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born December 12, 1967 is a Japanese video game composer. He is often regarded as one of the most influential innovators in chiptune and video game music, producing music in a number of genres including rock music, jazz, symphonic, and various electronic genres such as house music, electro, techno, and trance music. He and his sister Ayano founded the game development company Ancient in 1990, of which he remains the president.
Koshiro has been cited as creating some of the most memorable game music of the 1980s and 1990s contributing for 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 soundtracks for the latter have been cited by some to be ahead of their time.
While he was still in high school during the early 1980s, Koshiro began composing music on the NEC PC-8801 as a hobby, including of early arcade game music from Namco, Konami, and Sega. The Music sequencer skills and experience he gained from this would later be utilized in his early video game projects. The video games that influenced him most were The Tower of Druaga (1984), Space Harrier (1985), and Gradius (1985). The video game music soundtracks to these games inspired him to become a video game composer.
In a 1992 interview, Koshiro said that his favorite are new wave, dance music, synthpop, Classical music, and hard rock, and that his favorite Western bands are Van Halen and Soul II Soul. GameFan, volume 1, issue 1 (October 1992), page 8
All of these early soundtracks were produced using the FM synthesis sound chip of the PC-8801. Despite later advances in audio technology, Koshiro would continue to use older PC-8801 hardware to produce many of his later video game soundtracks, including the Streets of Rage and Etrian Odyssey soundtracks. Reprinted from His soundtracks for early Nihon Falcom games, such as the Dragon Slayer and Ys series, are widely regarded as some of the most influential role-playing video game scores.
His most notable freelance work was for Sega: his first freelance work for the company was the soundtrack to The Revenge of Shinobi (1989), for which he produced House music and "progressive, catchy, techno-style compositions" that fused electronic dance music with traditional Japanese music.
His soundtrack for ActRaiser (1990), on the other hand, was mainly Classical music and . While working on ActRaiser, in order to get around the SNES's 64 Kilobyte memory limitation which limited the number of instruments that can be used and prevented the reloading of samples, Koshiro developed a sample loading system that worked with the ROM cartridge memory, swapping samples from the Read-only memory data on the fly. This allowed him to "load parts of the music gradually as needed, and also change it quickly between stages or parts of a stage" which the "original system couldn't do it with its restrictions." A similar system was used by other companies for later SNES games such as Squaresoft's Seiken Densetsu 3 (1995) and Namco Tales Studio's Tales of Phantasia (1995).
While working with Ancient, he composed the soundtrack for the 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991. He adapted several pieces of music from the original 16-bit version, while the rest of the soundtrack consisted of his own original music.
His soundtracks for the Streets of Rage series (known as Bare Knuckle in Japan) from 1991 to 1994 were composed using then outdated PC-8801 hardware alongside his own original audio programming language. According to Koshiro: "For Bare Knuckle I used the PC88 and an original programming language I developed myself. The original was called MML, Music Macro Language. It is based on NEC's BASIC program, but I modified it heavily. It was more a BASIC-style language at first, but I modified it to be something more like Assembly. I called it ‘Music Love'. I 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 music, techno, hardcore techno, breakbeat, funk and ethnic music. He also attempted to reproduce the Roland TR-808 and TR-909 beats and Roland TB-303 synths using FM synthesis. The soundtrack for Streets of Rage 2 in particular is considered "revolutionary" and ahead of its time, for its "electro house of swaggering house synths, electroclash" electro-funk and "Trance music electronic textures that would feel as comfortable in a nightclub as a video game." The soundtrack also features contributions by Motohiro Kawashima, who also worked at Ancient at the time.
His CD soundtracks became best-sellers in Japan during the early 1990s. In 1993, Electronic Games listed the first two Streets of Rage games as having some of the best video game music soundtracks they "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 to Streets of Rage 3 (1994), along with colleague Kawashima who contributed in a larger capacity than in 2. He created a new composition method called the "Automated Composing System" to produce "fast-beat techno like Oldschool jungle." It was the most advanced techno technique of the time, incorporating heavily randomized sequences. This resulted in innovative and experimental sounds generated automatically that, according to Koshiro, "you ordinarily never could imagine on your own." This method was very rare at the time, but has since become popular among techno and trance music producers to get "unexpected and odd sounds." The soundtrack also had elements of abstract, experimental, gabber, and trance music. The experimental electronic music was not very well received upon release, but has since been considered to be ahead of its time. According to Mean Machines, "ironically it pre-dated the 'trance' era that came a short while after release."
