Just to compliment Nemo's popular thread, I present you with the exact opposite.

I'll list a few for now and the works I think they should be recognized for.  Basically, list some composers or groups you think do a fine job but for some reason either get a bad rap or no rap at all.  These can be current composers or people we haven't heard from in a while.

Kentaro Kobayashi (aka Kentaro Koyama)
Cyber Troopers Virtual-On series, Virtua Cop, Sega Rally 2006

Gon Ohtsuji
Minna no Golf (Hot Shots Golf) series

Kimitaka Matsumae
Kileak The Blood, Jade Cocoon series, his work in the S.S.T. Band

Mayuko Kageshita
Skygunner, Mad Maestro!, Suikoden

Kenji Eno
D series, Sega Rally 2, Space Channel 5 Remix Tracks

Toshihiko Horiyama
Rockman X, X3, and X4, Gyakuten Saiban 4

Noriko Matsueda & Takahito Eguchi (as a team)
Final Fantasy X-2, The Bouncer

Naofumi Hataya
Sonic CD, Space Channel 5, Golden Axe 2, NiGHTS, Burning Rangers

Feel free to disagree with mine and speak your mind.  List and talk about anybody you think deserves (more) attention.  Let's hear it!

Edit: Added very handy VGMdb artist links.

-Mike

Toshihiko Horiyama gets another vote from me. As for some other additions:

Tsuyoshi Sekito - more known for "arranging" than actual "composing"
- All Star Pro Wrestling II, Brave Fencer Musashi (everybody is probably sick of me talking up BFM)

Makoto Tomozawa
- Rockman DASH series

Akemi Kimura
- Rockman X6~X8, Gyakuten Saiban 2

Yayoi Wachi
- Panzer Dragoon II Zwei

Nathan McCree
- Tomb Raider 1 & 2

Tomohito Nishiura (Dark Cloud 1 / 2)
Takayuki Hattori (IQ Final Perfect Music File, Argent Soma [Anime])
Masahiro Ando (Arc the Lad)
44.0, Minako Seki, Hitomi Tachibana, Seiichi Kyoda etal (TearRingSaga, Berwick Saga)

Too many really, but how about:

Toshiaki Sakoda - MUSHA, Riviera, Aleste 2

Ryuji Sasai - Final Fantasy USA, Xak.

T's Music (I love these guys) - Sapphire, Super Darius II, Dangun Fever-on, Gate of Thunder, Lords of Thunder

Tsukasa "Macco" Masuko - Dungeon Explorer, number of Megami Tensei games

.

The Genesis Sonic composers.
The music itself is by no means underrated or unknown but the composers are.
I know STH 1 and 2 were done by the writer of a famous Japanese band ("Dreams Come True") but he hardly gets recognized for it.
And STH3... it's not even sure whether Michael Jackson had a hand in it or not... although I lean to not... but then again he was involved with the (awesome) game Moonwalker...

I was gonna say him but I figured most people knew of him and thought highly of him.  But now that you mention it, he really doesn't get much praise so let's keep him on the list.  His work on the Arc the Lad and Gran Turismo series really deserves some recognition, as well as his involvement in his "BAD" band and of course T-Square.  It's a shame he only has one track on the upcoming GT5 Prologue soundtrack.

-Mike

I'm gonna add Keiichi Sugiyama for Rez, Lumines remixes winter (the wind is wailing!!), and Sonic Heroes.  This is a guy I'd really love to see more of.

Rika Muranaka deserves some props for writing several VGM vocals back in the PS1/PS2 era.  Her credits include I am the Wind from Castlevania Symphony of the Night, The Best Is Yet to Come from Metal Gear Solid, Can't Say Goodbye to Yesterday from MGS2, and Esperándote from Silent Hill.

Much respect to the Japanese band COIL for their kick-ass work on the Gitarooman soundtrack.  Gitarooman is hands down one of my favorite music game soundtracks and COIL is responsible for most of it.  I'd love to see them do more VGM.

-Mike

The wind is fuckin wailing!!! Great track, great album, great dude. I didn't know he worked on Sonic Heroes. I'll have to dig that up and check it out.

