While a game's visuals and gameplay usually get the lion's share of attention, the music and the sounds are important as well. Just ask Akira Yamaoka, music composer for Konami's Silent Hill series. With Silent Hill 5 (PS3, Xbox 360) currently in development, Mr. Yamaoka shared his insights on what it was like to come up with the music for the Silent Hill movie and games.

Find out what Mr. Yamaoka had to say after the jump!

Konami's resident musician and video game composer Akira Yamaoka recently talked about PlayStation Portable title Silent Hill: Origins. Aside from composing 15 songs for the official game soundtrack, Yamaoka is also responsible for overseeing all parts of the Silent Hill franchise.

Anyway, Yamaoka shared that he wanted to do the music of Origins since day one because the story in this particular title will catapult the events of the other four games in the series. The musician said that he wanted to be sure that it will have the same feel as the first Silent Hill game.

Akira Yamaoka then revealed that Silent Hill: Origins has been a great challenge to them because its quite hard to terrify people using a small screen. He discussed:

The main challenge was to keep terrifying players on the handheld. It's much easier to do that on the console. We adjusted the combat system so that all players can feel the horror. On a small screen, it's a bit harder to keep everyone focused on the world of Silent Hill. That was the biggest challenge.

The musician then said that he feels like they succeeded in hurdling that challenge. "I'm very confident that we've done a good job and that players will be scared by this title. Silent Hill: Origins has some keys to understand the entire world of Silent Hill and the other games. Playing this game will help people better understand those mysteries", he concluded.

Silent Hill: Origins is expected to be released on November 6 in North America, November 15 in the whole of Europe, and December 6 for Japan.