Yoshiharu Gotanda first worked as programmer at Wolfteam and Telenet Japan, his first major work was Hiouden for SFC in 1994 at the age of only 18 years. At the same time he wrote the story Tale Phantasia which led to the Tales of Phantasia game for SFC in 1995 which he programmed as well. Due to disagreements with developer Telenet and financier Namco regarding how to handle the Tales series he left and founded tri-Ace, which first game is Star Ocean for SFC in 1996, again written and programmed by him. Together with friends and other former Telenet employees he runs the hobby musician group @MIDI which released 12 CD's since. He now heads tri-Ace and is director and scenario writer for most of its games. He has a friendly relationship to Motoi Sakuraba and was the driving force behind Sakuraba's Star Ocean & Valkyrie Profile live concert.
Website
http://www.atmidi.com