Tomoko Sasaki
From Sega Retro
History outline
A good amount of this is sourced from an excellent writeup here.
- Loved music from a young age, began playing piano and quickly found a talent for it.
- Inspired to become a composer from listening to Ryuichi Sakamoto.
- Inspired to become a VGM composer from playing Mother.
- Later moved to Tokyo to attend university, played in a punk band at this time!
- Hired by Sega in 1992. First game: World of Illusion starring Micky Mouse and Donald Duck.
- Frequent collaborator with Naofumi Hataya, also married to him.
- Designed and created the story, concept, and music for Roommania #203 and its sequel.
- "Serani Poji", a fictional in-game Roommania band, gained such fame outside the game that the fictional band (Sasaki and others, probably some WaveMaster folks) released a popular series of real-life published CD music albums.
- "Radio DC", a fiction in-game Roommania radio station, also gained notoriety and a real-life CD release. It later evolved into a SegaLINK internet radio show broadcast from 2003-2007, hosted by Sasaki.
- In addition to her voice acting work, she also sang "I Just Smile" from Burning Rangers.
- Her bouncy music style (personally always looved her compositions, and always thought they were very Hataya-like and vice-versa, crazy to find out they're married. I wonder since how long, and to what degree their musical styles were/are influenced by one another.)
- Also does voice work, notable the Chaos from the Sonic series. Sometime around 2002-ish Sega switched over to Ryo Hirohashi's Chao voicework, but then in 2009 returned to Sasaki's voices.
- Left the company in the late 2000s, sometime around the release of NiGHTS: Journey into Dreams.
- Already in the article, but she's the voice from the Saturn-era Sonic team jingle, the shimmery sparkly one with the cute voice.
CartridgeCulture (talk) 07:50, 16 November 2021 (EST)