 65 tracks in the game, Mitsuda composed 54, Uematsu 10, and Noriko Matsueda one.
After Chrono Trigger became a huge success Mitsuda found himself in high demand and worked on the soundtracks for three different Square games, including Radical Dreamers (a Chrono Trigger side-story) and Front Mission: Gun Hazard. The following year no games were released with music composed by Mitsuda and this was because he was busy working on the soundtracks to two significant 1998 releases.
The first of these was one of the original PlayStation's most beloved RPGs, Xenogears. The soundtrack works beautifully together with the game's story and characters, enhancing the mood of each scene and its location. Mitsuda composed some of the best music of his career for this game, making it in my opinion one of his best overall scores.
The other game Mitsuda composed music for in 1998 was Nintendo's Mario Party, which was the first non-Square game to feature his music. While the soundtrack may not be quite as memorable as some of his other works, it certainly shows his talent for composing various different types of music. Following the release of Xenogears, Mitsuda left Square to work as a freelance composer.
Since his departure from Square, Mitsuda has composed music for just one additional Square game - the 1999 PlayStation classic Chrono Cross. Being a sequel to one of the most revered SNES games, Chrono Cross had a lot to live up to in the eyes of fans. Whether it lived up to those expectations or not is heavily debated, but if nothing else the soundtrack is every bit as good as the original's was. It is also my personal favourite Mitsuda score.
Besides Chrono Cross, Mitsuda was also one of several composers who worked on the soundtrack for Bomberman 64: The Second Attack. The following year was another during which no game featuring Mitsuda's music was released, but in 2001 he was once again busy working on three different PS2 RPGs.
The first of these was a relatively unknown game called Tsugunai: Atonement. Despite the game being largely forgotten, the soundtrack by Mitsuda is worth going out of your way to listen to. The second game he worked on in 2001 was Shadow Hearts, a sequel to another niche PlayStation game called Koudelka. Mitsuda scored nine of the game's tracks, including the one above.
Finally, Mitsuda also created music for Legaia 2: Duel Saga, together with Hitoshi Sakimoto and Michiru Oshima. Although Mitsuda only composed 10 of the game's tracks, they are still very good pieces, and the entire soundtrack deserves more attention, even if the game itself isn't necessarily that memorable.
In 2002 Mitsuda once again collaborated with the director of Xenogears, Tetsuya Takahashi, when he composed the music to Xenosaga Episode 1: Der Wille Zur Macht. The game was the first in an eventual trilogy, and is considered something of a spiritual sequel to Xenogears, sharing many elements and details with that title. Mitsuda himself said the above piece is one of his personal favourite compositions.
The only other game Mitsuda composed music for in 2002 is a little known PC title called The Seventh Seal. It is easily one of his more obscure works, and it is quite difficult to find any of the game's music to listen to. I was only able to find a few tracks, one of which apparently wasn't even in the final release. What little I heard sounds very good and has Mitsuda's style all over it, so if you can find the soundtrack it's probably worth listening to. It only consists of 10 songs.
Mitsuda would then return to the Shadow Hearts series in 2004 with Shadow Hearts: Covenant, this time working with three other composers. He composed only five songs for the soundtrack, with Yoshitaka Hirota taking on the main composing duties. That same year Mitsuda also created the soundtrack for Graffiti Kingdom, another mostly forgotten PS2 title.
Over the next few years Mitsuda worked on a number of lower profile games, most of which came and went without making any kind of long lasting impact. These included such titles as 10,000 Bullets (2005), Deep Labyrinth (2006), and Luminous Arc (2007).
In 2008 Mitsuda found himself working once again with Monolith Soft and Tetsuya Takahashi when he composed the soundtrack to Soma Bringer. He also began a long standing collaboration with the developer Level-5 that year, creating the music for the first Inazuma Eleven game. Since then Mitsuda has composed music for nearly all of the releases in the series, as well as for the various anime series based on the games.
The following year he once again worked on a handful of games, the most notable of which were probably Arc Rise Fantasia for the Wii, and Inazuma Eleven 2, which was his only solo work in 2009. It would also be his last work as the sole composer of a video game soundtrack until 2013. At this point Mitsuda was clearly beginning to transition away from composing and more towards producing other composers' music, often contributing only a few of the tracks to any given score.
Some of the most notable examples of these kinds of video games are Xenoblade Chronicles, for which Mitsuda created just one track - the game's ending theme - and Kid Icarus: Uprising, which contained three tracks from Mitsuda. Naturally there were exceptions to this. He continued to create music for the Inazuma Eleven games, for example, and in 2013 he was one of two composers signed on to compose the music for Soul Sacrifice on PS Vita.
In 2014 Mitsuda worked quite sparingly on video games; most of his contributions that year were either reused compositions (Soul Sacrifice Delta, Inazuma Eleven Online) or consisted of only one track per score (Terra Battle).
In 2015 his most notable work was the soundtrack to the 3DS turn-based RPG Stella Glow by Imagepooch. The game was Mitsuda's fourth collaboration with the studio, which unfortunately closed a few months before the game was released in Japan.
Yasunori Mitsuda has remained active in the video game industry for over 20 years, creating music for some of the most beloved video games of all time during that period. His style of mixing such genres as jazz and Celtic music, among many others, creates a sound that is often instantly recognisable the moment you hear his music. Besides composing music he has also arranged other composers' music for various games, including the last two Super Smash Bros. games.
Mitsuda himself has also cited minimalism as one of the major influences on his work, the Xenogears soundtrack being perhaps the most notable example of this and the game's final battle theme uses very few chords throughout its duration.
For fans of Mitsuda the future seems quite bright, because in 2016 he will be composing music for at least two different games. The first of these is an indie RPG called Edge of Eternity, which promises to be a love letter to classic JRPGs. Mitsuda is one of two composers working on the game. The other game he's working on is his first solo score in quite a few years. This alone would make Valkyria: Azure Revolution an interesting prospect, but the fact that it is also a part of the Valkyria Chronicles series makes it even more appealing.
Yasunori Mitsuda is undoubtedly one of the greatest video game composers working today, having created some of the most enduring pieces of video game music of the last 20 plus years. I'm certain many of you have fond memories of listening to his music while playing, so feel free to share your favourite songs from Yasunori Mitsuda in the comments section below, and as always thanks for reading.
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His work on Xenogears is highly under-appreciated. Mitsuda is definitely in my top 5 Japanese composers of all time. Somewhere with the likes of Koichi Sugiyama and Nobuo Uematso.
Love his music, secret of the forest is one of my fav soundtracks ever
He's got talent
One of my favorites easily. Him and Uematsu are probably the two primary composers who got me into music, period. Like, before pop music or before ever watching MTV or anything.