My picks:

- Akemi Kimura (Rockman X6, Gyakuten Saiban 2)
- h ueda (Lumines remixes winter, Every Extend Extra)
- Masakazu Sugimori (Gyakuten Saiban, Viewtiful Joe)
- Misao Senbogi & Shusaku Uchiyama (Biohazard 4 [team], Devil May Cry [MS], Rockman 8 [SU])
- Nobuo Uemtasu (Final Fantasy series, Gun Hazard, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey)
- Nosleeves (DELIGHT in DAYLIGHT, Swinging Circuit, SUPERB! [who the hell is this guy?!])
- SoundTeMP (Granado Espada)
- Steve Kirk (Voodoo Vince)
- Tom Colvin (Sudeki)

EDIT: Up until this point I hadn't realized that the same dude that composed the campy and bouncy Rockman 8 was the same dude that contributed to Biohazard 4. That's some serious versatility right there!

Yeah that's crazy.  Looks like Shusaku Uchiyama did a track on the DMC4 Special Soundtrack and he also co-composed Biohazard 2 with Masami Ueda and Syun Nishigaki, which I didn't know until just now.

I'll have to check this guy out, can't say I've ever heard of him before.  And what's this "Final Fantasy" series you speak of?  Google here I come!

-Mike

I though I had exhausted all my Ryuji Sasai material.  I had no idea that he was responsible for this series as well.  Thanks Nemo!

As for me..

Hidenori Shoji - Super Monkey Ball 2 (duh)
Shusaku Uchiyama - Megaman 8, P.N. 03
Wizet Sound Team - Maple Story (I love that soundtrack.)
Junko Tamiya - Little Nemo the Dream Master, Bionic Commando
Akitaka Tohyama - Some Katamari, R-Racing Evolution, Tekken (even though the tekken stuff bores me to tears)
Nekomata Master (Naoyuki Sato) - Bemani series
Yasuhisa "Yack" Watanabe - Senko no Ronde, Metal Black, Border Down (I know probably everyone's heard of him, or at least listened to his stuff, so I don't know how "Underrated/Unknown" he is.")

Any arranged album with M&M composing and O'bits project producing/arranging.  I'm sure most of you have never heard of them but I highly recommend giving these few CDs a listen.  Double Dragon II The Revenge, V'Ball, the Ninja Gaiden 2 arrange album, and some High School Dodgeball arrange album.  They all contain insanely good jazzy-ish arrangements of old NES classics.  I have V'Ball on the way from YJA and I'm very excited cause that CD is pretty rare especially in the condition I grabbed it in.

-Mike

Hoo boy, tooooo many to make a just list. But just off the top of my head...

kt2 (No Reality, Abandoner, For You... From Here the Edge, Lost Child - Infinia, History Repeats Itself)
Toshiko Tasaki (Devil Summoner 1, Soul Hackers, Persona 2 - IS & EP, Shin Megami Tensei III)
Naoki Kodaka (Batman (NES & Mega Drive), Journey to Silius, Blaster Master, Hebereke/Ufouria, Fester's Quest, Albert Odessey series, etc.)
Tokuhiko Uwabo, Izuho Takeuchi & Masaki Nagagaki (The composers of the original Phantasy Star series, also known as BO, IPPO, and GAKICHAN. The PS music is often mentioned, but not the composers)
Manfred Linzner (Iridion Perfect Selection!)
Hitomi Shimizu (Forbidden Siren)
Hiroyuki Iwatsuki (Pocky And Rocky series, Wild Guns, etc.)
Kazunaka Yamane (Mr. Double Dragon)
Miyamo Shant (Guardian Legend, Zanac, Golvellius)
Iku Mizutani & Kouichi Yamanishi (lots of old classic NES and SNES action soundtracks like Shatterhand, Shadow of the Ninja, etc.)
Kinuyo Yamashita (composer of the original Castlevania and Metal Gear games)
Tatsuya Uemura (Toaplan's awesome shoot-em-up composer. Tiger Heli, Zero Wing, Hellfire, etc.)
Masahiro Ikariko (Metal Gear 2 - Solid Snake)
Nobuhito Koise (Exile)
Motoaki Takenouchi (Landstalker, Shining Force II)
Hiroshi Miyauchi (Sword of Vermilion)
Taro Kudou (Castlevania IV, Axelay)
Barry Leitch (lots of classic soundtracks for systems like the Amiga and SNES, like EEK! The Cat, Lotus series, Silk Worm series, Top Gear series, etc.)
Timothy Follin (too many to mention, but Solstice, Equinox, and Silver Surfer stand out for me)
Harumi Fujita (Skyblazer, SNES Spawn, etc.)
Norikazu Miura (mainly for Gradius Gaiden)
Kurt Harland & Jim Hedges (Legacy of Kain series)

