My connection with Sonic... A personal journey!

I almost never post personal stories here but I do have to share this one with the world :)

Thirty years ago I was just a young kid who stayed in his room drawing constantly. I barely had any friends at all.

My parents, who were struggling financially, worked really hard to buy me a Sega Genesis (or Mega-Drive in Brazil) with the game Sonic.

That game opened me up to this amazing world and I would spent countless hours in it. The music of it inspired me to learn piano so I could play the catchy tunes from Nakamura-San.

My parents couldn’t afford to pay a music teacher so I like to say that Nakamura (and Seiji Ozawa) were my teachers :)

My love for Sonic continued to grow and I started to collect some of the games. This picture contains a fraction of my collection in Brazil…

In 1998, when I was 13, I was selling fingerboards to my school colleagues and I managed to make some money to buy my Sega Dreamcast and my first game was Sonic Adventure.

Even though I was already dreaming about following my professional path as a game composer, the tunes from Jun Senoue were the ones that inspired me to move forward with this crazy dream!

I was convinced that I would become a game composer and that one day I would see my name on the credit list of a Sonic product.

Fast forward, in 2003, I started my career as game composer for the company Devworks Game Technology and became one of the pioneer game music composers in Brazil.

My first six months there I composed for small games being developed by TecToy (Sega in Brazil) for Mega-Drive and Master-System and I always felt that I was getting closer of my dream of working on Sonic.

Fast forward again, 2016, my career as a composer was established and I was working on amazing game projects, got some awards, did lots of interviews, but no Sonic in sight.

That same year, I was gifted this keychain with Sonic celebrating his 25th anniversary.

That day I made a promise to myself… Carry this keychain with me every single day until I manifest working on a Sonic production.

Here I am… Exactly 5 years later and I am seeing my name on the credit list of a Sonic product! I still can’t believe it!!!

That alone would be satisfying enough, but the universe is perfect and it brought me even more…

It gave me the chance to have my arrangements approved by Masato Nakamura himself and a chance to meet and talk with Jun Senoue - who watched part of the concert with us and kindly listened to my words of gratitude about how important he was to my professional and personal life.

All I want to say is that, never stop believing! It doesn’t matter what your dreams are, if you truly want them, chase them.

Work hard, breathe it, get obsessed with it and you will get there!

Thank you SEGA, Shota Nakama, Falk, Jun Senoue, Masato Nakamura and all the fans out there!

Life is beautiful. Happy birthday Sonic! 💙💙💙

If you did not watch the Sonic 30th Anniversary Symphony yet, please do it!

It is a beautiful project and concert!