| Shinji Hosoe | |
| Background: | non_vocal_instrumentalist |
| Native Name: | 細江 慎治 |
| Native Name Lang: | ja |
| Alias: | Megaten Sampling Masters MEGA |
| Birth Date: | 28 February 1967 |
| Birth Place: | Gero, Gifu Prefecture, Japan |
| Years Active: | 1987–present |
| Label: | Troubadour Records SuperSweep |
| Associated Acts: | Ayako Saso Takayuki Aihara Nobuyoshi Sano |
, also known as Megaten and Sampling Masters MEGA,[1] is a Japanese video game composer and musician most famous for scoring Ridge Racer, Street Fighter EX and many Namco arcade games between 1987 and 1996.[2] He also runs the music production and publishing company SuperSweep, alongside long time collaborator Ayako Saso.
Hosoe was born on February 28, 1967, in Gero, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. His family moved to Chōfu while he was in first grade of elementary school. At the age of 8, he bought Isao Tomita's album The Planets. He also listened to electronic music by artists such as Jean-Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra. During his teenage years, he played bass in a Yellow Magic Orchestra tribute band. At the time, he did not have a serious interest in music and received low grades in music classes. After graduating high school, he studied computer graphics at Japan Electronics College.[3]
Hosoe joined Namco in 1985 as a part-time game tester and CG artist. During this time, he merely created music as a hobby in his spare time. After showing his music to fellow co-workers, he was reassigned the position of a composer in 1986.[4] This led to him composing for Dragon Spirit, as well as various other arcade games such as Final Lap, Ordyne and Dirt Fox. He started off tracks by programming a rhythm into the sequencer, then playing melodies with a keyboard on-top, and later adding new parts or re-writing existing parts.[5] In 1990, he composed for , working with Ayako Saso and Takayuki Aihara for the first time; he found himself busy with lots of other work, hence other tracks were composed by the other two composers.[6]
Using the pseudonym Yuji Yamada, he also composed for games that were not developed or published by Namco. These include the Little Master series; as the series was intended for children, director Tadato Kawano asked Hosoe to compose tracks that are upbeat and happy.[7] He also composed for the PC-98 game Eye of the Beholder along with Yuzo Koshiro, whose style he tried to imitate for his tracks in the game.[8]
In 1992, Hosoe composed for Fighter & Attacker alongside Aihara, which was his first game project to utilize hardcore techno music. Neither Hosoe and Aihara had previously listened to music in this genre; Kawano had given Hosoe two CDs of hardcore techno music, which initially puzzled him but grew on him after repeated listens, so he composed music in this genre to match the game's intensity.[9] The following year, he composed for Ridge Racer. While racing games at this point often featured jazz fusion music, the majority of tracks in the game are dance music,[6] although he initially planned to include a wider variety of genres. Due to time constraints, he asked Saso and Nobuyoshi Sano to contribute one track each.[10] The success of Ridge Racer has since led to him receiving many offers from companies to compose similar music. He also composed for Cyber Sled earlier that year, which he considers to be his greatest work,[2] although it received a mixed reception from critics, who criticized it for being repetitive.[11] [12]
Hosoe left Namco to join Arika in 1996, feeling that his salary would not increase any further. Saso and Aihara also joined Arika desiring to continue working with him, although Sano remained at Namco. This led to the trio composing for Street Fighter EX along with its sequels. The console versions were their first game projects to feature live instrumentation. Ex-Taito composer Yasuhisa Watanabe later joined the sound team. The trio were also given freedom to work on the music of Square games Bushido Blade and Driving Emotion Type-S. The latter game was poorly received by game critics and fans, although the soundtrack has received praise for its blend of fusion, rock and techno music.[13] [14] [15] However, the music also received criticism, with one critic describing it as sounding like "a flock of seagulls being maimed and tortured".[16]
Upon joining Arika, he expressed a desire to eventually found his own game music company, which eventually led to him leaving in 2000 and founding SuperSweep alongside Saso and Watanabe.[2] [17] Yousuke Yasui, who had already tried to apply to join Arika, also joined the company as a composer. In addition to composing for games, the company also publishes various soundtracks.
