Composer Spotlight #1: Hiroyuki Iwatsuki

Hiroyuki Iwatsuki is the master of the generic beat 'em up track. What does that mean? Well let's find out!

Works featured in this post:

• Choujin Sentai Jetman (NES)


• Ghost Sweeper Mikami: Gokuraku Daisakusen (SNES)


• Ninja Gaiden Shadow (GB)


• Pocky & Rocky (SNES)


• Shin Kidoesenki Gundam Wing - Endless Duel (SNES)


• Spanky's Quest (GB)


• The Ninjawarriors (SNES)

full list of works

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One thing to note about Iwatsuki is that it's hard to get his "sound," so to speak, because he frequently collaborated with other Natsume sound team members, most notably Iku Mizutani and Haruo Ohashi. However, four out of his six chiptune works were solo ventures, so from these we can get some insight into the man's usual style.


"Area E"
Choujin Sentai Jetman (NES)


"Stage 1"
Ninja Gaiden Shadow (GB)

We can already see some similarities in the structure of the songs. Each loop has three basic sections: an intro, main body which ends in an upward sequence, and high conclusion. Both songs also have a driving bassline and percussion too. We'll see the tripartite structure and backbone in the next two co-composed samples from the SNES.


"Crazy Woods"
Ghost Sweeper Mikami: Gokuraku Daisakusen (SNES)
co-composed with Kinuyo Yamashita


"Last Boss"
The Ninjawarriors (SNES)
co-composed with N. Tate

I've been hand-picking tracks on purpose to reinforce the first sentence in the post, that Iwatsuki is the master of the generic beat 'em up track. All four games featured so far are side-scrolling/platforming beat 'em ups. More important, though, is how similar these songs are; the games Iwatsuki has worked on are chock full of songs just like these that grab you and yell out, "Beat up enemies to me!"

However, what I like about these soundtracks are just how eminently listenable they are. "Generic" does not automatically mean a song is bad; despite the four songs I picked being mostly interchangeable with one another (discounting the synth qualities of the three platforms), each track has its own decent melody and hooks, variety, and development. If these types of tracks are up your alley, then you should definitely check Iwatsuki out, because there are lots more tracks just like these.

Now that I've talked about how his music is all the same, let's look about some of his work that actually does sound different!


"Staff Roll"
Spanky's Quest (GB)


"Haunted House"
Pocky & Rocky (SNES)


"Airport"
Shin Kidoesenki Gundam Wing - Endless Duel (SNES)
co-composed with Haruo Ohashi

So in addition to beat 'em up tracks, we also have almost Kirby-like ^___^ness, almost RPG dungeonness, and almost technocrapness. I used "almost" and "-ness" in all three of those "genres" because each track does manage to still retain a little bit of the Iwatsuki flavor. Staff Roll and Haunted House have pumpin' basslines, and Airport still gets you ready to kick the crap out of something. Iwatsuki has a consistent style in his works that just rocks.

Other people besides Liontamer might post here too sometimes

Apparently I've been given the ability to post here. I'd better make the most of it before Larry fires me for making fun of his stench (like that of an African elephant) or pubefro (no modifiers needed). D:

I'm CHz, sometimes known as 'Ili Butterfield. I'm one of the folks who runs Song of the Week. Spiel:

Song of the Week (or SotW, for short) is an online, ongoing, weekly event. The purpose of this event is to promote the proliferation of quality video game music that is seldom heard amongst the society of VGM fans.

I just updated the site with this week's winners about two hours ago, so check Week 97 and all the previous weeks out and see if you like what you hear. Maybe even participate if you have the time.

But anyway, why am I here? Well, since the scope of this blog is not just video game remixes, Larry wanted contributions from people who know more video game music than just a couple of tracks from whatever lame 2D fighter they played ten years ago. Since I owed him a lifedebt for saving me from a Nicaraguan death squad, I agreed to help him out with this "VG Frequency" thing.

So what can you expect from me? I don't know either! Presumably something about video game music! My original ideas were composer spotlights on lesser-known guys who aren't totally obscure (like, say, a Motoaki Takenouchi vs. a Nobuo Uematsu or Nobuo Ito) and looks at overlooked works by big-name composers, like the Hanjuku Hero series or DynamiTracer by Uematsu. But I'm not that organized, so I might end up just making things up off the cuff, kind of like this post!

I've gone on far enough here without any actual content, so I'm just going to end this post with a song I really like. It'll give me a chance to test this cool Flash MP3 player dealie. It also could be a preview of my next entry...?!


"Energy Generator Lab (Stage 5)"
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (SNES)
Hiroyuki Iwatsuki