Motoi Sakuraba

Developer BIO

Motoi Sakuraba (桜庭 統) has composed and performed music for various Japanese video games, anime series, and TV dramas as well as independent albums and concerts. He was born on 5th of August in 1965 in Akita Prefecture, attended the Meiji University in Tokyo from 1983 to 1985, is married to Yuko Sakuraba, and has a young daughter, Mio Sakuraba.

After graduating from the Meiji University in 1985 Sakuraba broke into the music scene as composer and keyboard player of the progressive rock band Deja-Vu, which released an album, Baroque in the Future, in 1988 and took part in many live and recording projects with progressive rock bands, one of the last being the effort good enough to see a live compilation, Crime Syndicate. The band disbanded in 1989 over a dispute about development of the second album which was in progress at that time. The same year, Sakuraba went to create the tribute album called Pazzo Fanfano di Musica. And with him he had several other artists from the same record company, Crime. Sakuraba went on to release a solo progressive rock album, Gikyoku Onsou, in 1990. During his work as video game composer he continued to produce heavily extended arrangements of his own video game compositions.

Late 1989, Sakuraba began work as main for Wolfteam, first as a member of the Sergeant Wolf band together with Masaaki Uno and Yasunori Shiono, and later together with Shinji Tamura. In 1994, Masaaki Uno, who was not only composer, but also director and producer at Wolfteam, left to Camelot Software Planning and worked as coordinator and sound director there, up to now employing Sakuraba as exclusive composer and arranger for all Camelot games developed for Sony, Sega and Nintendo. In 1995, Wolfteam developed the break through game Tales of Phantasia for Namco, starting the third most successful video game series in Japan behind Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Wolfteam continued to develop games for Namco in the Tales series while keeping Sakuraba and the other Wolfteam composer Shinji Tamura as composers, until it morphed into the Namco Telenet joint subsidiary Namco Tales Studio in 2003. Meanwhile Tales of Phantasia writer and programmer Yoshiharu Gotanda, game designer Masaki Norimoto as well as former Wolfteam director and producer Joe Asanuma left Wolfteam and founded Tri-Ace with financial backing of Enix, creating the Star Ocean series as well as Valkyrie Profile and, again, employing Sakuraba as exclusive composer and arranger for all games. In 1999, long time Sakuraba sound designer and programmer Hiroya Hatsushiba, former member of Wolfteam and tri-Ace, founded Tri-Crescendo while continuing to contribute sound work to tri-Ace games. In 2001, tri-Crescendo started working on Baten Kaitos together with Monolith and with financial backing of Namco, Hatsushiba as director and main programmer and Sakuraba again as composer and arranger.

Other than these regular game works Sakuraba had also been contracted for composing works in other media like TV action and anime series as well as movies. Through the TEAM Entertainment company founded by Taku Kitahara in 1999 to promote and license the work of artists he is now also doing more guest arrangements of other composers video game music works. Furthermore he made several guest contributions to @MIDI.

During July 2003, Sakuraba held a live concert in Tokyo, Japan. He performed progressive rock interpretations of music from the PlayStation games Star Ocean 2 & 3 as well as Valkyrie Profile. He performed his live concert 2004 in August 2004 playing music from Star Ocean 3, Valkyrie Profile and Baten Kaitos.

Websites

• Wikipedia: Motoi Sakuraba -- Information about Motoi Sakuraba at Wikipedia
• Motoi Sakuraba profile -- on the Square Enix People Database
• Motoi Sakuraba -- Official English website
• Music releases by Motoi Sakuraba -- Database of commercial music releases by Motoi Sakuraba provided by Discogs.
• Motion -- Motoi Sakuraba's official homepage
• Motoi Sakuraba Web Site -- Japanese website of Motoi Sakuraba at TEAM Entertainment.

Games Credited

• Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition (2012), Namco Bandai Games America Inc.
• Dark Souls (2011), FromSoftware, Inc.
• Resonance of Fate (2010), SEGA Corporation
• Half-Minute Hero (2009), Marvelous Entertainment Inc.
• Super Smash Bros.: Brawl (2008), Nintendo Co., Ltd.
• Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World (2008), Namco Bandai Games Inc.
• Tales of Vesperia (2008), Namco Bandai Games America Inc.
• Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume (2008), Square Enix Co., Ltd.
• Eternal Sonata (2007), Namco Bandai Games Inc.
• Soulcalibur Legends (2007), Namco Bandai Games America Inc.
• Baten Kaitos Origins (2006), Nintendo Co., Ltd.
• Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria (2006), Square Enix Co., Ltd.
• Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (2006), Square Enix Co., Ltd.
• Mario Tennis: Power Tour (2005), Nintendo Co., Ltd.
• Radiata Stories (2005), Square Enix Co., Ltd.
• Tales of the Abyss (2005), Namco Bandai Games Inc.
• Mario Golf: Advance Tour (2004), Nintendo Co., Ltd.
• Mario Power Tennis (2004), Nintendo Co., Ltd.
• Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (2004), Square Enix, Inc.
• Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean (2003), Namco Limited
• Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (2003), Nintendo of America Inc.
• Tales of Symphonia (2003), Namco Limited
• Golden Sun: The Lost Age (2002), Nintendo Co., Ltd.
• Golden Sun (2001), Nintendo Co., Ltd.
• Star Ocean: Blue Sphere (2001), Enix Corporation
• Mario Tennis (2000), Nintendo Co., Ltd.
• Mario Tennis (2000), Nintendo Co., Ltd.
• Mario Golf (1999), Nintendo Co., Ltd.
• Mario Golf (1999), Nintendo Co., Ltd.
• Valkyrie Profile (1999), Enix Corporation
• Star Ocean: The Second Story (1998), Enix Corporation
• Hot Shots Golf (1997), Sony Computer Entertainment Incorporated
• Tales of Destiny (1997), Namco Limited
• Shining the Holy Ark (1996), SEGA Enterprises Ltd.
• Star Ocean (1996), Enix Corporation
• Tales of Phantasia (1995), Namco Limited
• Cosmic Fantasy 4: Ginga Shōnen Densetsu - Totsunyū-hen (1994), Telenet Japan Co., Ltd.
• Tenshi no Uta: Shiroki Tsubasa no Inori (1994), Telenet Japan Co., Ltd.
• Anett Futatabi (1993), Wolf Team
• Arcus I・II・III (1993), Wolf Team
• Devastator (1993), Wolf Team
• Neugier: Umi to Kaze no Kōdō (1993), Telenet Japan Co., Ltd.
• Road Avenger (1992), Wolf Team
• Arcus Odyssey (1991), Renovation Products, Inc.
• Earnest Evans (1991), Wolf Team
• El Viento (1991), Renovation Products, Inc.
• Final Zone (1990), Renovation Products, Inc.
• Granada (1990), Renovation Products, Inc.
• Sol-Feace (1990), Wolf Team