Hiroki Kikuta – 2025 Composer Interview

—Before joining Square, you were drawing manga for commercial magazines, right?

Kikuta: Yeah. After graduating college, I moved to Tokyo wanting to make it as a manga artist, and I kept at it for about six years. My memories from back then are a total blur, but the fact that I loved manga was a big part of it. The economy was booming, there was so much energy, and manga books were coming out like crazy. It felt like there were endless possibilities. I was drawing like mad… 18 hours a day. I spent a long time surviving off assistant work, too. I started out assisting Osamu Ishiwata, helping out with the early chapters of B.B in Weekly Shonen Sunday. The weekly schedule was set in stone, and work moved in a strict pattern every week, so my life was basically like that of a salaryman. Looking back, I'm glad I gave up on manga early.

—How did your path lead to Square?

Kikuta: I'd given up and decided to become a regular office worker, but then I heard this dubious rumor: "If you join the game industry, you can become a salaryman who gets paid to make music." I thought, "Seriously? Does a dream job like that actually exist?" Even though I didn't know a single thing about the game industry, I saw a job listing in LOGIN magazine and applied to Nihon Falcom, where I promptly got rejected in the resume screening.

The very first thing I did after joining was debugging Final Fantasy IV. I'd never even seen an RPG before, so I worked on it thinking, "This is pretty interesting… Is this what video games are like?" Around 1992, I worked on the sound effects for Romancing SaGa. Back then, there weren't standard tools; each company built its own drivers and tools. I was using a "sound effects editor" created by Minoru Akao. It had a workflow where you placed musical notes to construct sound effects.

That work was so much fun. Square back then had a really open, collaborative culture. While I was making sound effects, people from other departments would wander over and say, "I want to make sound effects too!" More and more people gathered, and the stuff they made ended up being great. Someone would make an incredible sound effect that only they could have pulled off, and we'd go, "This is awesome, let's put it in!"

In that sense, the company felt a lot like a school manga club or an after-school circle. When I joined, I think there were only about 50 people. We took up just one floor of the Alphabet 7 Building in Akasaka, small enough that everyone knew each other. We'd all go out to eat together every day… It was just like a club, and it was so much fun. Nobody wanted to go home. In fact, we didn't even see the point in going home (laughs). There was a non-stop festival going on right there on the dev floor. It was like we were perpetually preparing for a school festival—literally Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer. I really wish people today could experience that eternal festival atmosphere.

Ultimately, as long as you were making things and moving forward, you could do whatever you wanted. Everyone was doing what they loved. It made me realize, "Ah, so this is what freedom is." To an outsider, it might have looked completely chaotic, but even in that environment, games were getting made properly. Everyone was working hard, though you could also say everyone was slacking off… (laughs)

Originally, almost no one joined Square because they specifically wanted to make video games. Most people were there because they tried pursuing something else they loved, failed at it, and ended up at Square out of necessity. In that sense, there weren't any "first-rate" professionals. Everyone was second-rate and had experienced failure, but everyone loved interesting things. There was a lot of pent-up energy, which looped around and transformed into a passion for creation. People didn't always know exactly what they were doing, but they created nonetheless. "I made something! How's this?" They'd play around with the dev equipment and end up with a finished product. There was so much individual talent at Square, yet somehow it all came together. That's just what the development environment was like back then.

There was a guy named [Manabu] Daishima,1 who has since passed away… He was a wonderful guy, like a big kid. He was on the team, but he wasn't assigned any specific tasks. He was always making something, just doing whatever he pleased. But nobody nagged him about it. He'd just occasionally walk over and say, "I made this, what do you think?" For instance, if he made a new message window for an RPG, he'd code snow falling inside it. "Technically, this is amazing," we'd say, "but you can't read the text!" (laughs) He'd come up with crazy ideas no one else would think of and build them on his own… and if it turned out great, it'd get incorporated into the title we were developing.

