In 1990, Jun Ishikawa saw an advertisement for a sound creator position at HAL Laboratory. He had no formal training in music composition. He had graduated from Nihon University's Faculty of Art, from the film department's recording course. He had worked on student theatre productions. He had done live PA work and television audio for other companies. But he had never composed music for a video game. HAL Laboratory hired him anyway.
His first assignment was to compose one track and the sound effects for a game called Uchuu Keibitai SDF. He had never written music for the Nintendo Entertainment System before. He did not know how. HAL assigned a senior composer, Hideki Kanazashi, to teach him. Ishikawa watched. He saw how the limitations of the hardware shaped what could be done and what could not be done. He saw how Kanazashi worked within those boundaries to make something that sounded like music. Two weeks later, Kanazashi left the company. Ishikawa was alone.
He learned by trial. He learned by failure. He learned by pressing buttons and listening to what happened when he pressed them. The NES had five channels. Each one could play a single note at a time. Two square wave channels for melody and harmony. One triangle wave for bass. One noise channel for percussion. One sample channel that no one had much memory to spare for. That was all. You could not pour an orchestra into that. You could not pour lush chords or sweeping strings or subtle dynamics. You poured what fit, and you hoped what fit was enough.
In 1992, HAL Laboratory asked Ishikawa to compose the music for a new Game Boy game. The game was about a small round creature who could inhale enemies and copy their abilities. The system was even more limited than the NES — four channels instead of five, and the sound was thinner, quieter, more constrained. Ishikawa made a decision. He would not try to simulate complexity. He would write simple chords and simple melodies. He would write music that bounced. Music that sang. Music so direct and joyful it felt like someone had distilled happiness into waveforms.
The game was called Kirby's Dream Land. The music became the sound of Kirby. It was not grand. It was not cinematic. It was small and bright and unstoppable, like a light left on in a window at night.
Over the next decade, Ishikawa composed for Kirby Super Star, Kirby's Dream Land 3, Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. He created 'Green Greens,' the melody that became synonymous with the series. He created 'Gourmet Race,' a two-minute sprint of pure momentum that has since been arranged, remixed, and performed more times than most compositions from that era. He created 'King Dedede's Theme,' a march that somehow felt both menacing and affectionate at the same time. He worked with Hirokazu Ando, another composer at HAL, and together they built the sound library of an entire universe — one that was joyful without being cloying, energetic without being exhausting, simple without being shallow.
Ishikawa stayed at HAL Laboratory for thirty-three years. In April 2023, he left the company. He continues to compose for Kirby games as a freelancer. The music he writes now is built on the same foundation he laid in 1990, when he had two weeks of watching and the rest was silence.
There are composers who announce themselves. Who arrive with flourish and fanfare and the unmistakable sound of someone who has mastered their instrument and wants you to know it. Ishikawa was not that. He arrived with no training, no mentor after the first two weeks, no map. He had four channels, five if he was lucky. He had limitations that would have silenced someone else. And from that silence, he made a light. — Are the tools you have now, the ones you think are not enough, already everything you need?