Katsuhiro Hayashi

From Sega Retro

Katsuhiro Hayashi.jpg
Katsuhiro Hayashi
Place of birth: Wakayama, Japan
Date of birth: 1965-10-28[1] (age 58)
Employment history:
Sega of Japan (1984-04[1] – 1988-10[1])
Nova (1988-11[1] – 1989-11[1])
Freelance (1989-12[1] – 2005-09)
Takao (2005-10[2] – )
Role(s): Composer

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Katsuhiro "Funky K.H" Hayashi (林 克洋) is a Japanese musician and former Sega of Japan video game music composer.

Early life

In his fifth grade of elementary school, Katsuhiro Hayashi was semi-mandated to join the choir club. While in the choir club, he religiously watched TV singing shows such as The Best Ten and would sing along. He also started learning the guitar through songbooks, with the folk guitar becoming his instrument of choice, inspired by Southern All Stars and Godiego.[1][3]

In junior high school, his new obsession was Yellow Magic Orchestra, which inspired him to start playing piano. In high school, he joined a YMO and Casiopea cover band, where he played keyboard.[1][3].

Career

In 1984, Katsuhiro Hayashi joined Sega Enterprises, as they offered employment to high school graduates. He initially worked as a console games programmer for 3 months but was reassigned to sound development after his section manager noticed that his resume included "has been in a band".[3] He often worked with Hiroshi Kawaguchi early on, such as on Champion Soccer and Girl's Garden, and they also shared a dormitory.[4] He also had a senior/junior relationship with Tohru Nakabayashi, who taught him programming.[5]

After continuing to work exclusively on home console games for another year, his first arcade project was Quartet. As it was one of the earliest releases for the Sega System 16 hardware, many of the instruments used throughout the soundtrack were newly designed by Hayashi, and were later copied by other composers (most prominently the bass drum and snares).[5]

While Katsuhiro Hayashi continued to work on Master System games at Sega, he was best known for his arcade work, composing all the music for SDI and Sonic Boom, along with sound effects and a few songs for Super Hang-On, Galaxy Force and Gain Ground. Several of these were with Koichi Namiki, who he personally invited to join Sega as he needed help with songs for Super Hang-on[6]. Hayashi did the same thing for Shigeru Ohwada[7].

Following his departure in 1988, he spent a single year working at Nova on their PC Engine and Game Boy titles, including the PC Engine port of Altered Beast. Afterwards he became a freelance composer, working on games for Sega, Pack-In-Video and Angel.[8] Individual games with soundtracks prominent enough to be released on CD were Zero4 Champ RR with Media Rings and Tsuri Taro with Pack-In-Video. He was most famous in the late 90's for working with MediaWorks on their games Chaos Seed, Eternal Melody, the Yuukyuu Gensoukyoku series and Devicereign. Very few of his freelance works were arcade games, only working with Faith and Sega, including on the Treasure Panic revision of Ghost Hunters.[8][9]

The Maze of the Kings was his last soundtrack made for Sega, featuring an Egyptian-influenced in the style of John Williams[10]. However, in 2005, in the same he became an employed composer for pachinko developer Takao,[2] he contributed of remix of SDI music to SDI & Quartet: Sega System 16 Collection: Original Soundtrack.

After being publicly silent for 17 years, in 2023, Katsuhiro Hayashi made guest appearances on Koichi Namiki's solo album Stratosphere and the ensemble album FM Vertex III - ApEX.[11]

Influences

Since his childhood, Katsuhiro Hayashi has been influenced by Southern All Stars and Godiego, and later Casiopea and Yellow Magic Orchestra.[1][3] Other influences he has cited include George Duke, Herbie Hancock, Masayoshi Takanaka, Off Course, Kyohei Tsutsumi and Tsugutoshi Goto.[12]

Aliases

Katsuhiro Hayashi is most commonly known as Funky K.H (ファンキーK・H) in the video game industry.[1][9] While K.H is simply his initials, Funky can refer to his funky music, his funky personality or the famous last-minute dancing he performed at the disastrous Sega Sound Staff Band show After Burner Panic. The name first appeared in public in Sega Game Music Vol. 2 where Funky K.H wrote liner notes about the Quartet soundtrack.

His relatives refer to him as Q-chan (きゅーちゃん),[1] which were used in Galaxy Force II and Gain Ground.

Production history

Games

Music

Song credits

Main article: Katsuhiro Hayashi/Song credits.

Zaxxon (SG-1000 Version)

  • Game Start — Music & Arrangement
  • Main BGM — Music & Arrangement
  • Outer Space BGM — Music & Arrangement
  • Boss — Music & Arrangement
  • Clear — Music & Arrangement

Zoom 909 (SG-1000 Version)

  • Main BGM — Music & Arrangement
  • Boss — Music & Arrangement
  • Game Over — Music & Arrangement

Hang-On (Master System Version)

  • Title — Arrangement
  • Start — Music & Arrangement
  • Clear — Music & Arrangement
  • Game Over — Music & Arrangement
  • Hidden Music — Arrangement

Quartet (Arcade version)

  • Credit — Music & Arrangement
  • Miami Samba Machine (Start) — Music & Arrangement
  • Quartet Theme (Stage-01) — Music & Arrangement
  • Stage Clear — Music & Arrangement
  • FM Funk (Stage-03) — Music & Arrangement
  • sky (Stage-05) — Music & Arrangement
  • Oki RAP (Stage-10) — Music & Arrangement
  • Game Over — Music & Arrangement
  • Miami Samba Machine (Without Voice Ver.) — Music & Arrangement
  • FM Piano Test — Music & Arrangement
  • RAP Test — Music & Arrangement
  • Oki RAP (Without Voice Ver.) — Music & Arrangement
  • RAP Test (Without Voice Ver.) — Music & Arrangement

