He had made his mark at Taito with fairly impressive scores like Space Gun, Arabian Magic, Light Bringer, Grid Seeker, Chaos Heat and Lost Magic. For Super Sweep, he had released a solo album "Keep walking down the Steps", composed for G.Rev's Doki Doki Idol Starseeker and Will's Mama-San Volleyball. He had also contributed an arrangement on Masashi Yano's Tobi D+vine soundtrack and had a piece on the recent Technic Beat soundtrack.

He shall be missed.  I have several of his Taito and Super Sweep works. It was good while it lasted. Thanks for the great music over the years, Furukawa-san !

His Home Page

It used to be loaded with info, but now it only has a message that he closes down on June 30th.

Tragic to lose a genius so quickly !

For what it may be worth, I think you're making a federal case about the end of his personal website. He's just closing the site for some reasons while still keeping his mixi (a major social networking service where many famous composers have accounts) page update, and there isn't any indication of him retiring from the business.

That being said, we can take this opportunity as 'a lesser known composer appreciation thread' and I’d like to read what you think of him.

Aw nuts !!  This is what happens when I throw the text in Excite JP English Translation =/

Can you provide more info about that specific connection service for composers ?

I certainly don't see anything that points to such on his site.

Edit: I discovered him first on the Mama-San Volleyball OST, which I do enjoy for its music is very groovy and amusing. Then I bumped into Light Bringer somehow and I really liked what I heard there, so I hunted down more of his albums like Grid Seeker and Chaos Heat.

His music is usually very accessible and has some catchy melodies and makes great use of synth samples.

I guess that's pretty much it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixi

I no longer have my account anymore, but of VGM composers, Shimomura, Kikuta, Iwadare, Ito, quite a few (ex) Namco composers (including Keiki Kobayashi, the living god) and perhaps many other composers who I didn't bother to find were there.

As is written in the wikipedia page, registration of our cell phone mail adress has been required after some infamous incidents, and that makes it pretty hard to infiltrate it  from outside Japan.

I just want to say, you know, since most of us are generally on the same page here, people should use methods to hear samples from the Lost Magic soundtrack (ZTTL-9001), because it's pretty catchy (if a bit repetitive). Purchasing from iTunes Japan (no disc release, sadly) while not in Japan is rather a pain, but I'm fairly sure it's still not impossible.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/9/1/1 … nes%29.m4a
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/9/1/1 … ple%29.m4a
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/9/1/1 … tle%29.m4a
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/9/1/1 … ave%29.m4a
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/9/1/1 … ess%29.m4a

while that's not necessarily representative of the entire soundtrack, it's pretty good at showing (or sounding) what I'd like to hear more of from DS games.  It's just more.....organic, I guess? Regardless, I'd love to have more Furukawa music in games that people actually end up hearing about.