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Yoko Shimomura was born in Hyogo prefecture, Japan. Her parents enrolled her in piano lessons when she was five years old. She took
quickly to the instrument, and she often pretended to be composing her own music by playing the piano randomly.
After high school, she enrolled as a piano major in Osaka Music University. Upon graduation, Shimomura intended to become a piano
instructor. She had been a video gamer for many years, though, so on a lark, she sent some samples of her work to various video game
companies. Squaresoft invited her in for an audition and interview, and she was offe ...read more
Yoko Shimomura was born in Hyogo prefecture, Japan. Her parents enrolled her in piano lessons when she was five years old. She took
quickly to the instrument, and she often pretended to be composing her own music by playing the piano randomly.
After high school, she enrolled as a piano major in Osaka Music University. Upon graduation, Shimomura intended to become a piano
instructor. She had been a video gamer for many years, though, so on a lark, she sent some samples of her work to various video game
companies. Squaresoft invited her in for an audition and interview, and she was offered a job there. Her family and instructors were dismayed
with her change in focus (video-game music was still not mainstream in Japan at the time), but Shimomura accepted the job at Square.
Shimomura's first project with Square was the score for the role-playing game (RPG) Live A Live in 1994. After this, she was paired with more
experienced composers for a time. For example, she teamed with Noriko Matsueda on the strategy/RPG Front Mission in 1995. In 1996, she
composed and arranged (from Koji Kondo's Mario series music, as well as three tracks from Final Fantasy IV by Nobuo Uematsu), the music to
Square's very last Nintendo-produced game until 2003, Super Mario RPG.
In 1998, she went solo once again for the soundtrack to the RPG Parasite Eve. One of her most major works was achieved in 1999 with
Legend of Mana, a follow up to the beloved Seiken Densetsu series. The score to Legend of Mana showed a high range of breadth and depth
to her music, and though the game met with polarized sentiments, the music can be regarded as classic.
Shimomura's most notable recent score is for Kingdom Hearts II (2005), the sequel to the first joint Square/Disney venture that features
Disney characters in an action/RPG environment. She also composed the score to the game's prequels, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
and Kingdom Hearts. Shimomura rejected the Kingdom Hearts project initially, skeptical that such a combination could ever work. However,
she eventually relented, and her work for the game (which became a best-seller) is often cited as her finest to date.
In a very surprising matter in 2003 to both Square and Nintendo fans (if not the game industry), she composed Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga
(a sequel to Super Mario RPG, and unofficially, Paper Mario) for Game Boy Advance. However she wasn't the only employee from Square Enix
involved in the game. She later composed the soundtrack to Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time.
She remains an avid gamer to this day, only now, she plays more often to get a feel for the games she is composing the soundtracks for than
for her own pleasure.
-Wikipedia « hide |
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