Hokuto no Ken (Master System Version)

  • Title — Music & Arrangement
  • Game Start — Music & Arrangement
  • Stage BGM — Music & Arrangement
  • Power Up BGM — Music & Arrangement
  • Boss — Music & Arrangement
  • Clear — Music & Arrangement
  • Ending — Music & Arrangement
  • Miss — Music & Arrangement
  • Game Over — Music & Arrangement

Black Belt (Master System Version)

  • Title — Music & Arrangement
  • Stage BGM — Music & Arrangement
  • Boss — Music & Arrangement

Secret Command

  • Title — Music & Arrangement
  • We Fight for Friends (Odd Number Screen BGM) — Music & Arrangement
  • Barricade (Boss) — Music & Arrangement
  • Round Clear — Music & Arrangement
  • Ending — Music & Arrangement
  • Game Over — Music & Arrangement

Rambo: First Blood Part II (Master System Version)

  • Rambo Main Theme (Title) — Arrangement

Quartet (Master System Version)

  • Title — Music & Arrangement
  • Stage 1 — Music & Arrangement
  • Stage 2 — Music & Arrangement
  • Stage 3 — Music & Arrangement
  • Stage 4 — Music & Arrangement
  • Stage 5 — Music & Arrangement
  • Stage Clear — Music & Arrangement
  • Stage 6 — Music & Arrangement
  • Last Boss — Music & Arrangement
  • Ending — Music & Arrangement
  • Game Over — Music & Arrangement

Super Hang-On (Arcade version)

  • Outride a Crisis — Music & Arrangement
  • Sprinter — Music & Arrangement
  • Goal — Music & Arrangement

SDI (Arcade version)

  • Credit — Music & Arrangement
  • System Down (Stage 1, 2) — Music & Arrangement
  • Satellite Attack (Stage 3, 4) — Music & Arrangement
  • Sky Sun (Stage 5, 8) — Music & Arrangement
  • Illusion (Stage 6, 7) — Music & Arrangement
  • An Imminent War (Stage 9, 10, 11) — Music & Arrangement
  • Perfect — Music & Arrangement
  • We Are Desirous of Peace (Ending) — Music & Arrangement
  • Blue Moon (Name Entry) — Music & Arrangement
  • Illusion (Ranking) — Music & Arrangement

Heavyweight Champ (Arcade version)

  • Credit — Music & Arrangement
  • Title 1 — Music & Arrangement
  • Level Select — Music & Arrangement
  • Announce — Music & Arrangement
  • Congratulations — Music & Arrangement
  • Name Entry — Arrangement
  • Ranking — Music & Arrangement
  • Title 2 — Music & Arrangement [NOTE: Unused]

Sonic Boom (Arcade version)

  • Credit — Music & Arrangement
  • Stage 1, 4 — Music & Arrangement
  • Boss — Music & Arrangement
  • Stage Clear — Music & Arrangement
  • Stage 2, 6 — Music & Arrangement
  • Stage 3, 5 — Music & Arrangement
  • Name Entry — Music & Arrangement

Galaxy Force (Arcade version)

  • Coin [Galaxy Force] — Music & Arrangement
  • Defeat [Scene B] — Music & Arrangement
  • Take Back [Scene C] — Music & Arrangement
  • Alone Fighter [Scene D] — Music & Arrangement
  • Take Back [Long Ver.] — Music & Arrangement [NOTE: Unused]

Galaxy Force II (Arcade version)

  • Coin [Galaxy Force II] — Music & Arrangement

Gain Ground (Arcade version)

  • Europe in the Middle Ages ~Receiving~ [BGM 2] — Music & Arrangement
  • Future Robot ~Contract~ [BGM 4] — Music & Arrangement
  • Warrior's Rest [Round Clear] — Music & Arrangement

Yuukyuu Gensoukyoku

  • Wake Up!! — Music & Arrangement
  • Shy Boy — Music & Arrangement
  • Workingmen — Music & Arrangement
  • Are You Ready? — Music & Arrangement
  • Crying Shadows — Music & Arrangement
  • On My Honor — Music & Arrangement
  • Raise a War Cry — Music & Arrangement
  • Imitate Blue — Music & Arrangement
  • Rest in Peace — Music & Arrangement
  • Boneheads — Music & Arrangement
  • Stumble-Scramble — Music & Arrangement
  • It's All Right — Music & Arrangement
  • In Our Usual Sunny Place — Music & Arrangement
  • Daylight Bossa — Music & Arrangement
  • I'm at My Limit! ('Wake Up!!' vocal version) — Music
  • Go Easy — Music & Arrangement
  • Unchanged Happy Life — Music & Arrangement
  • Nocturne in C sharp major — Music & Arrangement
  • Earnest Hope — Music & Arrangement
  • A Smile Is Your Protection ('Shy Boy' vocal version) — Music
  • Red-Eyed Revenger — Music & Arrangement
  • Road to Nowhere — Music & Arrangement
  • Face a Crisis — Music & Arrangement
  • Under the Strain — Music & Arrangement
  • Fantasia Everlasting — Music & Arrangement
  • Anytime — Music & Arrangement
  • I Want to Be a Pearl (Sega Saturn Ending) — Music

Photographs

Main article: Photos of Katsuhiro Hayashi

Interviews

External links

References