Hayato Matsuo

Hayato Matsuo is a Japanese arranger, composer, orchestrator and musician.

Hayato is a composer, arranger and orchestrator for both the video game industry and the anime industry. He has worked on titles such as Front Mission 3, Final Fantasy XII, the Shenmue Series, and Magic Knight Rayearth. Inspired by his mother, who was a piano teacher, he graduated from the music composition department of Tokyo University of the Arts.

While in college, he composed for the band G-Clef, and occasionally stood in for the members of the band. Upon graduating, he went to work under Sugiyama Kouichi, the composer of the popular Dragon Quest video game series, arranging his pieces for Dragon Quest anime shows and soundtracks.

In 1991, Hayato began to work as a video game music composer himself, writing the score to Master of Monsters. Over the next few years, he worked as an independent composer on several games and anime series, including Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen.

In 1995, he joined the independent music composition group Imagine. He has continued since then to compose and orchestrate works for over 20 games and anime shows, as well as the television show Kamen Rider 555, and a few pieces a part of original albums.