In this Project Umbrella exclusive, we briefly discuss our conversations with the majority of the ex-sound team of BIO HAZARD. Yamada-san and Tomozawa-san joined the team in 1994, Kaida-san, Ueda-san and Utsumi-san in 1995. During the initial planning stages of development (second quarter of '94), the term "Horror" was used as the working title. Moreover, Horror was CAPCOM's prototype line in a genre called horror action adventure that became "survival horror". All the music and sound effects were recorded at CAPCOM's R&D building in Osaka. The English and unused Japanese dialogue were recorded at an outside studio they hired.
Project Umbrella Translation
"The musical score was one of the most important aspects in the production of Bio Hazard. I considered sound to be essential in creating the feeling of fear in the game." -Shinji Mikami, True Story Behind Bio Hazard
Makoto Tomozawa
Born: 08-04
"I worked on that project 15 years ago so I can't recall accurately, but..."
He graduated from the Tennoji High School attached to Osaka Kyoiku University in 1985 and Doshisha University in 1993. Joined Capcom in the same year.
He acted as music composer for the Super Famicom Rockman series, beginning with Rockman X under the alias of "Tomozou", released 1993-12-17, Rockman 7: Showdown of Destiny! under the alias of "V-Tomozoh", released 1995-03-24, and finally, Rockman X3, released 1995-12-01.
He remembers enrolling in the Bio development team in 1994, along with Ippo Yamada whom he worked with on Rockman 7. He received no special instructions from Mikami and proposed the idea to use sound like a movie, instead of a video game. He credited the other music composers as a very talented staff and didn't produce the song for dogs jumping through the window until the end of development. On that note, Kamiya said, "I forgot [who made the decision to include this scene]. We were discussing everyday how to frighten players."
Akari Kaida
Born: 1974-01-10
She graduated from the Hyogo Prefectural Miki-Kita High Schoolin 1992 and the Osaka College of Music with a major in jazz piano in 1993. Joined Capcom in 1994 due to it's close proximity to her house.
She composed some of the music for the Sega Saturn version of Street Fighter Zero, released 1996-01-26, under the alias of "Lemon", before enrolling in the Bio development team in 1995. The PlayStation version included a 1:46 sec. commercial for BIO HAZARD. The video file BIO_CM.STR was created October 26, 1995. The following text appears:
FEAR
HIGH TENSION
REALISTIC ACTION
LIFE OR DEATH
THE EVIL DEMONS OF DESTRUCTION
ONLY YOU CAN STOP THEM
BIOHAZARD
IT'S NOT JUST A GAME
"At Capcom, I sometimes encountered conflicts with my superiors regarding my musical approach, so that made it stressful at times," she told the website, originalsoundversion.com.
Masami Ueda
Born: 1970-11-19
"My position in Bio1 team was sound composition and arrangement."
He graduated from the Hyogo Prefectural Amagasaki-Kita High School in 1993 and the Department of Computer Music at Cat Music College [a private technical college in Osaka] in 1995. He joined CAPCOM in the same year.
He received no special instructions from Mikami and all his tracks were composed freely. In addition, he doesn't know Tomozawa in detail, though he later worked with Kaida on Okami and Bayonetta. The 1989 Famicom game, Sweet Home, did not influence his work.
"At the time, I was not making much music," recalls Ueda. "The main work was the work of the music data conversion." To clarify, he was largely responsible for midi to PSX sequence data conversion process.
We asked Ueda what was his favorite song he composed. "As you might expect, it was the save room song!"
Ippo Yamada
Born: 08-06
Blood type: A
Born in Kawasaki-Shi, Kanagawa, he graduated from the Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya High School and Faculty of Science at Chiba University. For detailed interviews with Ippo Yamada, please visit the following links:
http://www.siliconera.com/2008/10/04/mega-man-9-music-interview-with-int...
http://www.squareenixmusic.com/features/interviews/ippoyamada.shtml
Hideaki Utsumi
Born: 1973
"It was the first time I made sounds for an impressive game. I love all the sounds."
