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Shoji Meguro found great joy in playing video games on his computer from a young age, and this love of games contributed to his decision to become a composer for video games later in his life. Citing video game composers including Koichi Sugiyama, Takenobu Mitsuyoshi and Hiroshi Kawaguchi (James Mielke, 2017) as inspirations for his work, early PC games like Dragon Quest, although not of the same genre as many of Shoji's compositions, were greatly impactful on his decision to enter the field of video game composition.

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Classical music was one of Shoji Meguro's earliest musical interests, with him citing composers like Beethoven and Tchaikovsky (Greening, 2013). As a child, he was not interested in mainstream music, turning to these more classical composers instead, shaping his musicality to that of instrumental richness and musical storytelling. Their influence on his music is noticeable when listening to some of the more classical and subdued tracks from the games he has worked on, such as songs like the various iterations of 'Aria of the Soul' from the Persona series, which features very orchestral instrumentation and classical tones.

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Shoji Meguro has been very much influenced by Japanese jazz fusion bands, with his favourites being Casiopeia and T-Square (James Mielke, 2017). These had a great impact on his musical styling, and although he doesn't quite use the same genre he gained great inspiration from their smooth, melodic songs. The influence of this can be seen in his music, where rich, smooth jazzy sounds are used in the more classical and relaxed songs to give a quiet and comfortable feel to the music.

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Toby Fox first heard Yoko Shimamu's work in the various games she composed for, and as a self taught piano player would try to learn the songs from his favourite games by ear. "I became familiar with how the melodies and chords were constructed. Specifically, I paid attention to what emotions were drawn out by the different chord progressions in each song". (Anemone Mournian, 2023, p.4) One technique Toby Fox uses frequently in his music to elicit emotional responses in listeners towards characters, the leitmotif, is directly inspired from listening to the works of Shimamura and other similar composers.

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Gustav Holst was an English composer, who is known best for his orchestral suite The Planets, which was a great inspiration for the works of John Williams, as its structure moves through many different feels and emotional tones, giving it a vast cinematic feel. The Planets can be heard across a wide range of William's works, from the steady march and dissonant granduer of Mars' clear influence on the Imperial March, to the fun and wondrous tone of Jupiter's inspiring the likes of Superman's theme.

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote many well known ballets and symphonies still widely regarded today. Tchaikovsky's Romantic style is recognisable in the works of Williams, serving as a precursor to themes such as Han and Leia's theme, a theme which makes clear drawbacks to the grand swelling orchestral sound of classics like Swan Lake. Tchaikovsky's instrumental colour is echoed in William's songs, with arrangements in the Harry Potter films drawing inspiration from the musical flavour of The Nutcracker Suite, inspiring the gleeful and whimsical tones heard in Entry into the Great Hall and the Banquet and other songs from the films.

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Wilhem Richard Wagner was a German composer and theatre director, and his opera compositions had a large impact on the way Williams wrote his musical scores, particularly those of Star Wars. His Der Ring des Nibelungen was a great source of inspiration for his music, defining the sound and texture of the classical Romantic cinematic style that Williams uses across his works. Wagner also greatly utilised a technique - the leitmotif - that can be seen being used across the entire Star Wars series to provide each character with a distinct musical voice.

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The EarthBound soundtracks influenced Toby Fox's musical style, particularly instrument choice. Many of the songs in the Undertale and Deltarune soundtracks use Soundfonts featuring instruments from the EarthBound series, giving them a classic retro NES inspired sound, although through more modern means (ie. a plugin in a DAW instead of a real NES soundchip) and modified through audio modification to better suit his needs. The soundtrack's wide range of tone including chiptune, abstract/experimental, atmospheric, comedic and orchestral, had an impact on the songs composed by Toby Fox and the wide coverage of genre and tone within his own songs.

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Shoji Meguro, known for composing the soundtrack for the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series, is a musical influence of mine whose way of creating music for games in more contemporary genres is a style I would like to try in my future musical endeavours. Their use of pop, jazz and classical songs and their use of lyrics makes them stand out from other video game soundtracks, and makes the songs work even when separated from the context of the game.

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Anamanaguchi is an American band, that mainly makes chiptune, electro-rock and bitpop music. They use a style of production that involves the combination of both live instrumentation or lyrics with retro, 8-bit sounds, a style which has influenced Toby Fox's musical writing and production. This style is most evident in the song 'Hope and Dreams', and the band is cited as being one of the main influences behind it, with Toby Fox saying the song was 'arranged in a way inspired by the band Anamanaguchi'. (Fox & Peacock, 2017, "Hopes and Dreams")

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John Williams is a film composer who created the soundtracks for classics such as the Harry Potter series and Star Wars. The memorable themes he creates using classical instruments in large orchestral performances have left a profound impact on me as a composer, and I am particularly inspired by his talent to inspire feelings of wonder and excitement through his sweeping symphonies and recognisable melodies. The fluidity and natural progression of his music throughout scenes in the films, rising from background ambient sound to grand powerful symphonies, comes together with the imagery to create memorable spectacles that capture the imagination and attention of viewers.

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Toby Fox is a game developer and composer, most notably known for his game1s Undertale and Deltarune, of which he also composed the soundtracks. His ability to capture the emotion of scenes and enrich characters through music using memorable motifs and melodies, his focus on retro-video game instrumentation and the chiptune genre, have all been huge inspirations in the style of music I would like to compose. Toby is the main reason I started making music, after listening to his works extensively and learning about the methods and programs he used to compose, which I downloaded and still use today.