Kozue Ishikawa (#636)

[Uppa]

Perhaps best known for her scoring of Wario Land 2 and 3, Kozue Ishikawa provided music for a modest selection of Nintendo's software output during the 1993-2001 period. Gravitating towards sound-engineering and composition for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color, Ishikawa's work seemed aligned closely with Nintendo R&D 1, with her name cropping up most commonly in the Wario Land series and Zelda: Link's Awakening--as well as a credit for the unreleased Star Fox 2. As the Game Boy Color yielded to the onset of the Game Boy Advance, so too does Ishikawa's name seem to vanish. I'm wondering: Does anyone have any detailed information on this composer, or any insight as to what she's doing at present?

The earliest credit to her name that I've found is Link's Awakening. In an official strategy guide interview about the DX version of the game, Ishikawa is credited for "BGM Composition", whereas Totaka and Hamano--both listed before Ishikawa's name when composition is listed in the game credits--are only credited for "Sound Program" and "BGM Work" respectively: http://www.glitterberri.com/content/...111%28U%29.png

Though this is a shaky revelation in that the wording could simply be a curiosity of translation, I do feel it's something of a significant find. Some have, after all, queried who is responsible for individual track compositions as far as Link's Awakening is concerned. Though it's a leap of faith, I would hypothesise that the wording suggests that Ishikawa, perhaps, is the chief character responsible for Link's Awakening's musical score, with supplementary work being done by Hamano, and with Totaka introducing a few oddities in the form of his hidden jingle. I feel somewhat reassured in that this aligns, albeit tenuously, with a bit of information I heard some time ago that Ishikawa is the composer responsible for Link's Awakening's take on the Zelda overworld music; does anyone have any evidence for this?*

*Edit: Happily, the Guitar Super Best album seems to corroborate this--though it doesn't confirm Ishikawa's prominence in the scoring of the game. On the one hand, it could be interpreted as a fairly important piece that you might think the lead composer would be responsible for; on the other, it is something of an arrangement of an already established tune, and might be relegated to one of the supplementary composers.