Site Contributors :: Luc (aka Z-Freak)

Biography

My introduction to gaming started with Super Mario Bros back in '87. It took until Super Mario Bros 3 was released in '88 to get me really into gaming. I also recall renting a game called MegaMan 2. Not knowing what to expect, I decided to try something new for a change. The minute I started playing, I picked on the gameplay immediately, and I found myself enjoying this action game so much. This was the first game that really got me thinking "Wow, that's some really great music right there!!" I tried some other games, some of which included Karnov, The Legend of Zelda, and Bubble Bobble. With each of these games, I paid extra attention to the music. That was probably some time in '89.

Fast forwarding to 1995, I was enjoying a lot of the SNES games out then; I recall that my favourite game music was Demon's Crest. A friend of mine insists I try this game called Final Fantasy III. I was always under the impression of these "quest" type games being really boring and not worth checking out. I decide to bite the bullet and give this game a shot. I got through Narshe fairly easily, and then I encounter the Whelk. The moment the music, "Another World of Beasts," played, I was surprised by its quality and its progression as I was fighting the giant snail. From that moment on, my interest in RPG's kicked in. It wasn't long until I tried others such as Final Fantasy II and Chrono Trigger.

In late 1996, I discover the wonders of the Internet and just browse for fun. At the time, I was a huge Gargoyles fan, so I read Fan Fiction on this series daily. Aside from that, I also visited some game-related sites pertaining to Mega Man, Castlevania, and Final Fantasy. It was sometime in early 1997 that I discovered The Impressario's Sounds of Squaresoft Page, which had MP2s for several mainstream Square games. It was also on this site that I heard "One Winged Angel" for the first time, even before playing Final Fantasy VII. Come 1998, I decide to check out one of the links on that page, which was the Game Music Online webshop.

I wanted to try something new, so I saw the Final Fantasy V soundtrack. I knew I had to have it, no matter what. Several weeks following the order, the soundtrack arrived and I immediately consumed it as if it were my bread and water. Shortly after, I took something I was familiar with: Final Fantasy III, which I discovered to be numbered "VI" in Japan. It wasn't long until I decided to acquire all of the Final Fantasy soundtracks, while picking up several Zelda and Castlevania soundtracks as well. In the end, my "greed" got me to acquire *all* of the Square soundtracks from Final Fantasy to Front Mission 4.

During my 6 year quest to acquire everything Square, I bumped into a curious soundtrack called IS: Internal Section in 2002. Its electronic/trance approach really appealed to me in a way that no other soundtrack had done at the time. Shinji Hosoe was my new favorite composer at the time. I went out my way to acquire many old Namco soundtracks of his and his friends. My search for new, fresh game music eventually had me pointing towards Taito's musical band: Zuntata. Like IS two years before, the Taito Sound Team appealed to me so much that I couldn't help but putting them at the very top of my favorite VGM list. Even now, I haven't heard a fourth of all the VGM out there, but I keep on trying new things. I could never realize how branching out paid off so much. Even though I prefer Taito to Square Enix at the moment, there will always be a place for Square's music since those were the first to introduce and initiate me to the wonderful, wide world of game music album collecting.

I am a graduate of a two year Game Design course. After a year of strengthening my skills, I feel it is time to enter the Game Industry and make myself known. For the time being, I am aiming for a position as Sound Integrator / Manipulator / Programmer. With the experience I'll acquire from programming synthesizers, integrating music, and sound effects, I hope one day to be able to become a freelance composer and pay tribute to the real game music kings: the Japanese composers, of course. I feel a lot of affinity towards musical genres of electronica, jazz, rock and fusion, so it is these styles that I'll be concentrating my music on.

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