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A<\/span>lfred Hitchcock, David Attenborough, Harold Pinter, Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, Hideo Kojima \u2013 these are just a few of the recipients of the Bafta fellowship, the highest honour the academy can bestow. Japanese composer Yoko Shimomura is the latest to receive the accolade; one of only 17 women and four Japanese people to have done so. She is also the first video-game composer to be recognised by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the first composer recognised at all since John Barry in 2005.<\/p>\n It is with good reason that the academy has honoured her. Shimomura is an icon. You\u2019ll know her music from Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, Super Mario, Kingdom Hearts, Legend of Mana, Streets of Rage and more than 70 other games she has contributed original compositions or arrangements to. Her 37-year-long career has seen her record at Abbey Road Studios, have her music played by symphonic orchestras around the world, and work in genres ranging from rock to electronica, ambient to industrial, pop to opera. And yet Shimomura seems unchanged by her success.<\/p>\n \u201cCertainly, over the course of my career, there have been a number of times \u2013 a lot of times perhaps, compared to other people \u2013 where I have struggled. Enough to think maybe I want to give up.\u201d She tells me that even as far back as her first job at Japanese developer Capcom, she thought she had maybe two or three years in her before she\u2019d quit. She also says she applied for that job with \u201cbarely any hope of getting accepted\u201d \u2013 with a modesty that still seems a core part of her character.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though I love this job, there have been plenty of times when it was really hard for me to continue. I couldn\u2019t sleep, and I would especially struggle as deadlines would approach.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>The first video-game composer recognised by Bafta \u2026 Shimomura collects her fellowship.<\/span> Photograph: Lia Toby\/Getty Images for BAFTA<\/p>\n Part of her fatalism came from the culture of video games in Japan in the late 80s. Despite the thriving arcade and development scene later leading to the mainstream success of the PlayStation in the mid-90s, pursuing a career in video games was seen as a dubious prospect by Shimomura\u2019s peers and family. \u201cThis is something I think most gamers who were around at the time will understand,\u201d she laughs. \u201cGenerally, my friends and people I hung out with were not big gamers, so they weren\u2019t too familiar with what games really were. At the time, a lot of them were confused about what a job in video-games music even was! Certainly, my parents were not of the generation who would have played the Famicom [the NES], so they would say things like: \u2018Oh, video-game music? Is that a job? Is that real?\u2019 There was a lack of knowledge and understanding about the profession, really.\u201d<\/p>\n People used to say: \u2018Video-game music? Is that a real job?\u2019<\/p>\n Surprisingly, given the male-dominated western world of video games in the 80s and 90s, Shimomura tells me that a lot of her colleagues in the sound department at Capcom were women. The developer split its composers into corporate and consumer divisions, where the top staff were all female. \u201cI felt that since the head staff were women,\u201d she says, \u201cit was easier for other women to join the department.\u201d<\/p>\n Her peers began to understand how serious Shimomura was about her musical career with the release of Street Fighter II in 1991, the ninth game she worked on. \u201cThat\u2019s when the tide started to turn. It sold so much, and so many people knew it and became familiar with my music, that it was a really significant title for me. I certainly think it\u2019s why I ended up working with Square on titles like Live a Live and Front Mission \u2013 because the bosses there knew me from Street Fighter.\u201d<\/p>\n For Street Fighter, Shimomura would study the character designs and personalities of the fighters, then design themes for them. She would also pore over the detailed pixel art stages for each character, and draw out details from their \u201chome stage\u201d. She would then compose music based on the character\u2019s ethnicity and culture, often to striking and unusual effect. The best example, to my ear, is the use of a major key rhythm track for the Brazilian fighter Blanka, while the main melody playing on top of the rhythm is in minor. It\u2019s odd but it works, and gives the green-and-orange fighter a musical identity as as much as a visual one.<\/p>\n <\/span>Amazon River Basin in Street Fighter II \u2026 the inspiration for one of Yoko Shimomura\u2019s most notable early tracks.<\/span> Photograph: Capcom<\/p>\n Shimomura\u2019s classical background gave her the tools to work techniques such as this into her music. She eventually departed Capcom for Square, the most famous RPG developer in the world, because she wanted to work on games where she could utilise classical composition techniques.