A Composer, arranger and Saxophonist for GEM Impact and formerly of Konami
Born on September 3, 1973 in Osaka, Japan, Norihiko Hibino became a graduate of Berklee College of Music in the United States. He then moved to Kansas City to embark on a career as a solo jazz musician. Later Hibino moved back to Japan to begin employment as a composer with Konami and created a substantial amount of music for some of the company's biggest titles, including Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Zone of the Enders and Boktai.
In 2005 Hibino formed GEM Impact, a studio comprised of Takahiro Izutani, Yoshitaka Suzuki, Takahide Ayuzawa and himself. The studio worked on a number of titles, including Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, the anime series Blassreiter, Beatmania and a number of arrange albums. In recent years GEM has worked on Ninja Blade, Bayonetta and Ace Combat Assault Horizon among others.
As a side project, h started "Hibino Sound Therapy Lab" in 2009 study music's spiritual & acoustic effects on human beings. One of its experiments is an iOS application called "Prescription for Sleep" which has 280,000 downloads worldwide.
It has become apparant1 that Jeremy Soule (composer of Secret of Evermore and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and others) and Norihiko Hibino (composer of Metal Gear Solid series and Zone of the Enders series and has since left Konami) have both contributed music to the Metal Gear Solid Peacewalker Original Soundtrack. Read on
Akira Yamaoka confirmed he has left Konami. No word yet on what he'll end up doing, and according to Square Enix Music Online it would be likely he'll end up a freelance composer like many before him (Norihiko Hibino, Yoko Shimomura and Yasunori Mitsuda to name a few). While this might be a loss for Konami, frankly Silent Hill hasn't been the same for a while. It will no doubt do him good to go freelance and get some different work. If he ceases game composition entirely however he will be sadly missed.1
Norihiko Hibino's music production company.
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