Legendary video game composer Noriyuki Iwadare, whose contributions to the likes of Lunar and Grandia have earned him awards, has admitted to Arab News Japan that he was never all that interested in video games when he was younger.
"When I was a kid, I played ‘block crushers,’ ‘ping pong games,’ and ‘invader’ games," he told the outlet in an exhaustive feature on his career in games. "My relatives happened to have these gaming machines at their house. I sometimes went to game arcades, but I was never really crazy about them. I didn’t even have a Nintendo NES."
Iwadare adds that he likes games with a social element. "I prefer to gather with friends and have fun together, so I prefer video games that can be enjoyed by a large group of people," he adds. "I liked the kinds of video games played by a lot of people, like ‘Mario Party’ or the ‘Super Smash Bros.’ series."
Later in the same interview, he touches upon some of the franchises which have made him beloved by many gamers, including the turn-based strategy series Langrisser:
I think we created a cool, dynamic song [in Langrisser I] based on rock music in about a week. It was surprisingly easy. For Langrisser II, I composed almost all the songs. I had a lot of fun making the game for various consoles, including PC Engine FX, Super Nintendo, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and Windows. I don’t know much about Langrisser III because I wasn’t involved in most of it. For Langrisser IV, I wrote the opening, ending, and a few other songs, and for Langrisser V: The End of Legend, I wrote all the songs. Until now, I’m making a new song every year for the Langrisser Mobile game.
I never expected that the game would be transferred to so many different consoles or remade, but I’m very proud and happy to be involved in this beloved game by people all over the world.
In the case of Lunar Silver Star, Iwadare explains that each track was created in a surprisingly short amount of time:
Every song was made in about 30 seconds. We worked on various ways to make it so that people would not get bored even after looping for many times, but there were still many things that could not be depicted musically in 30 seconds, but the users gave good remarks to the music.
Grandia, another epic JRPG, is considered by some fans to be Iwadare's crowning achievement. He reveals that he only became aware of the audition to compose for the game the night before it happened:
I had to write a song and submit it that night, and I was selected among five candidates.
The scenario involved traveling around the world, so I was listening to a lot of folk music from all over the world. It was very interesting to analyze the characteristics of each country and region’s music and to learn about the instruments,” he said, reflecting on his inspiration. “It was exciting to create “new music” that did not exist anywhere else. For example, “City of Palms” was inspired by the time of the Industrial Revolution in England, so I used bagpipes and the sound of steam engines, and “Lily” was inspired by a French chanson, to which I added Arabic music.
You can read the full interview here.