Zuntata

Zuntata's current logo

Zuntata is Taito's in-house band, consisting of Taito's composers and sound designers formed in 1986, which composed most of the soundtracks and music of the games in the Darius Series. Following its popularity in the late 80s, other game companies also created house bands as well such as Data East's Gamadelic, SEGA's SST Band, Konami's Konami Kukeiha Club and Capcom's Alfh Lyra.

The group was established in 1983, releasing their first collective music album, Darius- TAITO GAME MUSIC VOL.2, in 1987 under the Alpha Records/GMO label, moving to the Scitron label in 1988. During the 90s the group performed live shows and eventually established their own in-house label, Zuntata Records, in 1996.

Though Taito became a subsidiary of Square-Enix in 2005, Zuntata continued to work on sound development for the company, though many of its former members, including OGR, had left the group by then. The group still makes live performances, and many of its albums were made available on digital services such as iTunes and Spotify.

Band members

• Shohei Tsuchiya: Composer of Darius Burst and ZUNTATA's bassist, joined ZUNTATA in 2008. Previously employed at FromSoftware as a sound designer.
• Yuu Shimoda: Joined ZUNTATA in 2017 and composed for RayCrisis' mobile port. Previously employed at Inti Creates, also composed for Mega Man 9 and Atelier Ayesha prior joining to ZUNTATA.
• Masaki Mori (aka. MASAKI): Joined ZUNTATA in 2015 and composed for Rhythmvaders 3 and RayStorm's mobile port as of now.
• Katsuhisa Ishikawa (aka. Ishikawa Babio): The oldest ZUNTATA member until now. Mostly doing sound effects and voice acting.

Ex-ZUNTATA Members

• Hisayoshi Ogura (aka. OGR): Main composer of the Darius series excluding Darius Twin and Darius Force. Going freelance in 2007, but composed one track for Darius Burst.
• Masahiko Takaki (aka. Mar.): Sound designer of the first Darius game, as well as composer of Rastan and Night Striker. Left ZUNTATA around the early 2000s and retired composing.
• Yasuhisa Watanabe (aka. Yack.): Composer of Metal Black, as well as sound designer of Darius II alongside Norihiro Furukawa. Left ZUNTATA in 2003 and joined SuperSweep
• Kazuko Umino (aka. karu.): ZUNTATA's keyboard player and composer of the Puzzle Bobble series and Liquid Kids. Left ZUNTATA around the early 2000s
• Norihiro Furukawa (aka. Joutouhei Nakayama/Wiz-Master): Composer/sound editor of Darius Twin, as well as sound designer of Darius II alongside Yasuhisa Watanabe. Left ZUNTATA around 2001-2002 and started doing freelance, mostly around SuperSweep
• Tomohito Takahashi (aka. Comoesta Takahashi): Guitarist of ZUNTATA. Left ZUNTATA around the early 2000s and now works as a freelance guitarist
• Munehiro Nakanishi (aka. Mu-Nakanishi): ZUNTATA's drummer and recording engineer. Left ZUNTATA around the early 2000s
• Shuichiro Nakazawa (aka. SHU): ZUNTATA's percussionist and composer of Taito's flight simulators (Jet de Go 2 and Landing Gear). Left ZUNTATA around the early 2000s and now works as a freelance composer as well as a DJ under the name Schnack
• Tamayo Kawamoto (aka. TAMAYO): Composer of the Ray series, formerly employed at Capcom alongside Hiroshige Tonomura. She left Zuntata in 2006 to form Betta Flash together with the singer Cyua

External links

• Official Site
• VGMDB profile
• Official Twitter
• Facebook Profile
• Hisayoshi Ogura's Twitter
• Masahiko Takaki's Twitter
• Yasuhisa Watanabe's Twitter
• Kazuko Umino's Twitter
• Tamayo Kawamoto's Twitter
• Norihiro Furukawa's Twitter
• Shuichiro Nakazawa's Twitter
• Katsuhisa Ishikawa's Twitter
• Shohei Tsuchiya's Twitter
• Yuu Shimoda's Twitter
• Masaki Mori's Twitter