Namco Arcade Composers – 2013 Roundtable Interview

Yoshinori Nagumo - Composer
Etsuo Ishii - Composer/Sound Designer
Ayako Saso - Composer
Yoshinori Kawamoto - Composer

—I think this is the first time in 20 years that all four of you have been gathered together in the same room.

Nagumo: Even after 20 years I recognized you right away though, Kawamoto.

Saso: The last time I saw you, Nagumo, was 20 years ago at that going away party.

Nagumo: A moment ago, when he asked Saso how old she was, I couldn't believe it.

Kawamoto: We've all aged a lot though. (laughs)

Ishii: Nagumo, you haven't changed at all.

Nagumo: Everyone looks just the same!

—Tell us what it was like back when you first joined Namco.

Ishii: I started working at Namco as a part-timer. Kawamoto had joined before me, and then later Nagumo and Saso got hired.

Saso: I was hired the season after Nagumo, so I'm his junior. That makes me the most junior of the four of us!

Nagumo: I remember everyone on the sound team being excited when Saso was hired. "An ojousama1 is joining our team!"

Saso: Whaaaattt, they were really saying that?!

Kawamoto: When I was a new hire, we started work at 9AM, but my boss had flex time and came to work around 11.

Nagumo: New hires had to go through a training period. In my day, they sent us to the top floor of the Seiseki-sakuragaoka shopping center. They had us wear full-body animal costumes and do exercise routines like Ponkikki.

Saso: My training was at Yokohama Namcoland, I think? We worked at family-oriented entertainment spaces, operating the steam trains and things like that.

Kawamoto: I joined in the middle of the year, after the hiring season, so I didn't do any training.

Ishii: Neither did I, since I had been working part-time at Namco before.

—What led you to start working part-time at Namco, Ishii?

Ishii: Obvious answer but it was because I liked video games. I was looking through part-time job ads, and I saw that Namco had a listing for "Sound Effect Creator (Part-Time)". It was also very close to my house. So I applied, and was interviewed by Hiroyuki Kawada and Junko Ozawa. At first I worked on a lot of console ports, like the PC Engine port of Dragon Spirit.

—Nagumo, I've heard that you were particularly fond of the music in Sega's games.

Nagumo: I was listening to a lot of hard rock and heavy metal back then, and I loved Outrun. I liked arcade stuff more than consoles, too.

—Kawamoto, you worked at Jaleco before Namco, correct?

Kawamoto: Well, my very first position was at Softbank. I made several games there, and then moved on to Jaleco.

—And Saso, how did you get hired by Namco?

Saso: I liked Namco's games. I played Xevious so much that I got blisters on my hands. I've had periods of my life where I haven't had much time to play games, but even then I've always had a soft spot for Namco.

—When I think of "sound team", the image that comes to my mind is a quiet office where everyone is wearing headphones and working in silence. Was that the reality?

Kawamoto: It was like that. People from other departments used to complain about how we were difficult to communicate with because they'd call out to us and no one could hear them!

Nagumo: Kawamoto, you would joke around all the time during work though. It really lightened up the mood at the office. I was also personal friends with Kawamoto then, so we would pass glances at each other throughout the day, and I hung out and stayed at his place sometimes, and vice-versa. We used to go play billiards after work too.

Kawamoto: We share the same first name, Yoshinori, which was one of the reasons we became friends. Nagumo used the initials NAUN in arcade games, which is why my nickname for him was Naun-chan.

—It was actually Kawamoto who contacted Nagumo for this interview too.

Nagumo: I hadn't heard from Kawamoto in awhile, and I was out when he called. My first thought was, "I wonder if he wants to borrow money…" (laughs)

Everyone: (laughs)

Ishii: I work right next to Kawamoto, and I remember him grumbling "Naun-chan never answers his phone!" (laughs)

Kawamoto: I had no choice but to send a fax. Can you believe that? In the modern era of e-mail!

Nagumo: It was really nostalgic for me to hear from Kawamoto though. It made me wonder what everyone was doing now, and at the same time it brought back all these old memories.

—Ishii, even back then you never made many media appearances, but you've continued to be employed at Namco all this time.

Ishii: That's right. It's just a cozy place for me that feels right. I worked at Namco part-time, and it was my first company I was employed at full-time. The people at Namco back then were all really interesting people, and I was surprised how well everyone got along with each other, how they all seemed to be on the same wavelength. It was like, "what IS this place…?" (laughs)

Kawamoto: The lights were on at Namco all night long, and people would ride their bikes to work in full military camo, so there was a rumor going around the neighborhood that "they must be making something dangerous over there…" (laughs)

Nagumo: Didn't the sound team take a company trip to Shikine-jima island, too?

Kawamoto: That did happen. I like islands, so I coordinated the trip. I remember even Hiroyuki Kawada and Junko Ozawa came, and they didn't usually take part in events like that.

—Wow, the whole sound team turned out! There were also live band performances with the sound team then, right?

Kawamoto: That was the Christmas charity concert we did. It was originally this RajiAme (a radio program Namco sponsored) event, but then Norio Nakagata and Junko Ozawa went and did an on-location performance, and it sort of evolved into a Christmas event with a full live band.

—Kawamoto, you participated in a band performance in 1988 also, I believe?

Kawamoto: I did, yeah. We played songs from Dragon Spirit. I had to practice a ton for that.

