Hiroki Kikuta

Hiroki Kikuta is a self taught music composer who wrote the music for Secret of Mana 1 and 2, also known as Seiken Densetsu 2 and Seiken Densetsu 3. According to an interview, he was hired by Nobuo Uematsu, and had only two weeks to write all of the music in Seiken Densetsu 2! I think he was given more time to write for Seiken Densetsu 3 because that game's music is more varied. For example, SD2 has 50 themes in all, 3 of which are for bosses. SD3 has 69 themes, 11 of which are for bosses.

After SD3, the Seiken Densets team left Squaresoft and broke up to form Brownie Brown with the programmers and artists, and Hiroki Kikuta on his own. With the help of SNK he formed Sacnoth and was in charge of Koudelka and Shadow Hearts.

Very little is documented outside of his own personal sources about Hiroki Kikuta, both online and offline, other than that he was hired by composer Nobuo Uematsu for Square, Inc. (now Square Enix). He spent the years from 1991 to 1998 composing music for the games "Secret of Mana" ("Seiken Densetsu 2") (1993) and "Seiken Densetsu 3" (1995), games for the Super Famicom entertainment system (known as the Super Nintendo Entertainment system in North America). Kikuta left Square in 1998, organizing the formation of a new video game company, Sacnoth, with the help of an investment from SNK, Japan. Under his direction, the company produced "Koudelka" (1999, PSX) and "Shadow Hearts" (2001, PS2). Unfortunately, the economic depression that Japan suffered soon after Sacnoth's creation led Kikuta to retire from his position.

As of this writeup, Kikuta lives in Tokyo, Japan, where he is searching for a new project in which he can use his talents.

Source: Hiroki Kikuta's personal site at <http://www.zephyr.dti.ne.jp/~deadtech/>