Yoko Shimomura

Yoko Shimomura (下村 陽子) is a Japanese composer and pianist primarily known for her work in video games such as the Kingdom Hearts series.

Shimomura was born on October 19, 1967, in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan.

She developed an interest for music at a young age, and started taking piano lessons "at the age of four or five".

She began composing her own music by playing the piano randomly and pretending to compose, eventually coming up with her own pieces, the first of which she says she still remembers how to play.

She graduated from the Osaka College of Music in 1988 and began working in the video game industry by joining Capcom the same year.

She wrote music for several games there, including Final Fight, Street Fighter II, and The King of Dragons.

Shimomura attended Osaka College of Music, and graduated as a piano major in 1988.

Upon graduation, Shimomura intended to become a piano instructor and was extended a job offer to become a piano teacher at a music store, but as she had been an avid gamer for many years she decided to send some samples of her work to various video game companies that were recruiting at the university.

Capcom invited her in for an audition and interview, and she was offered a job there.

Her family and instructors were dismayed with her change in focus, as video game music was not well respected, and "they had paid [her] tuition for an expensive music school and couldn't understand why [she] would accept such a job", but Shimomura accepted the job at Capcom anyway.

While working for Capcom, Shimomura contributed to the soundtracks of over 16 games, including the successful Street Fighter II, which she composed all but three pieces for.

The first soundtrack she worked on at the company was for Samurai Sword in 1988.

Final Fight, in 1989, was her first work to receive a separate soundtrack album release, on an album of music from several Capcom games.

The first soundtrack album to exclusively feature her work came a year later for the soundtrack to Street Fighter II.

While she began her tenure at Capcom working on games for video game consoles, by 1990 she had moved to the arcade game division.

She was a member of the company's in-house band Alph Lyla, which played various Capcom game music, including pieces written by Shimomura.

She performed live with the group on a few occasions, including playing piano during Alph Lyla's appearance at the 1992 Game Music Festival.

Shimomura left Capcom and joined Square (now Square Enix) in 1993, with her first project there being Live A Live.

In 1993, Shimomura left Capcom to join another game company, Square.

She stated that the move was done because she was interested in writing "classical-style" music for fantasy role-playing games.

While working for Capcom, she was in the arcade department and was unable to transfer to the console department to work on their role-playing video game series Breath of Fire, although she did contribute one track to the first game in the series.

Her first project at Square was the score for the role-playing video game Live A Live in 1994.

While she was working on the score to Super Mario RPG the following year, she was asked to join Noriko Matsueda on the music to the futuristic role-playing game Front Mission.

Although she was overworked doing both scores and it was not the genre that she was interested in, she found herself unable to refuse after her first attempt to do so unexpectedly happened in the presence of the president of Square, Tetsuo Mizuno.

These games were followed by Tobal No. 1, the last score she worked on with another composer for a decade.

Over the next few years, she composed the soundtrack to several games, including Parasite Eve and Legend of Mana.

Of all her compositions, Shimomura considers the soundtrack to Legend of Mana the one that best expresses herself and the soundtrack remains Shimomura's personal favourite.

Parasite Eve on the PlayStation had the first soundtrack by Shimomura that included a vocal song, as it was the first game she had written for running on a console system that had the sound capability for one.

She would later become better known for writing the music for Kingdom Hearts, which was her last game at Square before leaving to become a freelancer in 2002.

She founded a music production company, Midiplex, the following year.

Despite leaving Square Enix, she has continued to work with them in later Kingdom Hearts entries and other games such as The 3rd Birthday and Final Fantasy XV.

Other well-known games Shimomura has worked on include Super Mario RPG, the Mario & Luigi series, Parasite Eve, Legend of Mana, Radiant Historia, and Xenoblade Chronicles.

Her works have gained a great deal of popularity and have been performed in multiple video game music concerts.

Music from several of her games have been published as arranged albums and piano scores.

She is also a member of the music label Brave Wave Productions.

In 2002 she wrote the score for Kingdom Hearts, which she has said is the most "special" soundtrack to her, as well as a turning point in her career; she named the soundtracks to Street Fighter II and Super Mario RPG as the other two significant points in her life as a composer.

Kingdom Hearts was wildly successful, shipping more than four million copies worldwide; Shimomura's music was frequently cited as one of the highlights of the game, and the title track has been ranked as the fourth-best role-playing game title track of all time.

The soundtrack has led to two albums of piano arrangements.

Kingdom Hearts was the last soundtrack that she worked on at Square.

After the release of Kingdom Hearts in 2002, Shimomura left Square for maternity leave, and began work as a freelancer in 2003.