One of SuperSweep's first works was the soundtrack of Arika's Technictix in 2001, which Hosoe considers to be one of his most significant contributions to game music.[2] The team also worked on the music of the game's sequel Technic Beat. The game's producer, Ichiro Mihara, decided that the game's soundtrack would include remixes of music from earlier Namco and Arika games. Mihara chose which tracks would be included in the game, while the composers decided on which tracks they wanted to remix, at times fighting with other composers over who would remix a track.[18]
In 2004, Hosoe and Saso[19] worked on the gameplay soundtrack of , with Yuki Kajiura composing the cutscene music. Kajiura worked entirely separate from Hosoe and Saso, and did not collaborate on any tracks nor even meet during the game's production.[20] For the gameplay tracks, Hosoe composed those with the sound hardware of the PlayStation 2, and opted to use an electronic sound over orchestral due to the limited memory available to work with, in an attempt to make the difference in sound quality between the gameplay and cutscene soundtracks smaller.[2] His music for the game was poorly received by critics and fans at the time, and were considered unfitting;[21] as a result, he had no interest in releasing a soundtrack CD at the time and did not return to compose for , although his work eventually received a more positive reception from fans.[22]
Along with Saso, Kenji Kawai and other composers, he scored Folklore in 2007. The game features a serious, dark cinematic score; while Hosoe most frequently works on upbeat electronic music, he found the music easy to compose due to not having to focus on sound design. In 2009, he served as the sole composer of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, which also features dark, intense music. He found the music straightforward to compose. As he had to compose the music using the Nintendo DS sound hardware, Yasui assisted him in ensuring that the music sounded close to the quality of recorded music. He would go on to compose for later titles in the Zero Escape series, including in 2012 and Zero Time Dilemma in 2016.[23]
In 2016, game company Breaking Bytes announced that if its shoot 'em up game Xydonia is successfully funded, then Hosoe and Keishi Yonao will contribute additional tracks to the game. Saso and Yasui are also planned to be additional composers for the game if the stretch goal of €32,000 is reached.[24] However, as of 2024 the game has yet to be released.
In addition to his career as a composer for games and other media, Hosoe has also participated in a number of side projects. He founded the record label Troubadour Record in 1991. The label released a number of game soundtrack-inspired concept albums, featuring other prolific video game composers such as Hitoshi Sakimoto and Hayato Matsuo,[25] as well as vocal and cover albums. He was also part of the group Oriental Magnetic Yellow (O.M.Y.), parodying Yellow Magic Orchestra, alongside fellow Namco composers Sano, Aihara, and Hiroto Sasaki.[4] The group released several albums and also performed concerts.[26] He has also released albums under the Sampling Masters name with Saso, including the Over Drive Hell series of albums. He has also participated in the Nanosweep album series, which features original tracks by composers from both SuperSweep and Hiroshi Okubo's circle nanosounds.
| Year | Title | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1987 | Dragon Spirit | Music | |
| Final Lap | Music | ||
| Quester | Music | ||
| 1988 | Assault | Music with Kazuo Noguchi | |
| Ordyne | Music | ||
| 1989 | Dirt Fox | Music | |
| 1990 | Final Lap 2 | Music | |
| Pistol Daimyo no Bōken | Music with Seiichi Sakurai and Yoshie Takayanagi | ||
| Dragon Saber | Music | ||
| Music with Ayako Saso and Takayuki Aihara | |||
| 1991 | Starblade | Music | |
| 1992 | Eye of the Beholder | PC-98 version; music with Yuzo Koshiro | |
| Fighter & Attacker | Music with Takayuki Aihara | ||
| 1993 | Cyber Sled | Music | |
| Ridge Racer | Music with Ayako Saso and Nobuyoshi Sano | ||
| 1994 | Ridge Racer 2 | Music with Ayako Saso, Nobuyoshi Sano and Takayuki Aihara | |
| Attack of the Zolgear | Music with Ayako Saso | ||
| 1995 | Tekken | PlayStation version; arrangements with various others | |
| Rave Racer | Music with Ayako Saso, Nobuyoshi Sano and Takayuki Aihara | ||
| Dirt Dash | Music with various others | ||
| Speed Racer | Music | ||
| 1996 | Xevious 3D/G | Music with Ayako Saso, Nobuyoshi Sano and Hiroto Sasaki | |
| Tekken 2 | PlayStation version; arrangements with various others | ||
| Street Fighter EX | Music with Ayako Saso and Takayuki Aihara | ||
| 1997 | Bushido Blade | Music with Ayako Saso and Takayuki Aihara | |
| Street Fighter EX Plus α | Music with Ayako Saso and Takayuki Aihara | ||
