When did you know that you wanted to make music for games, and what was it like to jump in at such a young age?
I had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer at age 11, and I started making music on it. I was learning basic programming, making the joystick play different arpeggios on the 8 axes and, at the same time, I was gaming. I used to get up at 5 o’clock in the morning and do an hour before my parents were up, and that’s where my love for gaming came from. And then it was the arcade. When Out Run came out, I was 13, and I distinctly remember the music, because the quality was a massive jump. Out Run had a sophisticated sound chip and the compositions by Hiro [Hiroshi Kawaguchi] were great. That was the first time I thought, “Wow, game music is really cool.”
What happened next?
I went to university, and in those days we were given a small grant to help with buying food and stuff, and the first week I went and bought a Mega Drive. I was playing trombone, piano, percussion and I was studying composition and music technology as well. I was also working in a record store and reading this industry trade paper called Music Week, and in my final year I saw an advert for an in-house composer with Sega Europe in London.
I never thought that this job existed outside of Japan, because in those days the majority of software was coming out of Japan, and it was all cartridge-based. I was amazed that a job like this could exist, so I thought, well, I am still studying, but