*loads revolver*

EDIT: Edited this post to reflect the new information below (Sotaro Tojima ---> Taro Kudou).

Oh, snap! Did Tojima do all of CV4? And where'd you get that tasty info? Everything I have is just credited to the Club.

Check out the Castlevania section at SEMO.

Nope, he did it with Masanori Adachi, who could just as well go on my list (I think that guy did Contra III also, but I could be mistaken).

As for the tasty info, do you mean CV4 specifically of the other stuff? I got it from online VGM databases, game credits, and generally being around in the VGM scene for 10+ years and having a decent historian's memory.

Any specific credit I mentioned that you would like the source to?

Niiiiice. Time to update the old iTunes!

I was just curious about the stuff that's on Dracula Best and DB2. If you have 'em on hand that would be cool, but if not, no biggie. I just have that all blocked off as "KONAMI Kukeiha Club" on my iTunes.

The CV4 info is from the game's own credits. Castlevania Adventure 1 & 2 seems to have been composed by Hidehiro Funauchi, Kazuo Hanzawa, Shigeru Fukutake (source 1, source 2). Not sure if that's correct, though. As for Dracula Best 1, Castlevania 1 was composed by Kinuyo Yamashita (source 1, source 2). CV3 seems composed by H. Maezawa, Jun Funahashi, and Yukie Morimoto (see the CV Dungeon link), and CV2 by Kenichi Matsubara (the name behind "Bloody Tears"!).

Take all this with a grain of salt, though. The only credit in this post I can say for certain is correct is CV4.

Wrong you are.  If you do a little digging you'll find that Souji Taro, composer of Super Castlevania IV, is not the same person as Sotaro Tojima of Kojima Productions.  According to sites like snesmusic.org, the GMCL, and Kojima Productions' own site, you can easily find that they're two different people.  Tojima joined Konami in 1999, eight years after CV4 was released.  No one knows what happened to our beloved Souji Taro (also known as Taro Kudou, btw) but one thing is for sure, he didn't take an eight year vacation and then suddenly join up at Konami again.

http://ng-stg.hp.infoseek.co.jp/gm/name/to.html

http://ng-stg.hp.infoseek.co.jp/gm/name/ku.html

http://snesmusic.org/v2/profile.php?set&selected=2623

http://konami.jp/kojima_pro/japanese/pr … ojima.html

http://home.nycap.rr.com/mterry/cv4.png

-Mike

Ah, nice! Thanks for pointing it out, had no idea (I'm not the first one to make this mistake, though).

How about Axelay? That one was by Taro Kudou, right?

Zane - Most Konami games gave individual sound credits in the end credits at least. At SEMO, I've tried to provide accurate game credits for their popular series / composers found here:

http://www.squareenixmusic.com/companie … ames.shtml
http://www.squareenixmusic.com/companie … aphy.shtml

The section is due to be expanded and, for some games, more composers might be involved than listed. It's definitely the best available right now. GMCL is very good for individual composer credits for Konami titles, though in Japanese.

