Ryuichi Nitta saw a job advertisement. Tecmo was looking for a video game music composer. He picked up the phone and called them without hesitating. He had taught himself to compose. No conservatory, no formal training, just him and whatever instruments he could reach. When the interview was scheduled, he made demo tapes. No one had asked for them, but he brought them anyway. He carried something he had made into a room where people he did not know would decide his future.
He went through three rounds of interviews. The tapes stayed in his bag. He never got the chance to play them. Tecmo hired him anyway. It is a reminder that sometimes the act of preparing is more important than the thing prepared — not because the work is wasted, but because the work shapes the person who does it. He walked in carrying proof that he was already a composer. That was enough.
His first assignment came from a senior composer at Tecmo named Keiji Yamagishi. Yamagishi asked him to write a few songs for a new game called Ninja Gaiden, being developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was Nitta's first time composing music for a game. He was nervous. He did not hand over one finished track and call it done. He made two songs and let Yamagishi choose. Giving options, showing humility, letting the work speak — this became the foundation of a collaboration that would span decades.
The NES sound chip had five channels: two square waves, one triangle wave, one noise channel, and one sample channel. The constraints were severe. But Nitta, who had learned music outside any textbook tradition, was not burdened by what music was supposed to sound like. He composed melodies that were direct, urgent, and emotionally clear. He did not try to hide the limitations of the hardware. He worked with them, let them shape the sound, and in doing so created music that felt inseparable from the games themselves.
Nitta scored all three Ninja Gaiden titles for the NES: the original in 1988, the sequel in 1990, and the third entry in 1991. The soundtracks became some of the most memorable music of the 8-bit era. Players who had never thought about game music before found themselves humming the opening theme days after putting down the controller. The richness did not come from the number of channels or the sophistication of the chip. It came from what the composer chose to do with what he had. Five channels were enough, because he knew how to listen.
After the Ninja Gaiden trilogy, Nitta continued working at Tecmo across genres: puzzle games, sports titles, RPGs. He contributed to the beatmania series and to entries in the Castlevania franchise. Each project carried the same fingerprint — melodies that refused to let go, built from tools that others might have called inadequate. He did not wait for better instruments. He made music with the instruments in front of him.
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 not a rejection of collaboration — it was a claim of agency. He would compose on his own terms, with people he trusted, doing work that mattered to him. Independence is not the absence of others. It is the freedom to choose who walks the road with you and what you build together along the way.
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 offering two songs for someone to choose from, has never stopped. The work is not finished. 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 who understand what you are trying to make and help you carry it forward.
The phone call happened in 1987. The demo tapes were never played. The collaboration is still running. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is not to wait for permission, not to wait for ideal conditions, not to wait until you are certain you are ready. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is to pick up the phone and say: I am here. I made this. Let me show you what I can build.