Ari Pulkkinen is a rising composer from Finland. Since 2003, he is working at Frozenbyte as the in-house music and audio director.

His musical education consists of piano lessons received between age six and twelve. Coming from a musical family, it is no wonder Pulkkinen followed its direction as a career. Traditional Klezmer and Slavic music heard while growing up also had an impact on his style. He wrote his first song, "Autumn Rain", when he was twelve.

Before composing for video games, Pulkkinen created music as part of the demoscene. The experience gained in this medium left a distinctive electronic flair on his style. Standing out from the mass, he won a number of prizes at the Assembly party, including:

- 2001 Fast Music Compo: "Comrades" (1st)
- 2002 Fast Music Compo: "Karjalan Haamu" (2nd)
- 2003 Fast Music Compo: "Back to The Roots" (1st)
- 2004 Fast Music Compo: "Autumn Rain" (1st)

The first game Pulkkinen scored is StarFight VI: Gatekeepers released in 1999 for PC. While not a highly-acclaimed or ground-breaking game, it still brought some recognition to its composer. Following this title is I've Got Some Balls 2, for which he wrote a number of tunes, but the game was unfortunately canceled. It was not until a few years later that Pulkkinen gained international popularity with his work on Frozenbyte's Shadowgrounds. The industrial/rock/electronic/orchestral soundtrack to this futuristic alien-shooting action game pleased both fans and critics so much that the developer and Sumthing Else Music Works decided to publish it as a stand-alone album. He also scored the sequel, Shadowgrounds Survivor, released in 2007.

For the company Housemarque, Pulkinnen wrote completely new music for the modern remake of the 1994 Amiga title Super Stardust, titled Super Stardust HD and released on the PS3's PlayStation Network. Retro-ish electronic with drum and bass and orchestral elements are mixed together for the original release of the game, while the Team Expansion features orchestral arrangements of the original tracks.

With a strong belief that his works should be unique, he aspires to using "multi-genre styles" and "mixing conventional styles into new ones." This should come as a recommendation to game music fans to keep a close eye on this growing and evolving composer.

He is currently working on a yet-unannounced game at Frozenbyte, as well as looking into starting a solo/band music career.

"My goal is to make unique, modern music that stand out from the norm. There is no point just copying standard Hollywood film score styles. I am dedicated to create sophisticated, deep, melodic, dynamic music and sound design that will give each production individual style and feeling." -Ari Pulkkinen, official biography