Yet nobody tried to control him or tell him what to do; everyone recognized that letting him do his own thing was the best way to handle him. It was a deeply accommodating team that embraced people like that. Because he possessed tremendous talent, if his ideas hit, they became incredible new elements, and if they missed, nothing came of it… I think truly innovative creation comes from that kind of environment.

There are many ways of looking at it, but if someone isn't creating anything, they aren't a creator. People who can only build when given instructions are just technicians. Of course, you need those people too, but they aren't the ones turning 0 into 1. Game development requires a lot of people who can turn 0 into 1; otherwise, truly new and exciting things won't be born. I think it's essential to have plenty of people who, without being told a word, just jump in and start creating stuff simply because it looks fun.

Nowadays, I work as a composer, but I never feel like the work itself is painful. It feels completely natural… so people who need to force themselves to find motivation probably aren't suited for it. If you have to push yourself to be motivated, it means you didn't want to do it in the first place. If you place a creator in a sandbox with nothing to do, they'll naturally start building something, right? Someone who doesn't start making things on their own isn't cut out for it from the start.

—When you started writing game music, you began with PCM sound chips, right?

Kikuta: Yes, starting with the Super Famicom. I'd used digital samplers before, so I adapted to it fairly easily. Having worked with various hardware synths gave me a solid grasp of sound architecture. On the flip side, very few people truly understood the technical nuances, pros, and cons of PCM sound chips.

The SFC sound chip was a ridiculously finicky, unique piece of hardware, and developing for it was tough. That said, depending on who was working on it, you could make it do whatever you wanted. If you put in the effort, it rewarded you accordingly. Still, it involved endless trial and error, so there's no denying it was a pain.

As is often mentioned, the low sample rate created two main problems: high frequencies didn't come through cleanly, and sound attack suffered (making punchy, sudden attacks hard to produce). If you listen to SFC music from before that era, the audio almost universally sounds muffled and soft on the attack. Snare drums, in particular, sounded like muffled thuds. I wanted to fix that. As an engineer, I hated the idea of letting the hardware defeat me.

So I realized: "I don't need every sound to be high quality." The human ear is easily tricked when listening to sound as a single combined mix… Low-end sounds like bass don't need high fidelity, while mid-range sounds like strings need to be reasonably good. But if you adjust the highest register instruments like glockenspiels or cymbals so they sound crystal clear, the listener's brain interprets the entire mix as high-fidelity and full-range.

This is what's called "frequency spectrum design." By playing clean high frequencies, the other sounds can get away with being lower quality. In other words, if you write music where bright, high frequencies are constantly ringing out, the whole track sounds gorgeous. This directly impacts composition itself. Because acoustic properties dictate structural design, you have to write music with a complete understanding of those mechanics.

Seiken Densetsu 2 sounded significantly clearer than other SFC games, but that was the result of assembling this puzzle. In those days every developer was influencing each other and pushing themselves, so the entire industry was leveling up together.

—How long did you usually spend on a single game?

Kikuta: About two years. During my seven years at Square, I worked on three titles: Seiken Densetsu 2, Seiken Densetsu 3, and Soukaigi, and I was fully dedicated to sound that whole time. But that timeframe was absolutely necessary. Just designing the sound architecture took six months, and between sampling instruments and everything else, it took a full year before sound actually came out of the hardware. From there, polishing took another six months, and final integration took six more… I can only say it had to be that way.

Square's policy back then was to assign one composer per title, and even if there wasn't immediate work to do, it was crucial to be part of the team from the very beginning. Watching what was being created while eating meals together for the first six months, asking "What is everyone thinking? What are they feeling?", sensing firsthand what was coming to life… that was essential to understanding and building the world of the game. Without that kind of production schedule, you'd inevitably end up with something lacking.

Even if you used modern equipment today, porting music down to the SFC would still take two years. Reducing file size takes an immense amount of time. Take Seiken Densetsu 2, for example: the entire game's data had to fit into 2 megabytes. Compressing a 50-hour RPG into 2 megabytes required insane effort. I had to compress my music data byte by byte by hand. Writing a track might only take a day, but compressing it and getting it running on actual hardware took a week.

