Unfortunately, one of these creatives is no longer with us. Kenichi Okuma had worked in the industry since the early 1990s, with his composer credits including 2008’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The veteran game composer passed away from esophageal cancer last Friday at age 56.

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Okuma’s family members announced his death via Twitter on July 24th. Machine translated from Japanese, the tweet reads, “Kenichi Okuma died on July 22nd due to esophageal cancer. He was 56 years old. His time and funeral will be held at a family funeral. I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who loved Okuma’s music and all the people involved for their long-standing kindness. Thank you very much.” Public information about Okuma’s illness is limited, possibly due to his relatively low profile outside Japan. Regardless, Okuma’s early passing is undoubtedly a tragedy for his friends, fans, and family.

The tweet’s replies soon filled with friends and fans sharing prayers and condolences to the family and saying farewell to the talented composer. Among those mourning Okuma’s death was Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai. He shared his condolences and promised that Okuma’s legacy would live on through Brawl and the later Super Smash Bros. games that reused some of his tracks.

Okuma’s work is not very well known in the west, as very few of the games he composed for released outside of Japan. It’s thus difficult to find English-language sources covering the complete body of his work. However, Okuma’s career in the game industry goes back to at least 1991, when he co-founded the Japanese music production company Two-Five. His earliest composer credit is for a Japan-only adventure game called Classmate. Meanwhile, Okuma’s first work on a Nintendo game appears to be 1995’s Sengoku no Hasha: Tenka Fubu he no Michi, a Japan-only strategy game for the Super Nintendo.

He worked on several more Japanese-only titles before Nintendo recruited him to compose some of the music for 2008’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Okuma’s contributions included the tracks “Pokemon Gym/Evolution,” “Flat Zone 2,” and “Gyromite.” All three are arrangements or remixes from earlier Nintendo games, including previous entries in Masahiro Sakurai’s Super Smash Bros. series.

After composing music for Brawl, Okuma continued working steadily as a game composer until 2020, though it’s unclear whether that halt was due to his illness or not. His final music credit on Japanese Wikipedia is for the Windows 10 remake of his first game, Classmate.

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