Jun Ishikawa (石川 淳 Ishikawa Jun, born 1964) is a Japanese video game music composer employed by HAL Laboratory. He is most well-known for his musical contributions to the Kirby series of games. His composition style is reasonably versatile. His lighter melodies are very happy, and occasionally somewhat classical. They usually have more of a song-like structure, containing a bridge which usually employs the apex of melodic sensitivity. Whereas his darker, "boss" melodies are intense, and also somewhat classical. His darker melodies are often characterized by repetition, but instead of simply repeating like most video game music composers would do, he would repeat a melody, but the second repetition, or second measure, he would often repeat the melody one whole step lower. Using a minor scale, this is often a very effective and dark sounding musical method. In the earlier Kirby games, he used 7th chords quite often, and sometimes employed the blues scale at the end of a repetition in an almost "rock and roll" sort of way.
Works
Ishikawa is credited with the music for the following games:
- (1990) Uchuu Keibitai (NES) (with Zap Rodeo)
- (1990) New Ghostbusters II (NES)
- (1991) HyperZone (SNES)
- (1992) Arcana (SNES) (with Hirokazu Ando)
- (1992) Kirby's Dream Land (GB)
- (1993) Kirby's Adventure (NES) (with Hirokazu Ando)
- (1993) Alcahest (SNES)
- (1996) Kirby Super Star (SNES) (with Dan Miyakawa)
- (1998) Kirby's Dream Land 3 (SNES)
- (2000) Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (N64) (with Hirokazu Ando)
- (2002) Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land (GBA) (with Shogo Sakai, Hirokazu Ando and Tadashi Ikegami)
- (2003) Kirby Air Ride (GCN) (with Hirokazu Ando, Shogo Sakai, and Tadashi Ikegami)
- (2005) Kirby: Canvas Curse (Nintendo DS) (with Tadashi Ikegami)
- (2006) Kirby: Squeak Squad (NDS) (with Hirokazu Ando, Tadashi Ikegami, Shogo Sakai)
