Keiichi Okabe

Okabe started taking electric organ lessons as a child, covering contemporary pop and film music. Although he did not learn from teachers, he would develop his musical skills through joining a band and recording music. He has cited Henry Mancini, Ennio Morricone, and Ryuichi Sakamoto as being some of his musical influences. He studied at Kobe Design University.

After graduating from university, Okabe joined Namco in 1994, with his first work being a handful of tracks for medal game Spiral Fall. He would also work on titles such as Air Combat 22, along with some arrangements for the PS1 version of Tekken 2. This would lead to him scoring Tekken 3 along with fellow Namco composer Nobuyoshi Sano. Both composers chose to make big beat music for the game as it both fitted the atmosphere of the game and had not been done in video games before. During the game's production, he became ill. He and Sano would also work on Tekken Tag Tournament with other composers in 1999.

In the later years of his employment at Namco, Okabe did a handful of freelance composing and remixing gigs, such as composing background music for commercials and other video productions, as well as remixing pop songs with Junichi Soma. He left Namco in 2001 to become a fully independent freelancer; while he feels that the game industry served as an outlet for him to create music, he wanted more freedom to work on non-game projects. In addition to further work on game projects and remixes, he also composed and arranged a number of songs for various artists, such as Ryuichi Kawamura. However, being freelance resulted in him losing a lot of social trust, such as being unable to change residence or sign up for a credit card.