Yuzo Koshiro (古代 祐三, Koshiro Yūzō; born December 12, 1967) is a Japanese video game composer. He is often considered one of the most important creators in chiptune and video game music, creating music in many different styles, including rock, jazz, symphonic, and electronic styles such as house, electro, techno, and trance. He and his sister Ayano started the game development company Ancient in 1990, and he is still the president of the company.

Koshiro is known for creating some of the most unforgettable game music from the 1980s and 1990s. He worked on games such as Nihon Falcom's Dragon Slayer and Ys series, as well as Sega's The Revenge of Shinobi and Streets of Rage series. The music from these games is sometimes said to have been more advanced than other music from that time.

Early life

Koshiro was born on December 12, 1967, in Hino, Tokyo, Japan. His mother, Tomo Koshiro, was a pianist. She taught him to play the piano when he was three years old. By the time he was five, he had developed strong piano skills. In 1975, he started taking music lessons from Joe Hisaishi and studied with him for three years. After that, he learned everything on his own.

During the early 1980s, while Koshiro was in high school, he began creating music as a hobby using the NEC PC-8801 computer. He made copies of early music from arcade games made by Namco, Konami, and Sega. The skills he learned from this activity helped him later when he worked on video game music projects. The video games that most influenced him were The Tower of Druaga (1984), Space Harrier (1985), and Gradius (1985). The music from these games inspired him to become a video game composer.

In a 1992 interview, Koshiro said his favorite music genres include new wave, dance music, technopop, classical, and hard rock. He also mentioned that his favorite Western bands are Van Halen and Soul II Soul.

Nihon Falcom (1986–1988)

Koshiro's first job as a composer was with Nihon Falcom in 1986 when he was 18 years old. Falcom used music from the PC-8801 demo tape he sent them for the opening theme and several dungeon levels in their Dragon Slayer action role-playing game, Xanadu Scenario II. He also composed the opening song for Romancia that same year. His early work was influenced by music from arcade games and Japanese bands like The Alfee. In 1987, he created the soundtrack for Dragon Slayer IV / Legacy of the Wizard, which was inspired by the sounds of early Konami games. His most famous works for Falcom include the soundtracks for Sorcerian (1987) and the early Ys games, Ys I (1987) and Ys II (1988). These early compositions mainly included rock and fusion music. The TurboGrafx-CD versions of the first three Ys games (1989–1991) are notable for using Red Book audio in video games very early on. Music from the Ys games was also used in the Ys anime.

All of these early soundtracks were created using the FM synthesis sound chip of the PC-8801. Even as audio technology improved, Koshiro continued to use older PC-8801 hardware to make soundtracks for later games, including Streets of Rage and Etrian Odyssey. His early work for Nihon Falcom games, such as the Dragon Slayer and Ys series, is widely considered among the most influential role-playing video game scores.

Early freelance work (1988–1990)

After leaving Falcom, Koshiro worked as a freelancer, creating music for several other companies. His early projects included the X68000 version of the game Bosconian, The Scheme (1988), an action role-playing game by Bothtec for the NEC PC-8801, and Misty Blue, a visual novel adventure game by Enix for the PC-9801 in 1990. The soundtracks for The Scheme and Misty Blue included early examples of a music style called Eurobeat.

Koshiro’s most well-known freelance work was for Sega. His first project for the company was the soundtrack for The Revenge of Shinobi (1989), where he combined electronic dance music with traditional Japanese music to create house and "progressive, catchy, techno-style" compositions.

For ActRaiser (1990), Koshiro focused on classical and orchestral music. To overcome the Super NES’s limited memory, which restricted the number of instruments and prevented reloading of music samples, he created a system that transferred music data from the game cartridge as needed. This allowed him to play music parts gradually and change them quickly between different sections of the game. A similar method was later used by other companies for SNES games, including Seiken Densetsu 3 (1995) by Squaresoft and Tales of Phantasia (1995) by Namco Tales Studio.

