The characters started having dialogues during the game, and it made sense to me to have vocal themes for each character to describe their attitude with lyrics, or some other vocal songs for the situation. Still, am actually… I tried to bring more unique and new sounds to the world of Sonic because it was the very first 3D game for the franchise. I brought lots of rock music into the franchise, because I was a “rock” guy. What did you change specifically? How has Sonic’s sound develop since you took the lead as sound director? So I made something that I could be proud of through that project. It’s pretty hard to compose music that everyone’s into. I changed the franchise’s music style so drastically that a lot of fans said, “Whoa!” I know some love it and some hate it, but that’s okay, because it’s music. That was my very first experience to join the project as a sound director and lead composer. So we tried to preserve that.ĭo you think the music has developed over the years, or do you feel like you’re still going back to that original sound set up in the original games?Ī few years later, I worked on a game called Sonic Adventure, which was released for Sega Dreamcast in 1999 for American and European markets. The music was very catchy and easy to remember. The first Sonic game I worked on was Sonic The Hedgehog 3 and it was an honor to be one of the composers for it.ĭo you feel that your work on Sonic the Hedgehog 3’s sound brought anything new to the game’s sonic style?Īs for the music for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 or Sonic & Knuckles for Genesis, all of us - meaning all of the composers - we wanted to maintain the same feel, and tried to keep a similar sound to the first two Sonic games since it was so good. They were released before I joined Sega, and they meant a lot for me because they already had something of an established musical style they were the reason I wanted to join Sega to do something musically. They were games for the Genesis, released in 19. I was a big fan of the first two Sonic games, Sonic The Hedgehog and Sonic The Hedgehog 2. What was the first Sonic game that you worked on? My most recent project is Team Sonic Racing. I composed lots of music for Sega consoles, Genesis, Sega Saturn, and Sega Dreamcast since then, even some for the arcade games. Not only composing, but voice scripting and sound effects. I joined Sega in 1993 after graduating from university to work on music for console games. Guitar in middle school, and then bass guitar around when I was 15.

When I was a kid and a teenager, I was into video games and music, and began playing piano at 3 years old, since my parents wanted me to play musical instruments. How did you get involved with the Sonic gaming universe?

Team sonic racing soundtrack