Hirofumi Matsuoka (Dec 8, 1968-Oct 20, 2015 [46 Years Old])
Hirofumi Matsuoka was a composer, arranger, programmer, etc, for Falcom beginning sometime during 1992 until he left the company during the early 2000's. He is the first from this group of composers to have passed away. He debuted in 1992 in Brandish 2 alongside Masaru Nakajima, Takahiro Tsunashima and Naoki Kaneda. The two songs bellow are by Matsuoka:
Following this, he'd contribute songs to The Legend of Xanadu. Some of the songs give a small hint of the type of musical direction Matsuoka would turn to after leaving Falcom:
To hear more of him as an arranger, he was also in charge of the Sega-CD and Super Famicom versions of Popful Mail. Matsouka also worked on the Legend of Heroes remakes on the Mega Drive:
Later during his time at Falcom, he became the leader of the sound team for projects such as The Legend of Heroes V: A Cagesong of the Ocean and others. After his departure, he composed briefly for the first Gruppo One game alongside Takahiro Tsunashima, and afterwards began working on "folk pop" projects with vocalist Momori on his own. He would compose and arrange the tracks, and have Momori perform the vocals. This is a huge departure from his compositions at Falcom, but a pleasant evolution of his musical style. The following are from his original work titled "Fermata." It's a compilation of his work over the years:
Towards the end of his life, he found out he had a an advanced type of stomach cancer. Around this time, I was trying to interview him for VGMonline. In the end, I should had tried to contact him myself because over the next following months he would suffer greatly, eventually discontinuing treatment. He passed away on October 20, 2015.
Thank you Hirofumi Matsuoka, for your contributions to Falcom and your work afterwards.
Takahiro Tsunashima joined Falcom during that same 1992 period alongside Naoki Kaneda, Masaru Nakajima, and Hirofumi Matsuoka. He would contribute music towards most titles probably until The Legend of Heroes IV before focusing more on sound programming and ultimately leaving Falcom to become the lead composer of the ex-Falcom employee founded game developer Gruppo One. We will see in the rest of this post how many times he would switch from a slow melodic style to an extremely technical and aggressive style. Like the three others, he debuted in Brandish 2:
Following Brandish 2, Tsunashima would appear in Ys IV:
Next, he would contribute a small number of songs in The Legend of Xanadu. Included in his set is "The Beginning of the Legend" which is one of Falcom's finest songs and one of the best introductory themes to any video game:
In the Legend of Heroes III, he contributed a small number of tracks including:
Several months later, Tsunashima would compose for his first lead role, contributing the most tracks in Brandish 3. It is a defining moment in his career and shows a huge musical and technical evolution in his composition style. This is the Tsunashima we would hear several years later after Falcom in the Gruppo One games.
At this point, Tsunashima would focus more on sound programming than anything else. In the end, he'd contribute one last track in the Legend of Heroes IV: A Tear of Vermilion. Shortly after he would leave Falcom:
After leaving, and alongside other ex-Falcom members, they formed a new game company called Gruppo One. There are four notable games here, three which I will show where he was the only composer. In the first game, he composed alongside Hirofumi Matsuoka. There are no individual credits for this game. Because of this, we'll move on to following three games:
Unfortunately, Gruppo one disbanded, and there is no information on what happend to Takahiro Tsunashima afterwards. Recently, I heard from a ex-coworker he now works completely unrelated to game music.
Masaru Nakajima is one of the four powerhouse composers who joined around 1992, just before Brandish 2. He would contribute compositions and arrangements all the way until his departure shortly after The Legend of Heroes V: A Cagesong of the Ocean in the early 2000's. It will be up to you to listen to these sample in an attempt to dissect his musical style. This is from his debut in Brandish 2:
Next, this is a track originally composed by him in Ys IV: Dawn of Ys. The track is arranged by Ryo Yonemitsu.
Afterwards, Mr. Nakajima would take a much darker tone in some of the few tracks he composed in The Legend of Xanadu:
In The Legend of Heroes III: White Witch, Nakajima's style changed once again to something more lighthearted with the occasional aggressive battle song:
We won't see much after this point for a while. The next significant amount of songs comes from The Legend of Xanadu II. In songs such as "Crystal Valley" Nakajima reaches that calm, soothing yet melancholy change in musical direction that he begins to incorporate more from here on out and further into his music after Falcom. Similar to his role in the first Legend of Xanadu, his style in the darker tracks now sound more technical and sharper than before:
Moving on, Nakajima contributed to The Legend of Heroes IV: A Tear of Vermilion:
At the end of Nakajima's Falcom career, he would compose his final songs in The Legend of Heroes V: A Cagesong of the Ocean. The only breakdown I received as from Atsushi Shirakawa (Tenmon), and these are only his guesses as to what Nakajima may have composed. I'm sure there's more to it then just the songs he submitted to me. Still, it's better to have his guesses than nothing.
*The melody in this battle track would be reused in "Silver Will." And to this day, this melody still appears in Legend of Heroes games such as the current latest one: The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III.
After leaving Falcom, Nakajima decided to focus more on his website and composing for his own. The website is now down, and had featured new music he had composed. A project named "White Swan" was also released which is almost impossible to find (I have not been able to find it).
"White Swan" Project
Further into his composing career, he contributed arrange and original composition tracks to the FMPSG Doujin group over the next few years:
This would go on for a few years and he would also compose a few concept tracks meant for RPGs.
At the end of his career, his music continued to evolve as he took a surprising dive into vocaloid, which represents the last of his work.
The Never Ending Story (arrange):
The last known song he composed was a Vocaloid track from 2010, which was featured on his Piapro account. After that, he disappeared without a trace.
To find out more about this composer, I reached to many many people he worked with on Twitter, including members from FMPSG, as well as older contacts such as Naoki Kaneda and Atsushi Shirakawa. Unfortunately, no one seems to know what happened to him. Fortunately, one member of FMPSG told me that the last time he got in contact with Nakajima was in 2016, which means he is most likely still alive at least. This individual did recall Mr. Nakajima saying something that amounted to him not making music anymore.
The last known track composed by Masaru Nakajima is a Vocaloid work titled: Lost Virgin:
After many of our tireless efforts, we've managed to get a large amount of composer credits for many of the 90s Falcom game soundtracks. In particular, I'm interested in some of the composers from that time. Those would be Hirofumi Matsuoka, Mieko Ishikawa, Atsushi Shirakawa, Naoki Kaneda, Masaru Nakajima, Takahiro Tsunashima, and Satoshi Arai. The following posts will attempt to analyze each composer and investigate what they did during and after leaving Falcom (exception being Mieko Ishikawa who is still employed under Falcom).
Our biggest challenge now is to figure out composer credits for Brandish VT, or Brandish 4.
