Junichi Masuda

is a Japanese video game composer, director, designer, producer, singer, programmer and trombonist, best known for his work in the Pokémon franchise. He was a member of Game Freak where he was an employee and executive at the company since 1989 after Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori founded it, starting as a music composer. In 2022, Masuda was appointed to be Chief Creative Fellow at The Pokémon Company.

With the development of new Pokémon games, Masuda took new roles in future projects. He began to produce and direct games, starting with Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, and became responsible for approving new character models. His style seeks to keep games accessible while still adding increasing levels of complexity. His work sticks to older mainstays of the series, including a focus on handheld game consoles and 2D graphics. His music draws inspiration from the work of celebrated modern composers like Dmitri Shostakovich, though he used the Super Mario series as a model of good video game composition.

Life Masuda was born on January 12, 1968, in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. As a child, his family often vacationed in Kyūshū, where he spent his time catching fish and insects. Masuda was inspired by his time there to base the Pokémon series's Hoenn Region after it. In high school, Masuda played the trombone; he soon discovered classical music, and was drawn in by works like Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5.

Masuda attended the Japan Electronics College, a technical school in Shinjuku, Tokyo, where he studied computer graphics and the C programming language using a DEC Professional. His daughter Kiri was born in September 2002; he named a character in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire after her.

Career

Masuda has worked at Game Freak since the company's inception in 1989, and has been involved in nearly every title that Game Freak has produced. He was first hired to compose video game music, where his first game at Game Freak was Mendel Palace, a 1989 puzzle game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. After Mendel Palace, he worked on Yoshi, the company's first collaboration with Nintendo. He served as a member of the Game Freak board of directors.

June, 2014, Masuda was present for the opening of The Pokémon Center Paris the first Pokémon store in Europe held at the historic Cremerie de Paris. a landmark location connected to Gabrielle Chanel and her friend the Russian composer Igor Stravinski.

On September 28, 2018, Masuda revealed that during the early years of developing Pokémon games, "game data was nearly lost in a computer crash". Masuda described it as "the most nerve-racking moment in development", saying "We were developing the game on these Unix computer stations called the Sun SPARCstation 1. We're developing, and they're these Unix boxes, and they crashed quite a bit."

On November 1, 2018, Masuda stated that Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! would likely be his final time serving as director for the main series Pokémon games. The development torch to was passed to Shigeru Ohmori, who had previously assume lead director of Pokémon Sun and Moon. However afterwards, he served as a director for Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, developed by ILCA.

Masuda produced the Japanese ending themes "Pokémon Shiritori" and "Batsugun Type" for Pokémon Journeys with Japanese electronic group Pasocom Music Club.

On June 1, 2022, Masuda left Game Freak to The Pokémon Company, acting as Chief Creative Fellow.

Influences and style Masuda approaches each of his games with the mindset that a beginner should be able to easily play it. In view of this, his games begin in an easily approachable and accessible style, with more layers of complexity being introduced as the player progresses through the game.

Most of his ideas draw inspiration from simply observing real life and visualizing how he would design or draw outside objects. As a rule, he does not use previous characters as inspirations for new ones, instead creating each new one from independent sources.

Masuda's musical style draws from a number of sources, particularly classical music and the works of Igor Stravinsky and Dmitri Shostakovich. His favorite musical genre is techno, and he has looked to the music of the Super Mario series as an example of video game music that works well.

Works