is a Japanese

video game music Video game music (or VGM) is the soundtrack that accompanies video games. Early video game music was once limited to sounds of early sound chips, such as programmable sound generators (PSG) or FM synthesis chips. These limitations have led to ...

ian working for

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...

, where he is notable for composing music in many titles of the ''Metroid'' series, mainly ''

Super Metroid is an action-adventure game developed by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1994. It is the third installment in the ''Metroid'' series, following the events of the Game Boy ...

'' and the ''Prime'' trilogy. Yamamoto also plays a role as a music director at Nintendo, overseeing the audio for several of their games. He frequently collaborates with fellow composers Minako Hamano and Masaru Tajima. Yamamoto utilizes heavy drums, piano, voiced chants, clangs of pipes, and electric guitar. In development of ''Super Metroid'', Yamamoto came up with some of the game's themes by humming them to himself while riding his motorcycle home from work. He was asked to compose the music for ''

Metroid Prime ''Metroid Prime'' is an action-adventure video game developed by Retro Studios and published by Nintendo for the GameCube. ''Metroid Prime'' is the fifth main installment in the '' Metroid'' franchise and the first game in the series to use 3D c ...

'' to reinforce the series' continuity. The game's

Dolby Pro Logic II Dolby Pro Logic is a surround sound processing technology developed by Dolby Laboratories, designed to decode soundtracks encoded with Dolby Surround. Dolby Stereo (also known as ''Dolby MP'' or ''Dolby SVA'') was developed by Dolby in 1976 fo ...

surround sound was mixed by a member of Dolby Digital. Developers from

Retro Studios Retro Studios, Inc. is an American video game developer and subsidiary of Nintendo based in Austin, Texas. The studio is best known for its work on the ''Metroid Prime'' and ''Donkey Kong Country'' series, and has contributed to several other N ...

noted how the process of fitting all the sound effects for a world in ''Metroid Prime'' into 6 MB of space was crucial in producing a quality aural experience, as each sound had to be of very high quality to be included. '' Metroid Prime 3: Corruption'' took advantage of the increase in the amount of

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * Ra ...

that took place when the series switched from the

GameCube The is a home video game console developed and released by Nintendo in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, and in PAL territories in 2002. It is the successor to the Nintendo 64 (1996), and predecessor of the Wii ...

to the

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America and in December 2006 for most other Regional lockout, regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major ho ...

; this allowed for higher quality audio samples to be used and thus a better overall audio quality. The music from ''Metroid'' and other games have been played by ensembles and concerts. An orchestral arrangement of his music is included in ''PLAY! A Video Game Symphony'' that toured the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

and made its

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

n debut at the 2007 Singapore Arts Festival. In an interview with

Music4Games Music4Games was a video game music information site originally launched in 1999. It focused on the video game soundtrack industry and claimed to target dedicated gamers, game music fans, audiophiles, students, composers, developers, publishers, p ...

, Yamamoto detailed his experience working on the ''Metroid Prime'' trilogy. He described his thoughts on the inclusion of themes from ''

'' as well as his composition process and sources of inspiration. He intends to continue working on the ''Metroid'' series into the future.

Works

References

External links

Composer profile
at

OverClocked ReMix OverClocked ReMix, also known as OC ReMix and OCR, is a non-commercial organization dedicated to preserving and paying tribute to video game music through arranging and re-interpreting the songs, both with new technology and software and by vari ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Yamamoto, Kenji 1964 births Japanese composers Japanese male composers Living people Metroid Nintendo people Video game composers