—When CD-ROMs eliminated hardware constraints, did that impact production time?

Kikuta: People often say that having constraints leads to better work, and that's often true. Surprisingly few people actually know how to handle total freedom… but personally, I love working in unconstrained spaces.

When making Soukaigi for the PlayStation, I put my foot down: "No internal synth sounds. We're doing streaming audio." If it were a battle of internal sound chips, that'd be one thing, but the moment you switch to streaming audio, you have complete freedom, so we had to go all-in. However, on the PlayStation, the music pauses briefly while the laser seeks back to the start of the track, making seamless loops impossible. But I wrote the music for Soukaigi so that the break feels natural.

Considering post-PS audio specs, it was night and day compared to the endless restrictions of the SFC era, making the work vastly easier. From that point on, it became purely a discussion about music: "How is this as a piece of music?" Processing-wise, it was no different from playing a CD, so the work was essentially identical to producing a musical album.

Interactive audio, where the field and music connect directly (like in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild where the line between music and sound effects blurs), is a uniquely game-centric way to handle sound. I think that approach is wonderful. However, implementing that requires the code and music to be developed as an integrated unit, right down to field layout design.

Stuff like changing the melody depending on where the character walks and under what conditions, or linking specific overlay notes to events… technically it's entirely possible, but executing it is extremely difficult. You have to understand programming, map design, and manage every single trigger condition using dev tools. The sheer volume of preparation required means very few development environments can support it.

—How did you handle situations where you had to compose under tight deadlines?

Kikuta: When it's time to start writing music, game screens almost never exist yet. You write based on discussions or pitch images. Luckily, I'm fairly good at that, so I rarely struggle with writing tracks. It really comes down to whether the director has a clear vision. If they can communicate that to me, it translates directly into music.

My job is figuring out how to express the world created by the director through music. They don't need to have a musical image in mind, but they do need to have a solid image of the game world. I can't work music-first; I can't write tracks that don't closely align with the work.

For example, even with a battle theme, there's no point unless you understand what that battle signifies: you have to write music that makes that specific moment in the world come alive. Whether it's film scoring or background music, it has to be custom-tailored. The entire goal is to "nestle up to that world." I never write tracks in advance to keep in stock. The musical style and instrumentation are born out of the world, so they should exist to bring that world to life. I think most composers feel the same way.

—After leaving Square, did you focus purely on music?

Kikuta: From 2000 onward, I worked with the former Enix on an MMORPG project. Between the concept, entertainment value, and structural design, we thought we really had something. "If we keep going, we can take over the market!" But right at that moment, the merger with Square happened… So the decade from 2000 was a ten-year battle in my own way, but from 2010 onward, I decided to focus purely on sound.

I don't do any sales outreach myself; I prefer to let the work come to me, with clients who specifically want me for the job. The moment you ask for work, you lose an equal standing with the client. I want to build relationships based on mutual respect where we say, "It's great working together," and create the best possible work.

My current setup is great for my state of mind. Maintaining peace of mind is what matters most to me right now. Even if a job is a huge stretch for me, it has to be something I can power through on my own. I find it stressful to be given a task where I don't have the autonomy to complete it myself. It's like having your legs tied together while someone yells "Run!" You have to walk away from no-win situations like that… forcing people to fight unwinnable battles just breaks them. I suppose my philosophy ends up at something akin to Zen: a simple, overarching rule to "stop doing things that are painfully exhausting."

I think its a form of ascetic discipline, to always be asking yourself "Can I remain free?" and "Can I avoid being tied down?" The things that bind us are the things we ourselves are clinging to… so unless you let go with your own hands, you'll never be free of them. "How can I let go with hands that want to grip so tight…?" That's my life's theme. Once you learn to let go, life becomes so much easier.

For now, enjoying good food is essential! If you ask me what enlightenment is, I'd say: "To live, and to stay healthy."

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