Takenobu Mitsuyoshi

Japan · Born 1967 · Composer, Vocalist & Voice Actor

The Sega composer who sang his own songs: he wrote and performed the vocals of Daytona USA, scored Virtua Racing and Shenmue, and voiced Akira and Kage-Maru in Virtua Fighter.

Takenobu Mitsuyoshi was born in Fukuoka on 25 December 1967 and studied at Tohoku Gakuin University before joining Sega in 1990. He has worked as a composer, vocalist and keyboardist across chiptune, rock and jazz fusion, and he performed with Sega's in-house band S.S.T. Band from 1988 to 1993 and later with the group [H.]. His early work was on Sega's arcade breakthrough into 3D: he composed music for Virtua Racing (1992). He gained wide recognition with Daytona USA, for which he not only wrote the music but sang the vocals himself — the racing game's exuberant, chanted songs became some of the most recognisable in arcade history, and players still associate the game with his voice. He also worked on Sega Rally Championship (1995) and Shenmue (1999). Mitsuyoshi's voice reached players in another way too. In the Virtua Fighter series he has voiced characters including Akira Yuki and Kage-Maru, making him one of the few game composers who is also a long-running character voice in the games he works on.