Founding of Ancient Corp. (1990–1994)

In 1990, Koshiro helped start a company called Ancient Corp. His mother, Tomo Koshiro, was also a co-founder of the company. His sister, Ayano Koshiro, works at Ancient Corp as an art/character/graphic designer. She also designed the art for the ActRaiser games. Ayano has created characters and graphics for several games that Koshiro has worked on, including the Streets of Rage series (called Bare Knuckle in Japan), Ys, and ActRaiser.

While working at Ancient Corp, Koshiro composed the soundtrack for the 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991. He used some music from the original 16-bit version of the game and added his own original music to complete the soundtrack.

Koshiro composed the soundtracks for the Streets of Rage series (Bare Knuckle in Japan) from 1991 to 1994 using PC-8801 hardware and a programming language he created called MML, or Music Macro Language. He modified this language, which was based on NEC’s BASIC program, to make it more like Assembly language. He named his version "Music Love" and used it for all the Bare Knuckle games.

The soundtracks for Streets of Rage (1991) and Streets of Rage 2 (1992) were influenced by house, techno, hardcore techno, breakbeat, funk, and ethnic music. Koshiro tried to recreate the sounds of the Roland TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines and the Roland TB-303 synthesizer using FM synthesis. The soundtrack for Streets of Rage 2 is considered "revolutionary" and ahead of its time because of its mix of house synths, electro-funk, and trance-like electronic sounds. Motohiro Kawashima, who also worked at Ancient Corp, contributed to the soundtrack.

Koshiro’s CD soundtracks became popular in Japan during the early 1990s. In 1993, the magazine Electronic Games listed the first two Streets of Rage games as having some of the best video game music soundtracks they had ever heard. They described Koshiro as "just about universally acknowledged as the most gifted composer currently working in the video game field."

Koshiro composed the soundtrack for Streets of Rage 3 (1994) with colleague Motohiro Kawashima, who contributed more than he did for Streets of Rage 2. Koshiro created a new method called the "Automated Composing System" to produce fast-beat techno music similar to jungle. This method used randomized sequences to create sounds that were unusual and hard to imagine manually. This technique was rare at the time but later became popular among techno and trance music producers. The soundtrack included elements of abstract, experimental, gabber, and trance music. Although the experimental electronic music was not well received when it was released, it is now considered ahead of its time. A review in Mean Machines noted that the soundtrack "ironically pre-dated the 'trance' era that came a short while after release."

Koshiro was one of the first composers in Japan to be credited under his real name, while many other Japanese developers used pen names at the time.

Later career (1994–present)

In 1994, Koshiro worked with Kawashima to create the soundtrack for the Mega-CD version of Eye of the Beholder, a dungeon crawl role-playing video game that was originally made by Japanese developer Opera House and published by Sega. That same year, he used a late romantic style of music for the soundtrack of Beyond Oasis. He later used the same style for Legend of Oasis (1996), Merregnon (2004), and Warriors of the Lost Empire (2007). He also wrote one song for Terranigma in 1995.

Koshiro also helped create the soundtrack for Shenmue (1999), a game made by Sega, along with Takenobu Mitsuyoshi and other collaborators. He wrote fifteen original songs for the soundtrack. Three other members of the team from Ancient also worked on Shenmue. Later, he composed soundtracks for the Wangan Midnight series (starting in 2001) and Namco × Capcom (2005). These were the first projects where he wrote both the lyrics and the music. For the Wangan Midnight series, his songs were mostly trance music, a style he had not worked with before.

Koshiro wrote the main theme for the French TV channel Nolife, which began in 2007. The theme was included in the album Tamiuta in 2008. Some of his recent work includes music for the Etrian Odyssey series, the Wangan Midnight series, and the 7th Dragon series. In 2018, he wrote one song for Nobuhiko Okamoto’s album Braverthday. In 2020, he returned to compose music for Streets of Rage 4, working with Kawashima and others. That same year, he created the theme song “Koroneraiser Inu-More!” for Hololive’s virtual YouTuber Inugami Korone. Koshiro also made the opening and ending jingles for the YouTube channel Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games.