Français – English
MO5.COM is pleased to announce that composer of Panzer Dragoon Saga, Saori Kobayashi recently joined the association as Honorary Member.
She regards the work of our association as highly welcome and necessary, and she therefore decided to support us and become Honorary Member. Such an important figure of the video game industry will undoubtedly help us grow and gain further popularity.
Saori Kobayashi was born in Yokohama, Japan on July 31, 1963. She graduated from Musashino Academia Musicae with a major in Music and became a pianist, ushering her career as a musician. She joined the video game industry in 1994 when she entered SEGA, where she composed tracks and created sound effects for various Game Gear and Saturn titles, including the sound effects for NiGHTS into Dreams. Her breakthrough title came in the form of Panzer Dragoon Saga for SEGA Saturn, which saw her craft a memorable soundtrack to match the dark, mysterious world of that series. She left SEGA in 1998 to become a freelancer composer, although she would continue to do work for the company on occasion, and she was asked to compose the soundtrack for Panzer Dragoon Orta on the Xbox in 2002. In 2003, she teamed up with Yumiko Takahashi, vocalist for Suikoden II and a former artist at Konami, to form a band called AKANE, which is known for its modernized take on Japanese folklore music. AKANE released its first album, Kochae, in 2007 in Japan only. She then composed Crimson Dragon for the Xbox One, released in November 2013, reuniting her with many of her former Panzer Dragoon series teammates, including original series director Yukio Futatsugi. She then joined Japan and Kuwait-based video game music label Brave Wave Productions as a core label mate alongside other notable names like Manami Matsumae and Yoko Shimomura. She teamed up with Brave Wave on their compilation album In Flux, released in March 2014, and again in September of that same year for Journey, AKANE’s second original album and first to be released outside of Japan. Along with Brave Wave, she has worked on a number of new projects, including an unannounced mobile game from Wayforward Technologies utilizing a famous IP, and her first solo album due in fall 2015, titled TERRA MAGICA. Now a piano instructor for Roland in Tokyo, she is no longer primarily a video game music composer, but Kobayashi is eager to continue her work for video games and especially with developers and publishers from outside Japan. She left Japan for the first time in her life in July 2015 when she visited Japan Expo in Paris, putting her directly in touch with many of her European fans.
Sonic Triple Trouble (Game Gear, 1994)
NiGHTS into Dreams (Saturn, 1996)
Panzer Dragoon Saga (Saturn, 1998)
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz (Vita, 2012)
Crimson Dragon (Xbox One, 2013)
MO5.COM is pleased to announce that composer of Panzer Dragoon Saga, Saori Kobayashi recently joined the association as Honorary Member.
