Norihiko Hibino

Norihiko Hibino (日比野 則彦, born September 3, 1973), is globally renowned as a composer, arranger, and saxophonist, particularly for his brilliant work on the soundtrack of the famous videogame, the Metal Gear Solid series. This game has sold 22 million copies worldwide, and Norihiko has a strong legion of fans in the United States of America. He also produces for J-pop stars such as Yuki Koyanagi, Chihiro Yonekura, and many others. He is also a serious businessman, running a music production company called “Gem Impact”.

A graduate of Berklee College of Music, US, Norihiko is the head of the alumni committee in Tokyo. He’s also had the pleasure of traveling back to Berklee College of Music on several occasions to deliver speeches to his alma mater about game music and also conducted on “Artist Career Planning” at Tokyo University, sponsored by CESA (Japan Computer Entertainment Association).

In 2009, he will travel to San Francisco to deliver a talk at the Game Developers Conference 2009 on the topic of Japanese video game music business.

After graduating from Berklee College of Music, he moved to Kansas City to start a career as a solo jazz musician. He later relocated to Japan to work for Konami, where he became best known his work on Konami's Metal Gear and Zone of the Enders game series.

After working with Konami, Hibino started GEM Impact in 2005, which is a studio comprised of composers Takahiro Izutani , Yoshitaka Suzuki, Takahide Ayuzawa, and Norihiko Hibino himself. They have worked on a wide variety of projects, including Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Blassreiter, Beatmania, and several arrange albums (see the work section).

Hibino was the winner of a G.A.N.G. (Game Audio Network Guild) award in 2005 for his work on the Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater theme track, “Snake Eater” in the “Best Original Vocal Song – Pop” category. G.A.N.G. is an organization which contributes to establish game music category in Grammy award. He also made numerous public appearances including NHK (public broadcast) session 505, Tokyo Jazz 2006 & 2007 and Japan Hypergame Music Event 2007 & 2008. He has also appeared as a CM image character of Toyota Harrier '06 model (Lexus RX) in Japan.

Aside from his work in games, he was an active member of The Outer Rim, a jazz band headed by Jeff Curry where Hibino plays saxophone and programs the synthesized sections. He tries to perform as frequently as he can, and knows a wide array of artists in the Tokyo jazz scene who are often brought in to record parts for his various projects.

Always looking to get in touch with his fans, Hibino teamed up with Original Sound Version to take part in a regular feature called “Ask Hibino” where he answers questions from his fans and provides unique insights into the global game music industry.

He looks forward to getting in touch with you, so please don’t hesitate to send him a message to say hello!

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