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Yuzo Koshiro

The PC-88 composer behind Ys, ActRaiser and Streets of Rage

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Yuzo Koshiro was a teenager when Nihon Falcom used the music from his demo tape in Xanadu Scenario II. He went on to score Ys, Sorcerian, The Revenge of Shinobi, ActRaiser and the Streets of Rage games, writing most of it on an NEC PC-8801 in a music language of his own. In 1990 he set up the studio Ancient with his mother and sister, and he has run it ever since.

In the mid-1980s a teenager spent his summer holiday programming music into an NEC PC-8801, filled a cassette with it and took the tape to the software house Nihon Falcom. Falcom used more than ten of the songs in its next game. Yuzo Koshiro went on to write the music for Ys, Sorcerian, The Revenge of Shinobi, ActRaiser and Streets of Rage, and he kept writing on that same kind of Japanese home computer long after his music was being played on consoles. When Sega put his name on its title screens, players could see who had written it.

Fast facts

  • Born: 12 December 1967, according to his company’s own profile.
  • Training: piano from his mother, and lessons as a young child from the composer Joe Hisaishi.
  • First job: part-time “sound programmer” at Nihon Falcom, where his demo tape became music for Xanadu Scenario II (1986).
  • Falcom scores: Ys, Ys II and Sorcerian (1987–88), then he left to work freelance.
  • Sega: The Revenge of Shinobi (1989) and the three Streets of Rage games (1991–1994), among others.
  • Nintendo: ActRaiser (Quintet and Enix, Super Famicom, 1990).
  • Company: Ancient, founded in 1990, with his mother as president; Koshiro later became its president.
  • Tools: his own music language on the PC-8801, later on the PC-98.
  • Later work: the Etrian Odyssey series from 2007, Streets of Rage 4 (2020) and Earthion (2025), a new shoot-’em-up he built for the Mega Drive.

Piano lessons and a PC-88

Koshiro’s mother, Tomo, was a piano teacher. She started teaching him when he was three, although, he told Nintendo Life in 2019, he did not want to learn at first. In primary school he also took lessons from the composer Joe Hisaishi. “He would play an intro phrase, and have me continue it,” Koshiro told the Red Bull Music Academy in 2014. “I had to make music on the fly.”

The computer came next. He bought one of the first PC-8801s, which could not play music at all. That changed with the mkII SR model, “when I was about 17”, whose Yamaha FM sound chip could. With a classmate he recorded the music from arcade games and wrote a music program on the SR to copy it by ear.

Falcom: Xanadu, Ys and Sorcerian

The demo tape got him in at Falcom. “I filled a tape up, and I brought it to Falcom,” he recalled in a Japanese interview book of 2001. He was hired part-time as what the company called a “sound programmer”, doing “both programming and writing music”. Falcom used over ten of the tape’s songs in Xanadu Scenario II (1986). He then wrote the opening music for Romancia and music for Ys, Ys II and Sorcerian, sharing the scores with Falcom’s other composers. “After that I quit Falcom,” he said.

Ancient’s list of his work names the PC-8801 mkII SR as the machine for all of these, and adds other computer games from the same years: Misty Blue for Enix and The Scheme for Bothtec on the PC-88, and The Return of Ishtar for Namco on the MSX2.

Sega: Shinobi and Streets of Rage

As a freelance, Koshiro went to Sega. On The Revenge of Shinobi (The Super Shinobi in Japan, 1989) he “did everything, including the sound effects”, he said, and “even helped write some of the drivers”. Retro Gamer looked back on it in 2006 and called his “scintillating tunes” “the finishing strokes of Sega’s masterpiece”, though it judged them “inferior to his later Streets Of Rage compositions”.

Those came next. Streets of Rage (Bare Knuckle in Japan, 1991) was built around the house music that Koshiro heard in Tokyo’s clubs, and Streets of Rage 2 (1992) and 3 (1994) followed, with Motohiro Kawashima as his co-composer. The Streets of Rage entry tells that story. Koshiro’s name was on the title screens of The Revenge of Shinobi and Streets of Rage. As Wireframe put it, that way players “would know who’d crafted those banging EDM-style soundtracks”. Mean Machines gave the first game’s sound 94%. In 2001 Koshiro recalled that at the time the music “wasn’t especially well-received in Japan. It was more popular in America.”

The music language

He did not write any of this on a Mega Drive. “For Bare Knuckle I used the PC88 and an original programming language I developed myself,” he told the website Kikizo, as Retro Gamer reported in 2010. “The original was called MML, Music Macro Language. It’s based on NEC’s BASIC program, but I modified it heavily. It was more a BASIC-style language at first, but I modified it to be something more like Assembly. I called it ‘Music Love’. I used it for all the Bare Knuckle games.”

An MML describes music as text: a line of note letters, lengths, octave and volume commands that a driver program turns into writes to the sound chip. The PC-8801’s FM chip and the Mega Drive’s YM2612 are both Yamaha FM synthesis chips, which is why the computer made a workable place to compose for the console. “I think the best way to get nice sounds out of an 88 was by making your own music driver,” he said in 2014, “making an editor that plays sounds how you want them.”

