36 Facts About Hiroki Kikuta

Hiroki Kikuta is a Japanese composer and game designer.

Hiroki Kikuta has composed music for seven other games, and worked as a concept designer in addition to composer for the unreleased MMORPG Chou Bukyo Taisen.

Hiroki Kikuta became interested in music at an early age, but earned a degree in Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Cultural Anthropology from Kansai University.

Hiroki Kikuta spent the next few years working first as a manga illustrator, then as a composer for anime series, before coming to work for Square in 1991.

Hiroki Kikuta's music has been performed in concerts such as the Symphonic Fantasies concerts in Cologne, Germany in September 2009, and selections of his works have been published as piano arrangements in sheet music books.

Hiroki Kikuta's first instrument was a classical guitar, which he taught himself without lessons.

Hiroki Kikuta never received any form of formal musical training, and instead taught himself by reading music theory books and listening to a wide variety of musical genres.

Hiroki Kikuta went on to earn an interdisciplinary degree in Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Cultural Anthropology from Kansai University, which he attended from 1981 to 1984.

In 1991, Hiroki Kikuta was hired by Square, as a composer.

Hiroki Kikuta started off debugging Final Fantasy IV and creating sound effects for Romancing SaGa, as there were not enough game projects in development to open up new jobs for Square's new hires, but Kikuta was given game soundtracks to compose.

Hiroki Kikuta says that he was given complete freedom to compose the soundtracks, in that he was given no direction at all as to how to compose the music; he began working on the music before the design of the game was finalized.

Hiroki Kikuta was chosen for Secret of Mana after Kenji Ito, the composer for the first game in the Mana series, Final Fantasy Adventure, was unable to work on the sequel due to other demands, including the soundtrack to Romancing SaGa.

Rather than create MIDI versions of his compositions, like most game composers of that time did, and hand these over to the sound engineering department, Hiroki Kikuta made his own samples that matched the hardware capabilities of the Super Nintendo.

Hiroki Kikuta said in 2024 that he made the arranged album as a response to the stress of dealing with the restrictions of creating the original soundtrack, by instead creating something unrestrained and free.

For Trials of Mana, Hiroki Kikuta was assisted by a sound programmer, Hidenori Suzuki, which allowed him to compose over three times the amount of music he had created for Secret of Mana.

Hiroki Kikuta decided to take the music in a "different direction" than Secret of Manas, as he did not think he could surpass it with the same concept.

The move to the PlayStation for Soukaigi allowed Hiroki Kikuta to focus on creating live music for the soundtrack, rather than tweaking the synthesizer instruments to make the music files fit in the game cartridge as he had to for the Super Nintendo.

Hiroki Kikuta used the added audio processing power to expand his musical creativity, including pieces such as songs in unintelligible Thai and Malaysian by Japanese singers.

The game itself was not a success, and Hiroki Kikuta decided that he wanted more direct control over the next project he worked on.

Hiroki Kikuta tried to follow this philosophy in creating Koudelka, and tried to bring a sense of "obsessive passion" to the project, reading what he claims were over 100 books on British history and taking the design team on a trip to Wales to study the country.

Hiroki Kikuta left Sacnoth soon after; the company changed its name to Nautilus and went on to produce four more games including the Shadow Hearts series before folding in 2007.

In March 2001, Hiroki Kikuta founded Norstrilia, named after the novel of the same name.

Hiroki Kikuta serves as his private record label, and publishes his albums.

Hiroki Kikuta spent the next few years composing for video games only released in Japan, including the eroge visual novel Sora no Iro, Mizu no Iro and the MMORPG Concerto Gate.

Hiroki Kikuta released Lost Files, his first album of original music, in 2006.

The album includes the demo tapes Hiroki Kikuta submitted when first applying for the job of game composer at Square, using the sound source of the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Hiroki Kikuta has composed three other albums and two singles in conjunction with other singers or performers; these albums have been released through his Norstrilia label.

Hiroki Kikuta released a third original album in 2011, titled Tiara.

Selections of remixes of Hiroki Kikuta's work appear on Japanese remix albums, called dojin, and on English remixing websites such as OverClocked ReMix.

Hiroki Kikuta has said that he enjoys listening to these works, mentioning OverClocked ReMix by name.

Hiroki Kikuta considers it to be his "vocation", and contrasts it with designing and creating video games, which he calls his "wish" and finds to be very difficult to do in comparison to composition.

Hiroki Kikuta is inspired to create his music by things that he has seen, especially while traveling; he credits much of the musical imagery in Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana as being inspired by several islands in Fiji he has visited.

Rather than trying to be a "pure artist" that creates art for art's sake, Hiroki Kikuta says that his primary goal in composing is to entertain the listeners.

Hiroki Kikuta has not been influenced by other video game composers, though he claims to admire Hitoshi Sakimoto, who worked at Square.

Hiroki Kikuta has named Pink Floyd as his single biggest musical influence, and guitarist Allan Holdsworth as the artist he would most like to collaborate with.

Hiroki Kikuta stated that his favorite song he composed was "ouverture" from Concerto Gate.