Koshiro was one of the first composers credited under his real name in a time when several other Japanese developers were credited under pen names. El compositor de Streets of Rage puso su nombre en los juegos porque se lo dijo su madre. Vandal, March 12, 2020
He also composed the soundtrack for Sega's Shenmue (1999) alongside Takenobu Mitsuyoshi and various others, with Koshiro contributing fifteen original compositions to the soundtrack. Three other staff members of Ancient also worked on Shenmue. He later composed the soundtracks for the Wangan Midnight series (2001 onwards) and Namco × Capcom (2005). These were the first projects where he wrote the lyrics along with the music. For the Wangan Midnight series in particular, his compositions were mostly trance music, a style he was previously unfamiliar with.
He composed the main theme of the French TV channel Nolife, which launched in 2007. The theme was released as part of the album Tamiuta in 2008. Some of Koshiro's latest work includes music for the Etrian Odyssey series, the Wangan Midnight series, and the 7th Dragon series. In 2018, Koshiro contributed one song to Nobuhiko Okamoto's album Braverthday. He was brought back to compose for Streets of Rage 4 in 2020, along with Kawashima and several others. The same year, he composed the theme song "Koroneraiser Inu-More!" for Hololive's virtual YouTuber Inugami Korone. Koshiro also created the opening and ending jingles for the YouTube channel Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games.
| Romancia | Opening theme |
| Legacy of the Wizard | Music with Mieko Ishikawa |
| Sorcerian | Music with several others |
| The Return of Ishtar | Music; MSX version |
| Bosconian | Music with Hideya Nagata; X68000 version |
| ActRaiser | Music |
| Streets of Rage | Music |
| Sonic the Hedgehog | Music; Master System / Game Gear version |
| Eye of the Beholder | Music with Shinji Hosoe; PC-98 version |
| Music with Motohiro Kawashima | |
| Streets of Rage 2 | Music with Motohiro Kawashima |
| ActRaiser 2 | Music |
| Eye of the Beholder | Music with Motohiro Kawashima; Sega CD version |
| Beyond Oasis | Producer, music |
| The Legend of Oasis | Music, producer |
| Shenmue II | Music with several others |
| Car Battler Joe | Music with Tomonori Hayashibe |
| Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune | Music |
| Namco × Capcom | Opening and ending themes |
| Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2 | "You Gotta Move It" |
| Music with Michiru Yamane | |
| Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 3 | Music |
| Katekyo Hitman Reborn! Dream Hyper Battle! | Music with Motohiro Kawashima and Takeshi Yanagawa |
| Etrian Odyssey II | Music |
| Half-Minute Hero | Music with several others |
| Etrian Odyssey III | Music |
| Protect Me Knight | Music |
| Music with Takeshi Yanagawa | |
| Criminal Girls | Opening theme |
| Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 4 | Music |
| Etrian Odyssey IV | Music |
| Music with Takeshi Yanagawa | |
| Time and Eternity | Music with Takeshi Yanagawa |
| Music | |
| Code of Joker | "Shine Radiantly", "Innate Ability" |
| "Disturbances - The One Called from Beyond" | |
| Gotta Protectors | Music with several others |
| Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U | Arrangements |
| Music | |
| Chunithm | "Grab Your Sword" |
| Music | |
| Project X Zone 2 | Opening and ending themes |
| Etrian Odyssey V | Music |
| Secret of Mana | Arrangements with several others |
| Music | |
| Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 6 | Music |
| Etrian Odyssey Nexus | Music |
| Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom | Music with several others |
| Super Smash Bros. Ultimate | Arrangements |
| Sega Genesis Mini | Menu theme; dedicated console |
| Music | |
| The TakeOver | Opening stage theme |
| Streets of Rage 4 | Music with several others |
| Arrangements with several others | |
| Royal Anapoko Academy | "As God and As Man" |
| Sin Chronicle | "Hikari・Kibou" |
| Sega Genesis Mini 2 | Menu theme; dedicated console |
Music with
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| Mina the Hollower | Two tracks |
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