For Streets of Rage 3 he moved to a PC-98 and wrote what he called a “self-composing” program. “With the press of a button you could write half of a song. It used random numbers and mathematical formulas,” he said. He limited the notes it could use and the progressions it could make, then wrote the rhythms over the half-finished result by hand.

The source code of MUCOM88, an MML tool and driver that Koshiro wrote for the PC-8801 in 1987, was published in 2018 by the OPEN MUCOM88 project under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Public sources do not say whether it is the same program as “Music Love”.

ActRaiser

Koshiro’s best-known Nintendo score is ActRaiser, Quintet’s mixture of side-scrolling action and god game, published by Enix for the Super Famicom in Japan at the end of 1990. British importers were selling it by February 1991. Computer and Video Games reviewed it that spring and gave it “the accolade of having some of the grooviest music ever incorporated into a console (or computer) game”, with “a multitude of trumpets, drums” and boss tunes that were “especially brill”. When Alfa Records released the soundtrack on CD, Super Play wrote in 1993 that Koshiro had “become quite famous across the world for his great SNES compositions”. The sequel’s music got the same praise: Nintendo Magazine System called Koshiro’s score for ActRaiser 2 “one of the most memorable sonic experiences on the Super NES” in 1994.

Ancient

To take on bigger jobs, Koshiro needed a company. “SEGA had said I wouldn’t be able to take on the contract as an individual, however I could get the work if I set up my own company,” he later told the historian John Szczepaniak. Ancient’s own company profile gives its founding date as 1 April 1990. Its first programmer was Shinobu Hayashi, with whom Koshiro had made The Scheme, and its other staff were friends from Harvest, an amateur development circle he had belonged to. “My sister also joined Ancient, and my mother became the president,” Koshiro said. “In terms of who became the president, we just felt like only my mother could do that.” His sister, Ayano, drew for the company’s games.

Ancient’s first big job for Sega was the Master System and Game Gear Sonic the Hedgehog of 1991, an 8-bit game with its own levels, not a conversion. “Thinking back on it, it is quite weird,” Koshiro told Polygon in 2017. “Sonic is a huge property, and I’m not totally sure why they asked us to do it.” Koshiro scored the Mega Drive action role-playing game The Story of Thor (Beyond Oasis in America), and Computer and Video Games noticed in 1996 that it had a Streets of Rage feel because he “used many of the same sounds in both games”. Ancient developed its Saturn sequel, The Legend of Thor: Sega Saturn Magazine told a reader that year that “Ancient … did the new Saturn Thor game and Mr Koshiro did the music”.

Later work

Koshiro kept composing. His credits include tracks for Shenmue (1999), Namco’s arcade racing series Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune, and Konami’s DS game Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (2006), whose producer was Koji Igarashi.

For Atlus’s Etrian Odyssey (DS, 2007), a first-person dungeon game that its makers meant to bring back the “old-school 3D dungeon-crawler RPG”, he went back to the computer he started on. Shigeo Komori, who wrote the first game’s scenario and directed Etrian Odyssey II (2008), told 1UP.com that the team described the settings and scenes and “then left everything up to him”. To get “that old-school feel”, Komori said, Koshiro “actually synthesizes music from the NEC PC-88, a popular Japanese computer from the ’80s, and transfers it to the DS”. Koshiro scored the later games in the series too.

Koshiro joined Streets of Rage 4 (2020) after its developer, Dotemu, approached him; he wrote its opening tracks. In 2025 Ancient finished Earthion, a shoot-’em-up that Koshiro developed for the Mega Drive and scored himself. It came out on modern consoles and PC on 31 July 2025. The cartridge version for the Mega Drive was put back into 2026 so that it could be finished before manufacture, because, as Koshiro explained, a cartridge cannot be patched after release.

