Tetsuya Kawauchi

From Sega Retro

Tetsuya Kawauchi.jpg
Tetsuya Kawauchi
Employment history:
Divisions:
Role(s): Composer

Tetsuya Kawauchi (河内 哲也) is a former Sega sound composer notable for creating the music for the first two The House of the Dead titles. He served as leader of the AM1 sound team for many years, including its entire periods as both Wow Entertainment and Sega Wow.

Career

Theorized programming career

It has been theorized that Tetsuya Kawauchi was first a programmer under Sega AM3 , based on the credit to a T.Kawauchi in SegaSonic the Hedgehog from 1993. This is further supported by circumstantial evidence; first of which being that his earliest known soundtrack credits, Baku Baku Animal and Manx TT SuperBike in 1995, are with AM3 instead of AM1 like most of his later works; second of which is that the unique high score initials ANZ appear in both SegaSonic the Hedgehog and Manx TT SuperBike (as well as AM3's 1994 game Poto Poto).

AM1 career

Like all arcade sound designers of the mid-90s, Tetsuya Kawauchi was stationed at AM2 Sound[1], but the majority of the games he worked on were developed by Sega AM1. The seeds of this can be seen as early as the Sega Saturn game Fighting Vipers, where he is credited as sound designer alongside Makito Nomiya, already a frequent collaborator with AM1 by this point. Kawauchi was the sole sound designer for the department's newfound flagship title The House of the Dead, creating all the music, sound effects and creature voices[1], and would almost exclusively work on this series for several ensuing years, with brief respites such as the rushed and outsourced work on Sega Water Ski[2] and an entry in the very tonally different Print Club series[3].

Kawauchi began seeing more thanks and assistance credits as he became the head of sound at AM1 when it established a its own dedicated sound section around 1998, with Zombie Revenge being the last game he is known to have directly contributed audio for. Instead, under AM1 successors WOW Entertainment and Sega WOW, he was mainly responsible for direction and coordination. His last know game is the PlayStation 2 port of Sakura Taisen 3: Paris wa Moeteiru ka, released in early 2005.

Production history

Games

Music

Song credits

Main article: Tetsuya Kawauchi/Song credits.

Patents

Magazine articles

Main article: Tetsuya Kawauchi/Magazine articles.

References