While she was working on the score to Super Mario RPG the following year, she was asked to join Noriko Matsueda on the music to the futuristic role-playing game Front Mission. Her first project at Square was the score for the role-playing video game Live A Live in 1994. While working for Capcom, she was in the arcade department and was unable to transfer to the console department to work on their role-playing video game series Breath of Fire, although she did contribute one track to the first game in the series. She stated that the move was done because she was interested in writing "classical-style" music for fantasy role-playing games. In 1993, Shimomura left Capcom to join another game company, Square. She performed live with the group on a few occasions, including playing piano during Alph Lyla's appearance at the 1992 Game Music Festival. She was a member of the company's in-house band Alph Lyla, which played various Capcom game music, including pieces written by Shimomura. While she began her tenure at Capcom working on games for video game consoles, by 1990 she had moved to the arcade game division. The first soundtrack album to exclusively feature her work came a year later for the soundtrack to Street Fighter II. Final Fight, in 1989, was her first work to receive a separate soundtrack album release, on an album of music from several Capcom games. The first soundtrack she worked on at the company was for Samurai Sword in 1988. While working for Capcom, Shimomura contributed to the soundtracks of over 16 games, including the successful Street Fighter II, which she composed all but three pieces for. Her family and instructors were dismayed with her change in focus, as video game music was not well respected, and "they had paid tuition for an expensive music school and couldn't understand why would accept such a job", but Shimomura accepted the job at Capcom anyway. Capcom invited her in for an audition and interview, and she was offered a job there. Upon graduation, Shimomura intended to become a piano instructor and was extended a job offer to become a piano teacher at a music store, but as she had been an avid gamer for many years she decided to send some samples of her work to various video game companies that were recruiting at the university. Shimomura attended Osaka College of Music, and graduated as a piano major in 1988. She began composing her own music by playing the piano randomly and pretending to compose, eventually coming up with her own pieces, the first of which she says she still remembers how to play. She developed an interest for music at a young age, and started taking piano lessons "at the age of four or five". Shimomura was born on October 19, 1967, in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. She is also a member of the music label Brave Wave Productions. Music from several of her games have been published as arranged albums and piano scores. Her works have gained a great deal of popularity and have been performed in multiple video game music concerts. Other well-known games Shimomura has worked on include Super Mario RPG, the Mario & Luigi series, Parasite Eve, Legend of Mana, and Xenoblade Chronicles. Despite leaving Square Enix, she has continued to compose for the Kingdom Hearts series and other games such as The 3rd Birthday and Final Fantasy XV. She founded a music production company, Midiplex, the following year. She would later become better known for writing the music for Kingdom Hearts, which was her last game at Square before leaving to become a freelancer in 2002. Shimomura left Capcom and joined Square (now Square Enix) in 1993, with her first project there being Live A Live. She wrote music for several games there, including Final Fight, Street Fighter II, and The King of Dragons. She graduated from the Osaka College of Music in 1988 and began working in the video game industry by joining Capcom the same year. Yoko Shimomura ( 下村 陽子, Shimomura Yōko, born October 19, 1967) is a Japanese composer and pianist primarily known for her work in video games.
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