Hirofumi Matsuoka (#706)

[CHz]

This entry originally had Hirofumi Matsuoka's given name as 洋史, but that's the name of a designer & director who used to work for Nintendo (he was part of Metroid's staff, notably).

This Hirofumi Matsuoka is 博文: Popful Mail SNES / LoX II.

[Spirit_Chaser]

While researching for Hiro's contributions after leaving Falcom, I came across a blog run by Hiro where it looks like this person is currently fighting an advanced form of cancer. Blog entries show the progress of the medication. I looked through the twitter and through translations I can somewhat see a bit more info on this. on the studio21 blog, the looks like there's 6 months to a year of life left due to the cancer's advanced stage. Maybe someone who can understand Japanese can elaborate on this. Pretty tragic.

[DragoonEnRegalia]

It's very unfortunate to hear that Matsuoka likely is about to leave this world. Would he be the first JDK member, former and current, to pass away? This reminds me of when Tomomi Ohtani had a brain hemorrhage, but he survived and seems to be fine at the moment.

[Spirit_Chaser]

I don't think anyone knows because some of them completely disappeared without a trace. I am still trying to figure out what happened to Masaru Nakajima and Takahiro Tsunashima.

Still, this is really sad news for me since I really loved his work with Falcom. Though he is considered the leader of the second wave of composers, I don't think there's a single track credited to him during his time in Falcom, but little by little I might figure a few things out. And I just got into his newer material such as Fermata. Unfortunately, this is too difficult for me to get being in the West.

If you're interested, Hiro's Youtube account was updated yesterday.

[Youloute]

Bad news: his sister wrote a message on his blog two days ago...
http://studio21net.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-35.html

[Spirit_Chaser]

This is so sad. I was trying to get a hold of him for an interview the past 2-3 months.

[Spirit_Chaser]

http://www.vgmonline.net/hirofumi-ma...r-passes-away/

[dissident93]

VGMO says October 21, the original blog post says the 20th, so I'm assuming that's a typo?

[Chris]

Fixed, thanks for letting us know Youlette.

[Spirit_Chaser]

Does anyone know what the game credits for the two mega drive versions of The Legend of Heroes series show? I am curious to what it says and what his involvement in those games was.