Hitoshi Sakimoto

Early life

Sakimoto was born on February 26, 1969, in Tokyo, Japan. He began developing an interest in music beginning in elementary school, when he taught himself to play the piano and electronic organ and participated in some brass and rock bands. A fan of video games, he began creating his own games in junior high school with some friends. While in his senior high school years, Sakimoto wrote for the computer magazine Oh!FM and compiled data about pieces of music he liked, becoming a self-professed "computer, games, and music geek".

Sakimoto started composing for games when he was 16, and was paid to both create the music and the program to play it for several games. Composing for these games was the first time he had ever composed music for any instrument. His debut as a professional gaming composer came in 1988, when he and his friend Masaharu Iwata, whom he has worked with on numerous later titles, scored the shooter game Revolter, published by ASCGroup for the NEC PC-8801. Sakimoto also created the synthesizer driver "Terpsichorean" to enhance the sound quality of the game's music; the synthesizer driver has been implemented into many games throughout the Japanese game market in the early 1990s. Despite Revolter's success, he continued with his previous goal to become a video game programmer rather than a composer; however, his friends and colleagues encouraged him to continue composing game music. The recognition he gained within the gaming industry jump-started his career.

After Revolter, Sakimoto's music and synthesizer driver earned him immediate recognition in the industry, resulting in him being asked to score several PC-9801 and Mega Drive games such as Starship Rendezvous and Gauntlet IV, as well as use his driver both in the scores he wrote and for other games. Between 1990 and 1992, Sakimoto worked on over 20 different video games for several different companies such as Toshiba EMI, Artec, and Data East. It was during this time that he composed his first solo score in 1990 for Bubble Ghost.

Sakimoto's first encounter with mainstream success in Japan came about in 1993 when he composed Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen. The game was directed by Yasumi Matsuno, and since the release of the title, he has chosen Sakimoto as a regular for his development team at Quest and later Square. Sakimoto also worked on 14 other titles that year, including Shin Megami Tensei and Alien vs. Predator. Over the next few years, he would go on to compose for or work on over 40 more titles such as Tactics Ogre. In 1997, Sakimoto composed the score for Final Fantasy Tactics, which made him internationally famous, and was the score he was best known for outside Japan until at least 2006. This led to him joining Square as an employee, where he worked on Vagrant Story, his only score as an employee of Square. After leaving in 2000 he became freelance and went on to compose Breath of Fire V and Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis for Capcom and Quest respectively. After a couple of years of planning he formed his own music production company, Basiscape, in October 2002.