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Rika Muranaka is a Japanese-born composer and music producer renown for her songs in Konami's world-famous video game series, Metal Gear Solid.
Some of her most distinguished works include "The Best Is Yet to Come" (Metal Gear Solid), "Can't Say Goodbye to Yesterday" (Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty), and "Don't Be Afraid" (Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater). She also composed the song "I Am the Wind" for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and the song "Esperándote" for the original Silent Hill.
During her teens, Rika Muranaka left her native Tokyo to study jazz piano with jazz pianist and author Alan Swain in Chicago, USA. At the age of 16, she started to write music for herself.
After graduating from Northeastern Illinois University, Rika Muranaka returned to Japan and was signed a deal with Columbia Records, a major Japanese record company, in 1992. She released 4 albums with Columbia Records. Rika Muranaka composed music for commercials, advertising, the Japanese government and created demos for multimedia companies in Japan. She also developed pre-programmed beats and sounds for Casio electronic keyboards and produced music for educational materials.
Fascinated by the game industry, Rika Muranaka started to work for Konami in 1997. She wanted to change the standard for music in the game industry, because at the time many thought that video game music was simple and low quality. Her first projects at Konami were songs for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Silent Hill, where she worked together with Akira Yamaoka, another Japanese video game composer.
Konami led her to a 17-year long working relationship with Hideo Kojima on the Metal Gear Solid game series.
While working on Metal Gear Solid 2, Rika Muranaka brought in film composer Harry Gregson-Williams into the video game industry to work on the games, and was one of the first to involve film composers into the development of video game music.
At Konami she had not only composed music and written lyrics for some of the most popular video game songs, but also produced and edited music, arranged budget, hired musicians and orchestra needed to produce the music for Metal Gear Solid game series. She also brought in jazz musicians, such as Gerald Albright, Kevin Eubanks and Hubert Laws, to create music for the game series.
Despite being fond of writing for games, Rika Muranaka gradually developed passion to writing music for films, television and animation. After ending her work relationship with Konami, Rika Muranaka to working on her own projects, such as a drift reality show Hollywood Dream and her own business RnD Entertainment, both being a collaboration with Grammy and American Music Awards winning music producer Damien "E-Love" Matthias, and composing and producing music for films.
