By the beginning of the ’90s, video game sales became colossal worldwide and a war erupted between the two biggest companies in the business: Nintendo and Sega. Although Sega had their flag firmly planted in the arcades in the ’80s, the home console market belonged to Nintendo. That started to change when Sega’s Megadrive developed a reputation for putting out games that were just that little bit “cooler.” In part down to the unique sound of the Megadrive’s inbuilt FM Synth, some of the most incredible game music heard to date was unleashed with J-Pop star Masato Nakamura assigned to compose the Sonic The Hedgehog soundtracks, and Yuzo Koshiro bringing the influence of the clubs he was going to in Tokyo to one of the most memorable soundtracks in video game history, Streets of Rage

• Nick Dwyer

• Arnie Roth
• Nobuo Uematsu
• Haruhisa Tanaka