Yuzo Koshiro (古代祐三, born 1967) is a video game music composer, programmer, and the president of the video game company Ancient Corp. He is the main music composer for the Streets of Rage series, and is also known for his work on Nihom Falcon's Dragon Slayer and Ys series.
Koshiro got music lessons since an early age, being taught by his mother, Tomo Koshiro, and the famous film composer, Joe Hisaishi. While he was still in high school during the early 1980s, Koshiro began composing music on the NEC PC-8801 as a hobby, including mockups of early arcade game music from Namco, Konami, and Sega. The sequencing skills and experience he gained from this would later be utilized in his early video game projects. The video games that influenced him most were The Tower of Druaga, Space Harrier, and Gradius. The video game music soundtracks to these games inspired him to become a video game composer. As an adult, he 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 Sega'S Revenge of Shinobi, prompting the company to contract him for future projects.
In a 1992 interview, Koshiro said that his favorite music genres are new wave, dance music, technopop, classical, and hard rock, and that his favorite Western bands are Van Halen and Soul II Soul.
In 1990, Koshiro founded Ancient Corp. along with his sister and illustrator Ayano Koshiro. While working at 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, Namco × Capcom, and many others. His latest work is in the upcoming Yacht Club Games' title, Mina the Hollower, where he contributed with two tracks as a guest composer.
In 2019, he was brought back as a guest composer for the soundtrack of Streets of Rage 4, along with Motohiro Kawashima, Yoko Shimomura, Hideki Naganuma and Keiji Yamagishi. Him and the other guests became responsible for the boss themes, while the composition of the stages and other pieces were made by Olivier Derivière.