Naoto Kubo (#16790)

[CHz]

The Naoto Kubo who orchestrated the FF7 suite with Shota Nakama on the VGO Live at Symphony Hall album is a 2008 alum of Berklee: https://www.berklee.edu/bt/224/bb_vgo.html.

Naoto Kubo the Nintendo employee says on Facebook that he graduated from Berklee in 2008 and mentions arranging for VGO in a 2011 post.

P.S. here's a Nintendo sound team person with a public Facebook account who knows English and is apparently known by Shota Nakama, someone had better take advantage of this ASAP (Note: I did actually pass this tip on to Chris @ VGMO instead of letting it sit in a thread no one is going to read)

[MetalLord]

Lead composer on Super Mario Odyssey

Audio Management
Mahito Yokota

Audio Director
Shigetoshi Gohara

Music Lead
Naoto Kubo

Music
Shiho Fujii
Koji Kondo

Player / UI Sound Design
Yuki Tsuji

Character Sound Design/Lyrics
Nobuyoshi Suzuki

Field Sound Design
Hiroki Araya

Cut Scene Sound Design
Shunsuke Hongo
Hiroki Taniguchi

Sound Progam
Wataru Tanimura

[cal]

Huh. That music from the trailer sounds exactly like Yokota. Kubo worked under Yokota for a while, so I guess he learned how to mimic his style. (unless it's like Wakai on BotW. Maybe Yokota still wrote some music, but isn't credited under music)

Also, Shigetoshi Gohara works for Nintendo now?

[MetalLord]

He's been with nintendo for 10 years now.

[cal]

Hmm, no one ever linked him to our Nintendo entry so I kind of assumed he was a collaborator of some sort. He also doesn't mention working for Nintendo anywhere on his website or Facebook for some reason.

I have added him now.

[RBM95]

Gohara has indeed worked for much of Nintendo's Tokyo Office games, but unlike Yokota or Kubo he has been mostly involved with sound programming. He got to arrange the Throwback Galaxy theme in Super Mario Galaxy 2 but I guess that was just a one-off thing, as Nintendo usually has sepparate teams of composers and sound engineers / SFX designers (at least in the big productions, like Mario or Zelda).

BTW, I'm quite positive that Kondo may have only done one or two themes as usual in Odyssey (New Donk City maybe?). Hopefully some interview will clarify his role.