Asuka Ota

	Instruments:	Piano
	Joined Nintendo:	2004
	Company Role:	Composer
	Game Works:	Four Swords, New Super Mario Bros, Twilight Princess

Biography

Note: This biography was written exclusively for Square Enix Music Online by Chris and is under copyright.

Asuka Ota has been a composer at Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development since 2004. During her short time in the company, she has produced several major scores and the quality of her work has propelled her to become a senior member of Nintendo's team. Debuting on the GameCube's cooperative multiplayer title The Legend of Zelda: Four Sword Adventures, Ota mixed arrangements of Koji Kondo's score to A Link to the Past with a few new compositions. Though many of the arrangements were straightforward, whole new passages were added to the two overworld themes for the light and dark world, while sumptuous arrangements of Kakariko Village's theme and an orchestral piece of field music demonstrated Ota's musical maturity. With Toru Minegishi and Kazumi Totaka, she subsequently visited Nintendo's musical history again by mixing arrangements of classic themes with light-hearted new compositions on behalf of the DS' Yoshi Touch & Go.

With Totaka, Ota scored the DS' Animal Crossing: Wild World in 2005. Required to produce a large quantity of original compositions for the first time, she received many demands given the score intended to maintain a similar structure and quality to its predecessor. The setting themes mixed mellow acoustic pieces, catchy jazz-based tunes, and experimental ambience while the 'K.K.' themes proved a mixed and quirky bunch. 24 themes were also composed to change with each hour of the game, adding an element of interactivity while ensuring pieces didn't grow tedious. The following year, she composed the majority of the score to New Super Mario Bros., accompanied by Hajime Wakai. While its musicality was often unconventional, most of the original music was very catchy, particularly the main theme, later performed at PLAY! A Video Game Symphony's Chicago premiere. Its arrangements of Kondo's classic tunes were fitting homages that also demonstrated how far Nintendo's music has progressed.

In her most high-profile work to date, Ota scored a large proportion of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. While the game's music was compressed to meet memory restrictions of its consoles, it was nevertheless the largest Zelda score to date, mixing memorable setting themes, series' arrangements, and dungeon, event, and battle music, also exuding a more Eastern European flavour than previous scores in the series. Among Ota's suspected compositions is the full-orchestral field music, though individual credits will probably never be provided given the game's album releases were meagre. Since Twilight Princess, no further scores from Ota have been released, though she is suspected to be composing Animal Crossing Wii with Kazumi Totaka. She will also be joining a large team of arrangers to score the Wii's long-anticipated Super Mario Bros. Brawl. While just at the start of her career, Ota has produced some of Nintendo's most stellar music to date and looks set to continue endearing gamers.

List of Game Projects

List of Covered Albums