Yoshinori Sasaki
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Yoshinori Sasaki (better known as Moai Sasaki) is a Japanese composer, sound designer, and sound programmer, known for his numerous works with Konami. He was born on February 20, 1961. He graduated from Doshisha University, Faculty of Economics. Sasaki got into music when he was in junior high when he started to play music. In 1984, he started working for Konami, and as a result was a part of the Konami Kukeiha Club, making him one of the oldest members of Konami's sound team. He started out composing various arcade games for the company such as Road Fighter and TwinBee. When the company focused their attention on the MSX, he worked on those games such as Yie Ar Kung-Fu. He is known for games such as Penguin Adventure and Hi no Tori. His likeness also served as the enemy Moai found in the Gradius series.
In the 1990s, he received less credits for music, and started to be credited as a programmer. Despite not having much experience, he was the lead programmer of the X68000 port of Gradius II. However, Sasaki explained that his previous experience as a sound programmer for Konami helped with his development of the game. He also was a programmer for games such as the Genesis titles Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist and Lethal Enforcers. In addition, Sasaki was the director of the Sega CD version of Snatcher.
Around 1991, Sasaki stopped working on game audio altogether, and later became the executive producer for Konami Computer Entertainment Nagoya. It appears he later returned to programming up until 2015, and retired from the game industry around then.
Gameography
Aliases
Yoshinori was usually credited as Moai Sasaki. This was because his face is said to have resembled a Moai.
Links
- w.atwiki.jp/gamemusicbest100/pages/7535.html - Atwiki.jp (Japanese).