Anyway, some of my favourite lesser-known composers:

Kenichiro Fukui - I respect his versatility and meticulousness on projects like Einhander, Front Mission 5, The Black Mages, Violent Storm, Hanjuku Hero 4, and Project Sylpheed

Keiki Kobayashi - While the Namco Sound Team gets quite a lot of recognition, I feel the individual composers lack it and I've found Kobayashi's Ace Combat works to be the best of the lot

Kenta Nagata - I thought he did a great job establishing the nautical sound and making the main themes for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker while Mario Kart 64, Big Brain Academy, and Animal Crossing demonstrated his broader capacity

Mutsuhiko Izumi - I hear a lot about amazing game music guitarists, but Izumi is definitely underexposed. Although I don't follow bemani much, his earlier Konami contributions are also impressive, especially the TMNT and Snatcher series

Masami Ueda - I've heard a lot of credit for the Okami soundtracks, but Ueda's work on Biohazard 2, Devil May Cry, and the Viewtiful Joe series was fantastic too.

Masato Kouda - Former Capcom composer who has gone strength to strength on the Wild Arms series while also making formidable Devil May Cry, Darkstalkers, Monster Hunter, and Star Onions contributions.

Yoshino Aoki - Continuing with the Capcom theme, I love Aoki's works on Breath of Fire IV (and, to a lesser extent, III) and Mega Man series.

Hisayoshi Ogura - As far as historical figures go, Hisayoshi Ogura is right up there with the best. I respect how he's led the Zuntata team and also enjoy his Darius, Zoids Infinity, Arkanoid, and live works.

Toshikazu Tanaka - His SNK soundtracks manage to be so creative without loss of accessibility or energy. Metal Slug 4 & 5, Gaia Crusaders, and King of Fighters Maximum Impact 1 & 2 are all excellent.

Kohei Tanaka - Pretty well known for his anime works, but I wish the Alundra, Tengai Makyou, Sakura Taisen, and Lennus series would gain more recognition.

Takayuki Nakamura - I have a lot of respect for this guy. Interesting Sega past and he is now definitely one of the ones leading the industry in terms of fighting game soundtracks (Kengo, Guilty Gear Petit 1 & 2, King of Fighters EX, WWR Raw 1 & 2, Custom Robo: Battle Revolution, Ninety-Nine Nights, Ehrgeiz, Tobal 2). But it's his Lumines and Meteos work that I really love.

Lunar Knights: one of my favorite recent soundtracks that I never see mentioned in places like this.  The game manual doesn't list a composer, just a lot of people under "sound" --- anyone have any info?

From the list posted immediately above:

Hiroe Noguchi, Masashi Watanabe, Masanori Akita, Akihiro Honda, Shuichi Kobori, Nobuko Toda, Yuichi Tsuchiya, Yasuhiro Ichihashi, Tsutomu Watanabe, Tomoharu Nakano, Rie Yamatani, Yutaka Shimoyama, Rie Nakano, Hideyuki Suzuki, Kazuki Muraoka

That's the 'sound unit', i.e. not just composers (individual credits not available).

I knew I could count on you to mention these two. It apparently turns out that "Miyamo Shant" is in fact two composers collaborating, but I forget their individual names. Don't forget they composed Blazing Lazers too! Compile was such a cool developer.

That'd be Masato Nakamura. I think he gets plenty of recognition personally, but far be it from me to stand in the way of anyone praising the composer of the Chemical Plant Zone music.

Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles were composed by Jackson's producers/composers. Go Google their names some time, and you'll find that they were almost all involved with Jackson in some way. Be sure to compare the Sonic 3 credits tune with Jackson's "Stranger in Moscow" for a real smoking gun on this connection.

These are all great, but I'm not too fond of the vocal tracks. "Some High School Dodgeball album" is Nekketsu Koukou Dodgeball Bu: Soccer Hen, AKA Nintendo World Cup to us Westerners. It's part of the great Nekketsu/Kunio-kun series, which leads me to my sole contrubution to this thread:

Kazuo Sawa - badass behind all of the NES/Famicom Kunio-kun games, including River City Ransom, Super Dodge Ball, Nintendo World Cup and Crash n' the Boys: Street Challenge, as well as several Japanese-exclusive games in the series.

Heh yeah, I remember doing a little research on this a while back.  Check this video out too for a nice comparison of a few tracks.  My take on it is that Jackson got his people to do the music and he was just going to take credit for it.  But since he started feeling up little boys, some of the music was left in but the actual composers (all of his people) got the credit.  Very interesting stuff.