We contacted Mr. Utsumi who is now an instructor at the HAL Osaka College of Technology & Design about his role as sound designer. (He is also the sound design director of Biohazard 5.)
In 1995, he joined CAPCOM with ambitions to become a music composer, but instead was assigned to work on sound effects with Ippo Yamada. He has never played Sweet Home nor does he know the music composer, Junko Tamiya, of said title.
We asked him what his reasons were for joining CAPCOM. "It is a very difficult question to answer. Maybe I think that it was fate."
His instructions from Mikami were, "please aim at realistic sound like a movie." But those were the many horror movies he watched while working and he added, "It was very painful work for me because I hated the horror genre."
He was given a lot of freedom while producing the powerful sound effects, using only artwork and an instruction sheet. "I made the Hunter's sounds mostly from imagination," he recalls. "I used staff voices for the zombie moans." He doesn't remember who he used, but Shinji Mikami is one of them. On an interesting note, he used his own voice for one of the zombie moans in BIOHAZARD 2.
Describing the experience, he said, "It was a very good experience. The first game I made sound effects for was Bio Hazard. I'll never forget all those events. Moreover, Capcom was immediately facing bankruptcy at the time. However, everyone was very passionate and enthusiastic about game making."
In another interview, he described the experience as: "The basic idea, playing back samples, has not changed since the first Biohazard, but the data capacity increased drastically. The sound memory of the first Playstation was only 512k, which is less than the half of a floppy disc capacity. Also the music uses 256k, the half of it, and the other half is used for the sound effects. That is not even close to play realistic sounds, so I was struggling a lot to tweak the sampling rate and the data capacity at the time."
Famitaka Fuchigami
Born: 1973-08-02
Graduate of the now closed Pan School of Music and pop singer and who made his major debut with BIO HAZARD. "I wrote the words and sang the song of the opening and ending," he told us. The music was composed by Hiroshi Yasukawa and arranged by Koichi Hiroki.
You may not recall those words because the U.S. version received an instrumental version of the opening and ending theme, called "Icy Gaze" and "I Won't Let This End as a Dream".
In the first half of '95, CAPCOM signed a deal with Toshiba EMI, Inc. (now EMI Music Japan, Inc.), one of Japan's major music companies, to include Fuchigami in the game. However, according to Kamiya, it was entirely CAPCOM's decision and the development staff really hated to use it.
End.
Note: Sweet Home seems to have had no influence on the music composition and sound effects of BIO HAZARD even though the battle theme from said title was used in an early trailer from '95.
Makoto Tomozawa
Born: 08-04
"I worked on that project 15 years ago so I can't recall accurately, but..."
He graduated from the Tennoji High School attached to Osaka Kyoiku University in 1985 and Doshisha University in 1993. Joined Capcom in the same year.
He acted as music composer for the Super Famicom Rockman series, beginning with Rockman X under the alias of "Tomozou", released 1993-12-17, Rockman 7: Showdown of Destiny! under the alias of "V-Tomozoh", released 1995-03-24, and finally, Rockman X3, released 1995-12-01.
He remembers enrolling in the Bio development team in 1994, along with Ippo Yamada whom he worked with on Rockman 7. He received no special instructions from Mikami and proposed the idea to use sound like a movie, instead of a video game. He credited the other music composers as a very talented staff and didn't produce the song for dogs jumping through the window until the end of development. On that note, Kamiya said, "I forgot [who made the decision to include this scene]. We were discussing everyday how to frighten players."
Akari Kaida
Born: 1974-01-10
She graduated from the Hyogo Prefectural Miki-Kita High Schoolin 1992 and the Osaka College of Music with a major in jazz piano in 1993. Joined Capcom in 1994 due to it's close proximity to her house.
She composed some of the music for the Sega Saturn version of Street Fighter Zero, released 1996-01-26, under the alias of "Lemon", before enrolling in the Bio development team in 1995. The PlayStation version included a 1:46 sec. commercial for BIO HAZARD. The video file BIO_CM.STR was created October 26, 1995. The following text appears:
FEAR
HIGH TENSION
REALISTIC ACTION
LIFE OR DEATH
THE EVIL DEMONS OF DESTRUCTION
ONLY YOU CAN STOP THEM
BIOHAZARD
IT'S NOT JUST A GAME
"At Capcom, I sometimes encountered conflicts with my superiors regarding my musical approach, so that made it stressful at times," she told the website, originalsoundversion.com.
