Keiji Yamagishi lives in your head. If I say “Ready! Down! Hut! Hut! Hut!,[1]” his music drives through your brain. Tecmo fans hear Keiji’s 1st and 10 fanfare whenever NFL official Ed Hoculi signals his beefy-armed first downs. Mr. Yamagishi’s music is the soundtrack for Ninja Gaiden on Christmas morning or the (8-bit) Browns finally winning the AFC Championship after a hard-fought season.
Keiji Yamagishi, aka More Yamasan, aka K.Y. Jet, worked as composer and sound designer for Tecmo (and later Koei Tecmo) from the 1980s to the turn of the century. He is to the NES’s RP2A03/07 sound chip what Mozart was to the piano. From a measly collection of beeps and boops, Keiji crafted the musical equivalent of tiramisu; music which is both delicately layered and delicious.
Following a string of masterworks at Tecmo/Koei, Keiji stepped back from video game composition, but has recently returned with a new project: Brave Wave. Together with other classic video game composers such as Manami Matsumae (Mega Man), Masashi Kageyama (Gimmick!) and Sayori Kobayashi (Panzer Dragon), Brave Wave brilliantly fuses classic console-era sound design with modern electronica. The resulting music is certainly nostalgic but also incredibly engaging. I dare you not to bob you head or tap your feet to Brave Wave’s recent re-master of the Street Fighter II soundtrack.
Having recently released his own incredible albums Retro-Active pt. 1 and Retro-Active pt. 2, Keiji was kind enough to talk with us about his love of music, his influences, and, of course, Tecmo Super Bowl. A huge thanks to kcaze at romhacking.net for translating this wonderful interview. Our interview has been edited for grammar and cohesion.
Tecmo Bowlers: Thanks so much for talking with us! I’ve read you started in music the way most do: playing in garage bands and recording home demos. What did those early compositions sound like? Any early demos still floating around?
Keiji Yamagishi: Before working at Tecmo, I composed electric pop songs in the style of Pet Shop Boys and OMD [Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark]. I loved western rock and pop. Some say my early work sounds like YMO [Yellow Magic Orchestra] but they weren’t really an influence. I’d say I was more influenced by the anime and superhero shows I watched as a kid.
I haven’t ever presented any of my early compositions, but the opening track on “Retro-Active Pt.2,” Thought Police, uses music I wrote in college.
TB: The original Tecmo Bowl sounded like halftime of a college football game, with Souza-style marches and college fight songs. Tecmo Super Bowl, on the other hand, features driving, action-movie music. What was the discussion between the two titles? Why did you choose an action-game soundtrack for TSB?
Keiji: That’s a very good question. I tried to convey what I felt when watching actual Japanese college football in Tecmo Bowl‘s soundtrack. I was influenced by the style of Japanese college fight songs. For TSB, we wanted a faster tempo. I consulted with Tomie [Shinichiro Tomie, the director] and we decided to use rock-styled songs. At first we were unsure how this change would be received by players in the US, but it looks like the game was even more exciting so it looks like it was a success.
TB: I’m keen to know more about the production schedule for Tecmo Super Bowl. Do you recall when you started working on the project? When you finished? Based on some quirks, it seems like player data is from 1989.
Keiji: Unfortunately, I don’t remember the exact start and end dates, nor which year’s NFL data we used… But I do remember how we went about collecting player data. At the time, it was very difficult to obtain current NFL player data in Japan (although nowadays, you can easily find out on the internet). We talked to the sole American Football magazine publisher in Japan and our Tecmo America office to obtain the data. As a result, I think the data we referenced might have been out of date. Although I don’t know if the data we used was from the 1989-1990 season or not. Director Tomie might still remember the details, so next time I see him I’ll try to confirm.
TB: Speaking of Director Tomie, are you still in touch with any of the Tecmo Super Bowl staff? We’d love to imagine TSB alumni meetings!
Keiji: Unfortunately, the Tecmo staff have scattered. The only person I keep in touch with is Tomie. He was very surprised and delighted when he learned that even now, there are still a lot of fans who continue to update and play TSB. We talked about how it would be fun if those fans could meet with us, Tomie and Yamagishi. We’re really grateful to the fans who still love the game. Thank you. [ed note: someone make this happen.]
TB: You’ve said TSB’s voice samples ate memory and limited what you could compose. Can you elaborate? I don’t suppose there’s surviving beta compositions?
Keiji: NES music was always a struggle against data capacity limitations. In TSB, the voice clips took up a large amount of space. We had fit the music and sound effects in the remaining space. Originally, the guitar in TSB’s opening had a more refined string bending part. In the end there wasn’t enough space, so I sadly deleted it. There were also lots of parts in the songs played during the matches that had to be cut.
