Ryu Umemoto

was a Japanese video game music composer, born in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture. He was a descendant of the 16th-century daimyō Takeda Shingen. He was also a practitioner of Zen Buddhism, which had a strong influence on his melodic music, much of which had spiritual undertones: he incorporated scale and key changes and time signatures in a way that would mathematically reference Zen concepts, such as angles of holy temples or mountains, meditative breathing rhythms or lucky numbers. The first video game he ever played was Taito's Elevator Action.

He never had any formal education in music, but was entirely self-taught, and had often experimented with synthesizers since he was young. His musical influences included electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra and video game composer Yuzo Koshiro. During high school, Umemoto began doing freelance projects for personal computer game soundtracks. His first assignment was for the company FamilySoft, after sending them some demo works.

He then worked as a freelance musician on various projects for other companies such as and ELF Corporation, often working closely with scenario writer Hiroyuki Kanno, with whom he became friends. His first major projects were for several C's Ware visual novels, beginning with the 1994 title Desire, an eroge science fiction adventure game. He then worked with ELF, for which he composed the soundtrack for their most famous visual novel, YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world (1996).

Soundtracks

Soundtracks composed by Umemoto include the following:

1992: Hibiki (PC-98) Mobile Suit Gundam Hyper Classic Operation (FM Towns) Square Resort: Hyper Senshasen (X68000)

1993: Azure (FM Towns) Dengeki Division (PC-98) Macross: Remember Me (PC-98) Mobile Suit Gundam: A Year of War (PC-98) Mobile Suit Gundam: Return of Zion (PC-98) MSX Train (MSX) Princess Maker 2 (PC-98, FM Towns, PC Engine, Saturn, MS-DOS, Windows, Classic Mac OS, GP32) (arrangement of 2 tracks for a music CD) Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (PC-98) War Torn Versnag (X68000)

1994: Desire: Spiral of Immorarity (PC-98, Saturn, Windows, PlayStation 2) Macross: Skull Leader (PC-98) Macross: Love Stories (PC-98) (PC-98, FM Towns)

1995: EVE Burst Error (PC-98, FM Towns, Saturn, Windows, PlayStation 2)

1996: (PC-98) Mahou Shoujo Fancy Coco (PC-98) Rema the Truth (Windows) YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world (PC-98, Saturn, Windows)

2002: Popotan (Windows)

2003: Eclipse (Windows)

2005: Espgaluda II (Arcade, i-mode, iOS) Glas Auszeichnung (Windows)

2006: CrymeRhymeParadox (Windows) Ano Machi no Koi no Uta (Windows) StoneAge2 (Windows)

2007: R.U.R.U.R. (Windows)

2000: Psyvariar "The Mix" (Arcade, PlayStation 2)

2009: Contrasta: Monochrome Fairytale (Windows) Kaiten Illust Puzzle Guruguru Logic (Nintendo DSi) Kitto, sumi wataru asa shoku yorimo (Windows) Snapdots (Nintendo DSi)

2010: Espgaluda II Black Label (Xbox 360) Akai Katana (Arcade) Akai Katana Shin (Xbox 360)

2011: Nin2-Jump (Xbox Live Arcade) Instant Brain (Xbox 360) Mushihimesama Version 1.5 (Arcade)