Masami Ueda
Born: 1970-11-19
"My position in Bio1 team was sound composition and arrangement."
He graduated from the Hyogo Prefectural Amagasaki-Kita High School in 1993 and the Department of Computer Music at Cat Music College [a private technical college in Osaka] in 1995. He joined CAPCOM in the same year.
He received no special instructions from Mikami and all his tracks were composed freely. In addition, he doesn't know Tomozawa in detail, though he later worked with Kaida on Okami and Bayonetta. The 1989 Famicom game, Sweet Home, did not influence his work.
"At the time, I was not making much music," recalls Ueda. "The main work was the work of the music data conversion." To clarify, he was largely responsible for midi to PSX sequence data conversion process.
We asked Ueda what was his favorite song he composed. "As you might expect, it was the save room song!"
Ippo Yamada
Born: 08-06
Blood type: A
Born in Kawasaki-Shi, Kanagawa, he graduated from the Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya High School and Faculty of Science at Chiba University. For detailed interviews with Ippo Yamada, please visit the following links:
http://www.siliconera.com/2008/10/04/mega-man-9-music-interview-with-int...
http://www.squareenixmusic.com/features/interviews/ippoyamada.shtml
Hideaki Utsumi
Born: 1973
"It was the first time I made sounds for an impressive game. I love all the sounds."
We contacted Mr. Utsumi who is now an instructor at the HAL Osaka College of Technology & Design about his role as sound designer. (He is also the sound design director of Biohazard 5.)
In 1995, he joined CAPCOM with ambitions to become a music composer, but instead was assigned to work on sound effects with Ippo Yamada. He has never played Sweet Home nor does he know the music composer, Junko Tamiya, of said title.
We asked him what his reasons were for joining CAPCOM. "It is a very difficult question to answer. Maybe I think that it was fate."
His instructions from Mikami were, "please aim at realistic sound like a movie." But those were the many horror movies he watched while working and he added, "It was very painful work for me because I hated the horror genre."
He was given a lot of freedom while producing the powerful sound effects, using only artwork and an instruction sheet. "I made the Hunter's sounds mostly from imagination," he recalls. "I used staff voices for the zombie moans." He doesn't remember who he used, but Shinji Mikami is one of them. On an interesting note, he used his own voice for one of the zombie moans in BIOHAZARD 2.
Describing the experience, he said, "It was a very good experience. The first game I made sound effects for was Bio Hazard. I'll never forget all those events. Moreover, Capcom was immediately facing bankruptcy at the time. However, everyone was very passionate and enthusiastic about game making."
In another interview, he described the experience as: "The basic idea, playing back samples, has not changed since the first Biohazard, but the data capacity increased drastically. The sound memory of the first Playstation was only 512k, which is less than the half of a floppy disc capacity. Also the music uses 256k, the half of it, and the other half is used for the sound effects. That is not even close to play realistic sounds, so I was struggling a lot to tweak the sampling rate and the data capacity at the time."
Famitaka Fuchigami
Born: 1973-08-02
Graduate of the now closed Pan School of Music and pop singer and who made his major debut with BIO HAZARD. "I wrote the words and sang the song of the opening and ending," he told us. The music was composed by Hiroshi Yasukawa and arranged by Koichi Hiroki.
You may not recall those words because the U.S. version received an instrumental version of the opening and ending theme, called "Icy Gaze" and "I Won't Let This End as a Dream".
In the first half of '95, CAPCOM signed a deal with Toshiba EMI, Inc. (now EMI Music Japan, Inc.), one of Japan's major music companies, to include Fuchigami in the game. However, according to Kamiya, it was entirely CAPCOM's decision and the development staff really hated to use it.
End.
Note: Sweet Home seems to have had no influence on the music composition and sound effects of BIO HAZARD even though the battle theme from said title was used in an early trailer from '95.