Kouji Murata

History

Kouji Murata graduated from Tateishiyama Shiga High School in 1981 and enrolled at Kinki University to study electronics. He did not complete the degree. By 1986, he had entered the video game industry, working on sound for NES titles published by Jaleco, Namco, Ultra, and Konami. This was an era when game composers were often uncredited, and sound production meant working directly with limited audio hardware — the NES had five channels, each one a territory to defend and a puzzle to solve.

In the late 1980s, Murata joined Konami, where he worked under the alias 'Lazy Koji.' The name appears in the credits of several Konami titles from that period. At Konami, his work included Ganbare Goemon 2 and other projects that required not only music composition but also sound effect production and the technical work of sound driver programming. Game Boy was released in 1989, and Konami — like every other major publisher — began looking for composers who could make music work inside its four-channel sound chip.

From 1990 to 1992, Murata worked at Minakuchi Engineering, a subcontractor Capcom relied on to handle sound production for some of its releases. Despite his involvement, his work on Capcom titles often went uncredited. During this period, Capcom was preparing the Game Boy versions of its Mega Man series — adaptations of the NES originals, built for a smaller screen and a simpler sound system.

Murata was assigned as the main composer for Mega Man III, IV, and V on the Game Boy, released in 1992, 1993, and 1994 respectively. The challenge was clear: take the memorable themes from the NES originals and make them recognizable inside the Game Boy's constraints. The NES had five channels — two pulse waves, one triangle wave, one noise, and one sample channel. The Game Boy had four — two pulse, one wave, one noise. Murata had to decide what to keep and what to lose. His arrangements kept the melodies intact while simplifying the bass lines and removing layered harmonies that would have cluttered the limited audio space. The results were not imitations but translations — the same music rebuilt for a different instrument.

After leaving Minakuchi Engineering, Murata continued working as a freelance sound programmer and composer. He moved away from composing game music in later years, shifting his focus to production and development management. Today he works as an Executive Producer at Bit Groove, a game development company.

His career is a reminder that the history of game music is also the history of technical limitation — and that creativity often lives in the space between what a machine can do and what a composer wants it to say. Murata made handheld music when no one knew how, and in doing so, he proved that small screens can carry big sound.