Ryuichi Nitta

History

Ryuichi Nitta saw a job advertisement from Tecmo looking for a video game music composer. He called them without hesitating. He had taught himself to compose, and though no one had asked, he made demo tapes and brought them to the interview. He never got the chance to play them during the three rounds of interviews, but Tecmo hired him anyway. Sometimes a door opens not because of what you show, but because you were willing to walk up to it carrying something you made.

His first assignment came from Keiji Yamagishi, a fellow composer at Tecmo who asked him to write a few songs for a new game called Ninja Gaiden for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was Nitta's first time composing music for a game. He was worried. He made two songs and let them choose. That approach — giving options, showing humility, letting the work speak — became the foundation of a collaboration that would last decades.

The NES sound chip had five channels: two square waves, one triangle wave, one noise channel, and one sample channel. The technical limitations were severe. But Nitta, who had learned music outside any conservatory or textbook tradition, was not constrained by what music was supposed to sound like. He composed melodies that were direct, urgent, and emotionally clear. The Ninja Gaiden soundtracks — the first three games in the series, all scored by Nitta — became some of the most memorable music of the 8-bit era, not despite the limitations but in conversation with them.

After the Ninja Gaiden trilogy, Nitta's work at Tecmo expanded across genres: sports games, role-playing games, platformers. He contributed music to the beatmania rhythm game series and to titles in the Castlevania franchise. Each project carried the same fingerprint: melodies that grabbed hold and refused to let go, built from tools that others might have called inadequate. The richness came not from the hardware but from what the composer chose to do with it.

In 2000, Nitta left the structure of a company and co-founded Kajiya Music with Keiji Yamagishi and composer Kaori Nakabai. The decision to start his own music company was a statement: he would compose on his own terms, with people he trusted, doing work that mattered to him. Independence is not the absence of collaboration; it is the freedom to choose who you collaborate with and what you build together.

Nitta continues to compose for video games. His partnership with Yamagishi, which began in a Tecmo office in the late 1980s with a nervous first-timer making two songs for someone to choose from, has never stopped. The work is not finished, because music — like any craft taken seriously — does not have an ending. You start somewhere, you learn as you go, and if you are fortunate, you find people to walk the road with you. Nitta's career is a reminder that the best tools are the ones you already have, and the best time to begin is the moment you decide to pick up the phone.