Kenji Yoshida
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Kenji Yoshida (born Noboru Yoshida (吉田昇)) is a Japanese professional composer, sound designer and musician. Yoshida has been in the music industry since 1967, however he first made music for Japanese commercials and movies. In 1971, he joined the folk group "Kaigara" as a bass player, and in 1972, he performed in the theme song of the TV drama "Papa to Yobanaide". In the past, he was a supporting member in 1967 and played in folk groups such as The Lind & Linders, New Far Fly, Bang Bang, Jupiter, and Band of Tsumasaburo in the later years. After the group disbanded, he worked as a freelance professional musician, produced sound for commercials, and was the music director for the film "Kurakunarumadematenai!" (1975, Kazuki Omori) as music director. His commercial music in particular was known to be catchy and memorable.
During the 80s, Kenji was struggling as a freelance musician, and wanted to work in music full-time. He went to the arcade one day, played MagMax, and landed an interview with its developer, Nihon Bussan, the next day. During his time with the company, he worked on a vast majority of their games, and got to work on a huge amount of platforms. He started out working on their arcade games, but when the company started working on the NES, TurboGrafx-16, and other platforms, he also started working on those platforms. Around 1997, Nihon Bussan ceased game development, and Yoshida left as a result.
While Yoshida no longer composes video game music, he is active as a musician under the name "Jubi".
Contents
Audio Development
Yoshida explained in an interview that he would usually receive images of the game late in development and compose around those images. He also stated he would create around one-to-two-hundred riffs a month, but the developers only picked the ones they liked. He would compose on a synthesizer and then work with a programmer to implement the music into machine code.
Game Boy
Yoshida either used or had his music arranged into a sound driver by Make Software.
NES
Yoshida originally used a custom sound driver from Nichibutsu, but later used one from Make Software. Alternatively, he had his music arranged into the drivers by the game's programmers. He said it was a headache working on Terra Cresta.
SNES
Yoshida's music was converted to many sound engines including Make Software and Cream's, both of which were variants of Nintendo's Kankichi-kun. It is possible sound staff from those companies converted his music.
Gameography
Picture Gallery
Around 1972. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUSWiDLp8wQ
Around 1975-1978. https://nichibutsu-sounds.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2012-06-10-1
Circa 1980's. Shooting Gameside Vol.10, Page 94.
Circa 1986, Beep! magazine 6/86.
Aliases
Kenji was usually credited as K. Yoshida, but the games Seihai (ARC) and Crazy Climber (FC) credit Yoshida as N. Yoshida. This is in reference to his birth name, Noboru.
During the SNES era, he was oddly credited as 吉田ウィ〜！ (Wee! Yoshida), a hand with the devil-horn shape in between the two words. The etymology of this alias is currently unknown.
Links
- wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%90%89%E7%94%B0%E5%81%A5%E5%BF%97 - Japanese Wikipedia.
- atwiki.jp/gamemusicbest100/pages/2706.html - Biography (Japanese).
- twitter.com/yoshidakennji - Twitter.
- youtube.com/channel/UCXCvPuf62tL1mApB8AOuN2A - YouTube.
- shmuplations.com/gamemusic1986/ - Interview.
- web.archive.org/web/20031212200930/game-music.com/INTERVIEW.htm - Interview (in Japanese).
- web.archive.org/web/20031001191448/game-music.com/INTERVIEW2.htm - Interview (in Japanese).
- translate.google.com/translate?depth=1&hl=en&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ja&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://nichibutsu-sounds.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2012-06-10&xid=17259,15700021,15700186,15700190,15700256,15700259 - Name Origin.
