Junya Nakano has had music in his life since the age of 3, when his parents enrolled him on music courses and bought him an Organ, which is what encouraged him to follow a career in music. At the age of 8 years old, he then found that he had a liking for video games as well as the usage of computers and it was only natural that he would want to combine the two of these things. In 1985 that’s exactly what he did when he started creating MIDI files on his PC and when he went to vocational school, his love for music technolgy grew even stronger.

When he graduated from his school, he instantly applied to Konami and was given the job straight away. He spent 4 years working for Konami in their arcade game department before he along with Kenichiro Fukui left Konami and joined Square.

In only his second project for Square, he was given the task of composing the music for the game Front Mission: Gun Hazard on the SNES alongside Yasunori Mitsuda, Nobuo Uematsu and Masashi Hamauzu. Although he only composed 4 tracks on the soundtrack, he was continuing to add to his growing reputation.

In 2001, he was given the task of composing the Original Soundtrack for Final Fantasy X alongside Nobuo Uematsu and Masashi Hamauzu once again. This showed the confidence that Square had in his ability as it was the first “major” game that he had been given the task of composing for and he was also given the task of producing some of the arranged albums for the games music.

Junya still works for Square Enix, and he is currently working alongside Masashi Hamauzu on Musashi: Samurai Legend.

Vital Information