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy is classical music such a good fit for RPGs? I think it\u2019s because so many of those titles are set in medieval, European-style worlds where that music naturally belongs,\u201d she says. \u201cBut even if an RPG is set in a more modern take on a world, they\u2019re very rarely close to reality; the game world is of another age. And classical music is of another age too, so it\u2019s a very good fit.\u201d<\/p>\n The first project Square set Shimomura to work on was Live a Live, a 1994 RPG that takes players on a fantastical journey as eight characters across nine scenarios. \u201cThere are so many different worlds and different settings in there, and very few of them actually needed classical music, so it was completely different to what I was expecting,\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Pushing Buttons<\/span><\/p>\n Keza MacDonald’s weekly look at the world of gaming<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Shimomura would not get to flex her classical music muscles the way she really wanted to until Square\u2019s 1999 release Legend of Mana, on which she felt she could truly express herself. \u201cUntil that point, at Square, the projects I worked on did not allow me to do something 100% from scratch,\u201d she explains. \u201cThere were always other factors, other legacy things that went before it. Music in Live a Live had to align with the characters. For Parasite Eve, I had to work with what was established in the original game. Mario RPG, of course, is set in the world of Mario and had to be \u2018Mario music\u2019. I was not free to create something from the ground up until Legend of Mana.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Live a Live \u2026 working with an eclectic cast of characters and giving them a unique aural identity is Yoko Shimomura\u2019s bread and butter.<\/span> Photograph: Square Enix<\/p>\n Legend of Mana would be foundational for the rest of Shimomura\u2019s career. Three years later she would work on Kingdom Hearts, the now-mainstream success that trades on the unlikely idea that the worlds of Final Fantasy and Disney could somehow become merged.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it first released, Kingdom Hearts wasn\u2019t a big hit,\u201d Shimomura recalls. \u201cAfter it was released, it was one of those hard times I mentioned before: I left Square, and I wasn\u2019t sure if I was going to continue in this job or not. But then they came back to me and asked if I wanted to work on Kingdom Hearts II, and that was significant for two reasons. One, it proved I could <\/em>continue doing this as a freelancer. And two, it was the first time I\u2019d been asked to come back and work on another game in a series.\u201d Even at that point, 17 years into her career, Shimomura was uncertain about her standing in the world of video-game music. \u201cI think, both professionally and in a sense of personal growth, that\u2019s why Kingdom Hearts means so much to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, 37 years since her first job at Capcom, Shimomura has been lauded with Bafta\u2019s highest honour, and she is still as polite, humble and respectful as the young woman poring over Street Fighter\u2019s stages. \u201cI was blessed to have mentors and seniors who really helped me grow as a composer and taught me a lot of what made me who I am,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel very lucky, and it is down to all those people that I am here talking to you today.\u201d<\/p>\n And her advice to other young women hoping to break into making music for games today? Be tenacious, persevere and work through that self-doubt. \u201cI think the reason I haven\u2019t given up is because I always make myself think of the love I have for music and for games. I cherish that feeling. And so if people do ever think they want to give up, please, cherish that feeling of love yourself, and keep going. I hope I can be an example for people when times are tough. If I can get over that, I hope that they can too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alfred Hitchcock, David Attenborough, Harold Pinter, Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, Hideo Kojima \u2013 these are just a few of the recipients of the Bafta fellowship, the highest honour the academy can bestow. Japanese composer Yoko Shimomura is the latest to receive the accolade; one of only 17 women and four Japanese people to have done<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1281,1283,1280,1189,1277,82,378,1282,356,1279,1276,1278],"class_list":{"0":"post-9242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-classical","9":"tag-classics","10":"tag-composer","11":"tag-fantasy","12":"tag-fighter","13":"tag-final","14":"tag-games","15":"tag-gamings","16":"tag-put","17":"tag-shimomura","18":"tag-street","19":"tag-yoko"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}