Biography

Hitoshi Sakimoto (崎元仁, Sakimoto Hitoshi, born February 26, 1969, in Tokyo) is a video game music composer. He worked freelance beginning in 1990 and at the age of 16, Hitoshi Sakimoto gained attention through the industry with his work done for the game “Revolter” as well as the sound driver “Terpsiphorean”; an unparalleled synthesizer driver which was implemented into many games throughout the Japanese game market in the early ’90s. This recognition led to many game designers and companies recruiting Mr. Sakimoto to compose and arrange music for their projects. When he was just starting out in the field of music, he would write his name as “YmoH.S”, an obvious bow to the Japanese electronic group Y.M.O.

In 1997, Sakimoto joined Square and composed the score to “Final Fantasy Tactics” with his long time friend Masaharu Iwata. Later on, in 2000, after completing his work on the action/RPG hybrid title “Vagrant Story”, he resigned from Square and once again became a freelance musician. He went on to establish Basiscape, an independent provider of audio and music for video games and other media. After the success of “Final Fantasy Tactics” and Vagrant Story, Square-Enix offered Hitoshi Sakimoto a job composing the score for “Final Fantasy XII” and after its huge success, he expanded Basiscape to meet a growing demand for his compositions.

As the founder of Basiscape, Sakimoto has since been composing for several games and taking commissions from independent companies. He has recently completed music for the MMORPG “Fantasy Earth: ZERO”. Basiscape also employs Sakimoto’s long-time friend Masaharu Iwata, as well as Manabu Namiki and Mitsuhiro Kaneda.

In 2007, Sakimoto was the composer for the anime series, “Romeo x Juliet”.

Announced in May 2008, Hitoshi Sakimoto may begin composing for American video games.