Wave Master

From Sega Retro

Wave Master (ウェーブマスター) (formerly known as Sega Digital Media) is an award-winning team that has created some of the most memorable scores in gaming history. They have also branched out into other endeavors, including game development and music for television. They employ nearly 40-50 sound designers and recording engineers at their Tokyo office.

Many of the most popular Sega soundtracks have come from Wave Master, the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Wave Master's music has received critical acclaim, and has been recognized by the International Game Developers Association and the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences for excellence in the field. In addition to releasing game scores, Wave Master has put out remixes and compilation albums of their music.

At the heart of Wave Master's operations is their state-of-the-art recording studio. It is composed of three rooms: a control room with a high-end 56-channel mixing console, a 4.6 x 5 meter "live" room with acoustic reflectors, and a 4 x 6.2 meter "dead" room with sound dampening properties. Some of Wave Master's most powerful works feature technology that dynamically changes the music based on game situations. When flying your airship in Skies of Arcadia, the main musical theme subtly changed based on your location in the world. Jet Grind Radio's pumping hip-hop tracks blended together in a way that mirrored a DJ mixing records on turntables. The main theme of Space Channel 5 progressively decomposed the worse you did in the game.

There's more to Wave Master than just game music. In 2000, Wave Master entered the world of game development with a quirky life simulation title called Roommania #203. They also handled the Japanese versions of Visual Concepts' Sega Sports 2K series. Other Wave Master projects include Radio DC (an Internet radio program featuring Sega game music), the Sonic Cafe suite of mobile phone applications, and jingles for TV shows and commercials in Japan.

Since 2004, following a Sega wide studio restructure, Wave Master is only a record label, the various musicians and sound members are located within their respected game development teams.

To date, Wave Master is known to have contributed to one non-Sega game, Enix's Super Galdelic Hour for the PlayStaiton 2.

Current members

Former members

Games developed by Wave Master

Music and sound design by Wave Master

Non-Sega games with sound design by Wave Master

These games do not have pages on Sega Retro.

  • Super Galdelic Hour (2001; Enix; PlayStation 2)
  • Ghost Vibration (2002; Artoon/Eidos; PlayStation 2)
  • Blinx: The Time Sweeper (2002; Artoon/Microsoft; Xbox)
  • Onimusha Blade Warriors (2003; Capcom; PlayStation 2)
  • Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space (2004; Artoon/Microsoft; Xbox)
  • Yoshi Topsy-Turvy / Yoshi's Universal Gravitation (2004; Artoon/Nintendo; Game Boy Advance)
  • Rule of Rose (2006; Punchline; PlayStation 2)
  • FlingSmash (2010; Artoon/Nintendo; Wii)


External links


Timeline of Sega of Japan research and development divisions








83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
00
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22