The original song data might still exist at Tecmo, but since we don’t have any of the machinery anymore, there’s probably no way to play them back. I also don’t have any of the TSB demo cassette tapes nor the original MIDI file data. I now wish that we had properly archived everything (wry laugh).
TB: Where exactly did the voice samples from TSB come from? Do you recall who voiced what?
Keiji: We recorded them at Tecmo in the sound room. The voice samples were from Americans that our overseas department brought over. If I remember correctly, there were 3 or 4 people. I was put in charge of handling the recordings. None of them were pro football players nor had experience as quarterbacks, so they couldn’t really act. Nowadays that would probably be unthinkable (laughs). But at the time, people were delighted just to hear voices on the NES.
TB: How well do you remember the tracks from Tecmo Super Bowl? Do you have a favorite? The “Player Injured” track still clenches my chest in dread when I hear it!
Keiji: I didn’t remember all the tracks so went on YouTube and listened to them. Wow, I was really embarrassed. A lot of tracks I thought, “Couldn’t I have done better?” I also remembered the parts that we had to cut due to space limitations. Overall, it would be a 60/100. Unbelievable. If I could go back in time, I would definitely fix things!
My favorite track is still the opening song. I put my heart and soul into creating this track. It’s the face of the game after all. I think among the games that I’ve worked on, the art and music fit together the best in this song. Even now, I would like to pick up a guitar and play this song with a band.
TB: How involved were you in Tecmo Super Bowl’s sound design? For it’s time the crowd noises and hitting sounds are fairly advanced. In other games, the crowd is annoying chirps.
Keiji: I was responsible for all of the sound design in TSB, from the program used to play sounds to the actual song and sound effect compositions (there was only 1 track that Arata from Ninja Gaiden II was responsible for). At the time, Tecmo didn’t have separate departments for programming, song composition, and sound effects; it was normal to handle all of them. The NES’s sound chip could only simultaneously play 5 noise or sampling notes at a time. As a result, if the person in charge kept the music and sound effects in check, he could produce better sound quality I think. I had to continuously listen and adjust the pitch and duration of notes to make them sound good. In fact, I worked hard to create the sound effects so it’s an honor to be recognized for it. Thank you very much for listening to them.
I also remember how Tecmo’s sound driver (the program used to generate sounds) would cut into the melody and rhythm of a track whenenver a sound track played, so I also had to grapple with an algorithm to resume the melody after a sound effect finished playing.
TB: Was there a specific “sound” you were trying to achieve in Tecmo Super Bowl? Like, “I want the playoff theme to sound like Black Sabbath?”
Keiji: There were indeed times where I aimed to emulate a specific sound. There were also such songs in Ninja Gaiden. Game designers would also suggest that I make certain types of songs for certain situations. But for TSB, I don’t think there were any tracks where I consciously aimed for any specific band or artist. Although in reality maybe it does sound similar to something (wry laugh). I mostly looked at the different scene’s art while I created them.
TB: The filmmaker Orson Welles once said “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” It seems to me composing for NES had to be something like composing a Haiku, trying to pack so much information and emotion in such a small space.
Keiji: That’s exactly it. I think it’s probably easier to exercise creativity when working in a constrained environment. I remember that it was very fun trying to see how well I could express the music and sound effects on the NES, which could only play 5 sounds. Although as a result, after I started working for on the PS2, I lost much of the constraints in the environment and my enthusiasm for composition also grew weaker (wry laugh).
TB: Your work with Tecmo/Koei slowed in the mid 1990’s even though your credits don’t include a single bad composition. Was it something about the jump from 8 and 16 bit systems to the more advanced consoles that caused you to step back? You’ve said elsewhere symphonic composing isn’t your forte. Was it just time to move on?
Keiji: I transferred from Tecmo to Koei in 1993. At the time, Koei didn’t compose music in-house. They all had external professionals compose their music. I was brought in when they started working on in-house music compositions, but there were quite a few jobs for making video game music. I wasn’t featured on the credits, but I worked on game music composition up until 1997. I worked on sound programs and synthesization for the SNES, Playstation, and Saturn.
After that, I became a manager and my work mostly became directing music production so I was distanced from the actual creation. In 2000, I became independent and began writing video game music again, but there wasn’t any demand in Japan for my style of music, so I left music composition. All the game companies were looking for tracks like those in Hollywood films you see. I can’t create that kind of theatrical music, so I thought it was the end of me composing music for video games. I lost my passion for music composition. If I didn’t meet Mohammed (from Bravewave), I don’t think I would have started composing music again.
And continue to compose Keiji did! Next time out, we continue our conversation with Keiji Yamagisish, where we talk about the best NES track he ever wrote, his new work with Brave Wave, his Retro-Active albums, and the mystery of TSB’s unused Track 32.
Click to continue on to Part 2 now!
NOTES:
[1] Hut hut hut hut hut hut hut!
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