Yuzo Koshiro (古代祐三, born 1967) is a video game music composer and programmer and president of Ancient. He is the main music composer for the Streets of Rage series.
Koshiro got music lessons since an early age, being taught by his moter and famous film composer Joe Hisaishi. During the 80s he became interested in music composition for video games and was hired by Nihon Falcom, where he composed the soundtracks for Legacy of the Wizard, Sorcerian and Ys I & II. He eventually left Falcom in 1988 and became a freelancer, during which time he produced the soundtrack for Revenge of Shinobi for Sega, prompting the company to contract him for future projects.
In 1990 Koshiro founded Ancient Corp. along with his sister and illustrator Ayano Koshiro. While working with Ancient, he composed the soundtrack for the Master System version of Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991. In the same year he also composed the soundtrack for Streets of Rage, and in the subsequent year he composed the soundtrack for Streets of Rage 2. His works in the Streets of Rage series are some of his most recognizable ones and considered ahead of their time.
His company produced the games on the Actraiser and Beyond Oasis series, all of which he composed for. He would go on to compose the soundtracks for various series such as Shenmue, Etrian Odyssey and 7th Dragon and many others. In 2019 he was brought back to compose the soundtrack for Streets of Rage 4, along with Motohiro Kawashima, Yoko Shimomura, Hideki Naganuma and Keiji Yamagishi.
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