Shinji Hosoe (細江 慎治, Hosoe Shinji, born February 28, 1967), 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.
[4] This led to him composing for Dragon Spirit, as well as various other arcade games such as Final Lap, Ordyne and Dirt Fox.
[8] In 1992, Hosoe composed for Fighter & Attacker alongside Aihara, which was his first game project to utilize hardcore techno music.
[10] The success of Ridge Racer has since led to him receiving many offers from companies to compose similar music.
The trio were also given freedom to work on the music of Square games Bushido Blade and Driving Emotion Type-S.
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.
[19] In 2004, Hosoe and Saso[20] worked on the gameplay soundtrack of Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse, with Yuki Kajiura composing the cutscene music.
[2] His music for the game was poorly received by critics and fans at the time, and were considered unfitting;[22] as a result, he had no interest in releasing a soundtrack CD at the time and did not return to compose for Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra, although his work eventually received a more positive reception from fans.
In addition to his career as a composer for games and other media, Hosoe has also participated in a number of side projects.
), parodying Yellow Magic Orchestra, alongside fellow Namco composers Sano, Aihara, and Hiroto Sasaki.
He has also participated in the Nanosweep album series, which features original tracks by composers from both SuperSweep and Hiroshi Okubo's circle nanosounds.