-Mike

I heard somewhere (I think it was on these forums many years ago) that this guy also composed Battle of Olympus. You know if that's correct? BoO's soundtrack was great.

He sure did.  GMCL comes to the rescue again!

http://ng-stg.hp.infoseek.co.jp/gm/name/sa.html (towards the bottom of the page)

Also DK, yes, Taro Kudou composed Axelay.

-Mike

If it's anything like V'Ball then that sounds good to me.  I guess I'll be checking this CD out later tonight then.

-Mike

That album's sorta inconsistent, but the good bits are good. I went ahead and made a zip of the NSFs for all the games in the series if you want to check that out.

[edit]: I seem to be missing Kunio-kun no Nekketsu Soccer League (the Japanese sequel to Nintendo World Cup). I thought it had been ripped, but I can't seem to find it anywhere.

I want to add Kou Hayashi to the list.
Now composer at Milestone, he's responsible for many tracks in Zanac Neo, Zanac x Zanac, Radirgy, Chaos Field, Karous.. He mainly composes techno/trance.

This list needs Tsukumo Hyakutaro.  He composed the music for Thunder Force V, Hyper Duel, and most of the music on the Broken Thunder album.  I wanna say he was the composer for the Blast Wind music as well, but the style is a bit different.  Can anyone confirm/deny that?

How about Manabu Namiki?  I'm not a big fan of dancey-trancey, techno-style music.  But I like what he does on Ke-tsui, Battle Garegga, and Mushihimesama.  I thought I heard some hints of his composition while watching some DeathSmiles movies.  Did he compose music for that game?

And what about Yasuhisa Watanabe (Yack)?  Despite being a former Zuntata member, I don't think his work gets enough recognition.  After he hooked me with Border Down, I had to get some of his older stuff.  Metal Black -the first- is still a great album, and the Senko no Ronde music is among my favorites.

Word for those three. I found Fukui through Einhander and shortly after that, got Project Sylpheed and FM5's soundtracks. His techno side is nice and fresh each time. "Badlands" kicks ass.

As for Kobayashi: AC final battle themes for the win. "Zero", "The Unsung War", and "Megalith: Angus Dei" rocked. Epic.

Ueda? DMC1, baby. How can you go wrong with tracks like "S" and the Griffon battle theme song? How?

Ryu Umemoto gets my vote. Heck, most of you probably don't even know about this guy already. He's one of the FM masters (along with Yuzo Koshiro and the Tecnosoft composers). Pity that the two games with his work released in english (Desire and Eve: Burst Error) had crappy MIDI arranges...

Stephane Picq should get a mention for his Dune work (Amiga version was pretty great, but the PC Adlib soundtracks is just about the only instance I can recall of OPL2 sounding good).

Martin Ivesone was responsible for a whole slew of Amiga Core Design games. I'm sure most of you know him for his Tomb Raider work, but seriously, Tomb Raider < Bubba 'n Stix.

Already mentioned, but he warrants the attention. 

I used to have high hopes for Kota Hoshino until Chromehounds and Armored Core 4. He seems completely burned out. Being the diehard AC fan that I am, I'll still check the For Answer OST. I'm assuming he composed it himself so I'll have to prepare for more suckage. If Tsukasa Saitoh was back in the Sound Director's seat there could be great hope for it, though.

Tetsuro Sato (WASi303) blew my mind with his arrangement of "Bonds of Steel" on the Ibara remix CD. I wish he would've arranged the whole OST! Unfortunately, nothing else of his I've checked out (Psyvariar 1 & 2, Shooting Love '07) has matched the brilliance of that track but I'll be keeping an eye on him, for sure.

*EDIT*

How could I forget Akihito Ohkawa (Zero Divide 1 & 2, Super Speed Racing, Mister Mosquito)? Anyone know what he's doing these days? I see that Zoom is in the mobile phone gaming market these days. God, I hope he's not composing for cell phone games. What a waste of talent that would be.