Saso: I joined the band in 1989, and arranged several songs for live performance. I had watched the previous year's performances on video, which was before I had joined Namco. I had actually gone to see them perform then too, in my own personal time. Band practice wasn't game development, so I remember we called it "Outside Support Activities" and claimed the time that way.

Ishii: I also joined the band in 1989, and I remember not really knowing what was going on. (laughs) We reserved rehearsal studio spaces around town, just like a real band. But you know, between the band practice and our actual work which we still had to do, I barely got any sleep.

Saso: I know! I hardly had any time to sleep. I remember one time taking the train the practice and being so tired I practically passed out while standing up. (laughs)

—Incredible... and what are your memories of those live performances?

Kawamoto: When I joined the band, during his solo parts Norio Nakagata would go to the front of the stage wit his keytar and play in front everyone, from behind I could see that it wasn't plugged in. (laughs)

Everyone: (laughs)

Saso: I remember how Kawada stepped forward to play his solo, but he was a little too early so he had to awkwardly step back again. It was like, "whoops, not yet!" (laughs) Ishii was playing guitar then, and he would rarely come forward, and he kept turning his volume down.

Ishii: Ahhh, yeah, I just wasn't very good, even after practicing so much. So the only thing I could do was turn down. (laughs)

—I was in the audience for those shows, and I was so excited! Shifting gears now, Kawamoto, I understand you've composed a new song for Phelios for volume 2 of the Rom Cassette Disc In NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc. MegaDrive Compilation series.

Kawamoto: Yeah, I'd been wanting to make a new song. The arcade version uses the full specs of the board for an orchestral sound, but recreating that on the Megadrive proved to be very difficult, so this time I decided to make a new song that was better suited to the Megadrive's capabilities. A lot of people told me they'd always loved that ending song, too, so I'm glad I made it.

—Next I'd like to ask you, Nagumo, about Dangerous Seed.

Nagumo: A lot of people told me the music was cool for that game, but the truth is, the reason I wanted to make songs like that was because I was trying to impress a girl. (laughs)

—Next, I want to ask Ishii if he could tell us about the sound production on Marvel Land.

Ishii: Each and every song in Marvel Land needed a strong melody, and that made it a challenging project. I also went to Disneyland as part of my "on-location" work… by myself.

Everyone: (laughs)

—Today, Kawamoto and Ishii work side-by-side in the same room. Kawamoto, what kind of person is Ishii, in your opinion?

Kawamoto: Ishii is a craftsman, so he never refuses a request, and he always produces something good. As such, he's known as a very reliable person within the company.

—And Ishii, what kind of person is Kawamoto?

Ishii: To me, he's like my senpai… he had already produced a number of works before I was hired. The first time we worked together was on the PC Engine port of Dragon Spirit. We wanted to take extra care with the sound, and he wrote a program for me saying, "with this, we can produce an FM-ish sound on the PC Engine." And he was right: we were able to reproduce a strikingly accurate imitation of an FM chip. It was a sound that no other company had been able to replicate on the PC Engine yet. That experience left a big impression on me... "whoa, this is an amazing guy."

Saso: People always talked about how accurate the PC Engine port of Dragon Spirit was.

—Saso, tell us about Rolling Thunder 2... how did you end up making an OST that sounded like that?

Saso: A lot of people probably associate my name with Ridge Racer, but the truth is, the style of music in Rolling Thunder 2 is my specialty. I was given the freedom to write whatever I wanted, so I tried to retain the spy-feel from the first game, while also adding some jazz and R&B. After Rolling Thunder 2, however, I didn't get any more offers to work on games in that genre. I got offered tons of techno work, but the style on display there in Rolling Thunder 2, that is my true self.

—How do you all feel about having your old music put out into the world today?

Kawamoto: Well, it's kind of embarassing in some ways, you know?

Saso: It is!

Nagumo: It's the opposite for me... I actually think it's great that more people are hearing this music! It's motivating to me too, and the fact that a whole new generation is being exposed to this music makes me happy about having made it.

Kawamoto: Well aren't you a model citizen!

Everyone: (laughs)

—Was this kind of banter the norm at Namco back then too...?

Nagumo: Yeah, Kawagen is always like that. (laughs)

—Well, our time is running out, so please give a final comment here.

Kawamoto: Right now I am a producer for the Taiko no Tatsujin series. I had wanted to be involved with this series since it started, but back then I was working on Seven: The Cavalry of Molmorth. After 10 years, I'm now finally able to be a part of the Taiko series, and having waited so long I intend to give it my all and try out all sorts of things.

Nagumo: I've been working at my own pace as a sound creator, creating healing-style ambient music. If you search Yoshinori Nagumo on iTunes you can find several of my songs there, so please give them a listen. I'm going to keep endeavoring to write songs that pursue the ideal of beauty.

Ishii: I don't write a lot of music these days. The last thing I wrote was for Pac 'n Roll on the DS, which Kawamoto also worked on. These days I am focused on creating sound effects, as well as the PVs for God Eater. I've found that the work of adding sound to visuals really suits me, and I hope to continue doing it in the future.

Saso: I'm the youngest at this event today, which is honestly quite rare for me nowadays, and it's so heartening to have three of my senior colleagues beside me like this. I'm also working on Bandai Namco's games, such as Taiko no Tatsujin, Ridge Racer, and Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Please play them if you have the chance!

—Thank you all for your time today!

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