Sources

  • Nick Dwyer, “Interview: Streets of Rage Composer Yuzo Koshiro”, Red Bull Music Academy Daily, 25 September 2014 (web, secondary; Koshiro’s own words): Joe Hisaishi’s lessons; the first PC-8801 and the mkII SR; copying arcade music; Xanadu Scenario II, Ys, Ys II, Sorcerian and leaving Falcom; freelance work on Shinobi; his own music driver; the PC-98 and Streets of Rage 3. https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2014/09/yuzo-koshiro-interview/
  • Yuzo Koshiro interview in the Japanese book series Game Maestro (2001), translated as “Yuzo Koshiro – 2001 Composer Interview”, shmuplations (web, secondary; his own words in translation): the demo tape; part-time “sound programmer”; over ten songs in Xanadu Scenario II; Romancia, Ys, Ys II and Sorcerian; The Revenge of Shinobi; clubs and Bare Knuckle; its reception in Japan and America; the self-composing program for Bare Knuckle 3. https://shmuplations.com/yuzokoshiro/
  • Jake Baldwin, “Streets of Rage Legend Yuzo Koshiro on Music, Game Dev and Nintendo Switch”, Nintendo Life, 24 August 2019, republished by Time Extension (web, secondary): his mother’s piano lessons from the age of three; Ancient; Dotemu’s approach for Streets of Rage 4. https://www.timeextension.com/news/2019/08/feature_streets_of_rage_legend_yuzo_koshiro_on_music_game_dev_and_nintendo_switch
  • Ancient Corp., “Yuzo Koshiro profile” and “Company information” (company website; profile archived February 2011) (web, secondary): his birth date; his list of works with platforms and publishers (Xanadu Scenario II, Romancia, Ys, Sorcerian and Ys II on the PC-8801 mkII SR; Misty Blue, The Scheme, The Return of Ishtar, The Super Shinobi, ActRaiser, the Game Gear Sonic, Bare Knuckle 1–3, The Story of Thor, the Saturn Thor, Shenmue, Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, Etrian Odyssey in 2007); the company’s founding on 1 April 1990 (Heisei 2). https://www.ancient.co.jp/yuzo.html and https://www.ancient.co.jp/info.html
  • SEGA Master System: A Visual Compendium (Bitmap Books, 2019), p. 165: Koshiro on founding Ancient for the Sonic contract, Shinobu Hayashi, Harvest, his sister and his mother as president, quoted from John Szczepaniak, The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers.
  • Ryan Lambie, “Sonic Youth”, Wireframe issue 57, November 2021, pp. 86–87: Koshiro’s name on the title screens of The Revenge of Shinobi and Streets of Rage; Ancient and the 8-bit Sonic, with his mother, Tomo, and sister, Ayano; his 2017 words to Polygon’s Jeremy Parish.
  • Retro Gamer issue 30, 2006, retro review of The Revenge of Shinobi (“the finishing strokes of Sega’s masterpiece”; “17 years after its initial release”). The same review in Retro Gamer Collection volume 1, 2007.
  • Retro Gamer Videogames Hardware Handbook volume 2, 2010, on Japanese computers: Misty Blue and The Scheme on the PC-88; Koshiro’s Kikizo interview on “Music Love”.
  • Mean Machines issue 12, September 1991, pp. 80–82: Streets of Rage review (sound 94%), as cited in the Streets of Rage entry.
  • Mean Machines issue 5, February 1991: import advertisement listing Act Raiser at £49.95.
  • Computer and Video Games issue 114, May 1991: ActRaiser import review, “Doctor Actraiser’s musical pharmacy” panel.
  • Super Play issue 9, July 1993: review of the ActRaiser soundtrack CD (Alfa Records).
  • Nintendo Magazine System issue 17, February 1994: ActRaiser 2 review.
  • Edge issue 26, November 1995: Legend of Thor preview (the development team, Ancient, “includes the talented and well-known composer Yuzo Koshiro”).
  • Sega Saturn Magazine issue 12, October 1996: letters page, Ancient and the Saturn Thor. Computer and Video Games issue 174, May 1996: Legend of Thor preview (the Story of Thor sounds).
  • Wikipedia, “Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished” and “Sorcerian” (web, secondary): Koshiro’s Falcom co-composers, including Mieko Ishikawa; Ys on 21 June 1987 and Sorcerian on 20 December 1987. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ys_I:_Ancient_Ys_Vanished and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcerian
  • Wikipedia, “ActRaiser” (web, secondary): the Japanese release in December 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActRaiser
  • Retro Gamer issue 36, 2007, “The making of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night”: Igarashi had “overseen the production” of Portrait of Ruin. Retro Gamer Collection volume 4, 2010, Castlevania series history: Portrait of Ruin in 2006.
  • Retro Gamer issue 100, March 2012: Sonic the Hedgehog feature, the 8-bit version by Ancient, “a Japanese developer managed by revered Sega composer Yuzo Koshiro”, as cited in the Sonic the Hedgehog entry.
  • Jeremy Parish, “Etrian Odyssey II Director Q&A Preview”, 1UP.com, 4 June 2008 (web, secondary): Shigeo Komori on Koshiro’s music and the PC-88. https://web.archive.org/web/20160305084107/http://www.1up.com/previews/etrian-odyssey-ii
  • OPEN MUCOM88 project, “mucom88” repository, README (web, secondary): MUCOM88 as a PC-8801 MML tool and driver by Yuzo Koshiro from 1987, published under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. https://github.com/onitama/mucom88
  • Wireframe issue 40, June 2020, pp. 92–93: Streets of Rage 4 review (“Original composer Yuzo Koshiro’s opening tracks replicate the house anthems of the first game”).
  • Damien McFerran, “Earthion Launches Next Month, Mega Drive Version Pushed Into 2026”, Time Extension, 13 June 2025 (web, secondary): release on 31 July 2025; the cartridge delay in Koshiro’s words. https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/06/earthion-launches-next-month-mega-drive-version-pushed-into-2026

See also

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