is a former composer of

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 t ...

. He used to work for the Japanese video game developer Hudson Soft. With them he would go on to compose several of their most famous early hits, including ''

Star Soldier A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but their immense distances from Earth ma ...

'', ''

Milon's Secret Castle ''Milon's Secret Castle'', known in Japan as , is a 1986 action-adventure game released by Hudson Soft for the NES. A Game Boy version was released in 1993. A sequel, '' DoReMi Fantasy'', was released in 1996 for the Super Famicom. Plot The pro ...

'', ''

Mickey Mousecapade ''Mickey Mousecapade'', released in Japan as , is a platform video game developed and published by Hudson Soft originally in 1987 for the Family Computer (Famicom) in Japan. Capcom published the game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in ...

'' and '' Robowarrior''. In recent years, he has dedicated his time to performing video game music at live venues in the

Shibuya Shibuya (wikt:渋谷, 渋谷wikt:区, 区 ''Shibuya-ku'') is a Special wards of Tokyo, special ward in Tokyo, Japan. As a major commercial and finance center, it houses two of the busiest railway stations in the world, Shinjuku Station (southern ...

area, as well as releasing several albums containing his video game music material. Kunimoto is noted as one of the first to write accompanying lyrics to the music featured in the video games he composed for, printed in the instruction booklet supplied with the game software.

Biography

Kunimoto began his career after attending college and being scouted by Hudson Soft staff member Sasagawa Toshiyuki who visited the musical instrument store Kunimoto was working at, often coding the pre-composed melodies in keyboard software. Sasagawa assigned him to compose for '' Challenger'' on the Famicom. He went on to compose the majority of Hudson Soft's earlier hits. Most of his work was done on the YAMAHA CX-11 (MSX) + SFG-01 module. In 1987, Kunimoto made the move to Tokyo in order to begin a career as a live musician and session player, and as a result his work on video games slowed down considerably. He was brought in to assist on the soundtracks for '' Momotaro Densetsu'', and also to do work on Hudson's new PC Engine software. In 1990. Kunimoto appeared on the popular TV show "Yuji Miyake's exciting band heaven" on TBS. As was the standard in the mid-1980s, video game composers were often not credited for their work, and would remain in obscurity. Due to Hudson's increased output of their video game music library in the mid-2000s, as well as acknowledgement from former colleagues on various blogs and interviews, Kunimoto stepped back into the spotlight in 2006 with his own active blog and video game music CD collections. He would go on to form several bands dedicated to performing video game music live in the

area. His newfound popularity also landed him a publishing deal with record label SuperSweep, with the release of "Takeaki Kunimoto WORKS ~Hitsuji no Oka~" in 2012. A friend of the late video game composer

Ryu Umemoto was a Japanese video game music composer, born in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture. He is known for composing soundtracks to various visual novel and shoot 'em up video games since the 1990s, for several companies including FamilySoft, C's Ware, ...

, Kunimoto has held several memorial concerts as well as partaken in tribute albums for Umemoto, including JADE-II,Shining Gems: JADE-II Live Report
/ref> JADE-IV and WOODSOFT's "Umemoto Was Here" album.

List of works

Famicom

*'' Challenger'' (1985) *'' Ninja Hattori Kun'' (1986) *''

'' (1986) *''

'' (1986) *'' Dino Riki'' (1987) *''

'' (1987) *''Takahashi Meijin no Bug-tte Honey'' (1987) *''

Starship Hector ''Starship Hector'', originally released as ,Japanese title
at SuperFamicom.org is an

'' (1987) *'' Robowarrior'' (1987) *'' Momotaro Densetsu'' (1987)

PC Engine

*'' J.J. & Jeff'' (1987) *'' Victory Run'' (1987) *''Victory Life'' (1988) *''Break In'' (1989)

Discography

Albums

References

External links

Official Website

Official Blog

Artist profile at VGMdb
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kunimoto, Takeaki 1962 births Chiptune musicians Japanese composers Japanese male composers Japanese music arrangers Living people Musicians from Sapporo Video game composers