| 1998 | Street Fighter EX2 | Music with Ayako Saso and Takayuki Aihara | |
| Music with Ayako Saso | |||
| 1999 | iS: internal section | Music with Ayako Saso | |
| Street Fighter EX2 Plus | Music with Ayako Saso and Takayuki Aihara | ||
| Custom Robo | Music with Ayako Saso and Yasuhisa Watanabe | ||
| 2000 | Street Fighter EX3 | Music with Ayako Saso, Takayuki Aihara and Yasuhisa Watanabe | |
| Driving Emotion Type-S | Music with Ayako Saso and Takayuki Aihara | ||
| Custom Robo V2 | Music with Ayako Saso, Yasuhisa Watanabe and Yousuke Yasui | ||
| 2002 | Technic Beat | Music with various others | |
| Custom Robo GX | Music with Ayako Saso | ||
| 2003 | Mega Man Network Transmission | Music with Ayako Saso and Yousuke Yasui | |
| 2004 | Music with Yuki Kajiura and Ayako Saso | ||
| 2005 | Music with Ayako Saso | ||
| Azumi | Music with Ayako Saso, Yousuke Yasui and Masashi Yano | ||
| Ibara | Music | ||
| Under Defeat | Music | ||
| Super Dragon Ball Z | Music with various others | ||
| 2009 | Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors | Music | |
| 2010 | Fate/Extra | Music with Keita Haga and Daisuke Nagata | |
| 2012 | Music | ||
| 2016 | Zero Time Dilemma | Music | |
| 2021 | Pac-Man 99 | Music with Ayako Saso | |
| 2022 | Alice Gear Aegis Op. Halzion | Music |
| Year | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1988 | Metal Hawk | Music with Kazuo Noguchi |
| 1995 | Music ("Attract") | |
| 1998 | Battle Garegga | Saturn version; arrangements ("Subversive Awareness" and "Erupter") |
| 2000 | Music with Takayuki Aihara and Naoki Tsuchiya | |
| 2001 | Keyboardmania 3rdMix | Arrangements ("EE-AL-K" and "Sensation from Salamander2") |
| Beatmania IIDX 5th Style | Music ("Outer Wall" and "Tablets") | |
| Beatmania IIDX 6th Style | Music ("Route 80s" and "Rottel-Da-Sun") | |
| 2003 | DoDonPachi DaiOuJou | PlayStation 2 version; arrangements ("Stage Clear" and "Game Over") |
| Naruto: Clash of Ninja | Music with Ayako Saso and Yousuke Yasui | |
| Beatmania IIDX 9th Style | Music ("Rottel-the-Mercury") | |
| Music with Ayako Saso, Yousuke Yasui and Masashi Yano | ||
| 2004 | Beatmania IIDX 10th Style | Music ("1st Samurai") |
| Espgaluda | PlayStation 2 version; arrangement ("Name Entry") | |
| The King of Fighters 2003 | Console versions; arrangements with various others | |
| Ridge Racers | Music with various others | |
| 2005 | Zatch Bell! Mamodo Battles | Music with various others |
| Ridge Racer 6 | Music ("Valley of the Mind" and "Highway Fusion") | |
| 2006 | Music with various others | |
| Ridge Racers 2 | Music ("Rotten7 Remix" and "Heat Floor Remix") | |
| Ridge Racer 7 | Music ("Combustion" and "Listen Up!") | |
| 2007 | Folklore | Music with various others |
| Endless Ocean | Music with Ayako Saso | |
| Music with various others | ||
| Project Sylpheed | DLC; one track | |
| Arkanoid DS | Arrangement ("Captain Neo -Confusion Mix-") | |
| Umisho | Music ("Glad Romantic") | |
| 2008 | DJMax Technika | Music ("Son of Sun") |
| Music ("Fist Festival") | ||
| Let's Tap | Music with various others | |
| CS | Music ("Vox Up") | |
| 2009 | 11eyes CrossOver | Music ("The Long Afternoon of the Mages" and "Hollow Boundary") |
| 3D Dot Game Heroes | Music with various others | |
| 2010 | DJMax Technika 2 | Music with various others |
| DJMax Portable 3 | Music ("Xlasher") | |
| 2011 | Otomedius Excellent | DLC-only; music with various others |
| Ridge Racer 3D | Music with various others | |
| Ridge Racer (2011) | Music ("The Time is Now") | |
| 2012 | Ridge Racer Unbounded | Music ("Mushrooms" and "Wrong Way") |
| Tekken Tag Tournament 2 | Console version; music with various others | |
| Groove Coaster Zero | Music ("Wacky Dance Ethnic") | |
| 2013 | Tekken Revolution | Music ("Fear to Agonize") |
| maimai PLUS | Arrangement ("Like the Wind [Reborn]") | |
| 2014 | Onigiri | Music ("The Rainbow Wind Blows" and "One and All, Forever") |
| Arrangement ("Lightning Strikes") | ||
| 2015 | Chunithm | Music ("The Wheel to the Right") |
| 2016 | Music ("Zombie Chase") | |
| 2017 | Giga Wrecker | Music with Takahiro Eguchi and Teruo Taniguchi |
| DJMax Respect | Music ("Mulch") | |
| Fighting EX Layer | Music with various others | |
| 2018 | Pokémon Quest | Music with Teruo Taniguchi, Takahiro Eguchi, and Fumihisa Tanaka |
| 2019 | Tetris 99 | Music with various others |
| 2024 | Tekken 8 | Music ("Delusional Reality" and "Dive into the Arcade") |
| Endless Ocean Luminous | Music with Ayako Saso and Takahiro Eguchi |
| Year | Title | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | The Pet Girl of Sakurasou | Music with various others | |
| 2014 | Sgt. Frog | Music with Ayako Saso, Takahiro Eguchi and Yousuke Yasui | |
| No Game No Life | Music with Ayako Saso, Takahiro Eguchi and Fumihasa Tanaka | ||
| 2015 | Taboo Tattoo | Music with Ayako Saso and Takahiro Eguchi |