, also known as Megaten and Sampling Masters MEGA, 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. He also runs the music production and publishing company SuperSweep, alongside long time collaborator Ayako Saso.

Biography

Early life 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 electronic music album The Planets. He also listened to electronic music by artists such as Yellow Magic Orchestra and Jean-Michel Jarre. 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.

Namco (1985–1996) Hosoe joined Namco in 1985 as a part-time game tester and CG artist, creating music in his spare time as a hobby. After showing his music to fellow co-workers, he was assigned the position of a composer in 1986. 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. In 1990, he composed for Galaxian3: Project Dragoon, working with Ayako Saso for the first time.

Using the pseudonym Yuji Yamada, he also composed for games that were not developed or published by Namco. These include the Little Master series, where director Tadato Kawano asked Hosoe to compose upbeat and happy-styled music. 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.

In 1992, Hosoe composed for Fighter & Attacker alongside Takayuki Aihara, his first game project to utilize hardcore techno music. This decision was inspired by hearing hardcore techno CDs that Kawano had provided him, which slowly grew on him. The following year, he composed for Ridge Racer, largely featuring dance music. Due to time constraints, he asked Saso and Nobuyoshi Sano to contribute one track each. 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, although it received a mixed reception from critics, who criticized it for being repetitive.

Arika and SuperSweep (1996–present) Hosoe left Namco to join Arika in 1996, frustrated that his salary was not increasing. 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. Ex-Taito composer Yasuhisa Watanabe later joined the sound team. Arika's sound team also composed for games developed by other companies, such as 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. However, the music also received criticism, with one critic describing it as sounding like "a flock of seagulls being maimed and tortured".

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. Yousuke Yasui, who had 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. 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 arrangements 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 others on who would arrange a track.

In 2004, Hosoe and Saso worked on the gameplay soundtrack of Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse, with Yuki Kajiura composing the cutscene music. Kajiura worked entirely separate from Hosoe and Saso, and did not meet during the game's production. 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 mask the difference in sound quality between the gameplay and cutscene soundtracks. His music for the game was poorly received by critics and fans at the time, and were considered unfitting; 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.

Along with Saso, Kenji Kawai and other composers, he scored Folklore in 2007. The game features a serious, dark cinematic score, which he found 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 features dark, intense electronic music. Although he found the composition process straightforward, as it was composed to play on 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 Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward in 2012 and Zero Time Dilemma in 2016.

Side projects 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, 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. The group released several albums and also performed concerts. 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.

Notable works

Video games

As lead composer 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 Galaxian3: Project Dragoon Music with Ayako Saso 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 Tetris: The Grand Master 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 Tetris: The Absolute – The Grand Master 2 Music with Ayako Saso Custom Robo V2 Music with Ayako Saso, Yasuhisa Watanabe and Yousuke Yasui 2002 Technic Beat Music with SuperSweep Custom Robo GX Music with Ayako Saso 2003 Mega Man Network Transmission Music with Ayako Saso and Yousuke Yasui 2004 Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse Music with Yuki Kajiura and Ayako Saso 2005 Tetris: The Grand Master 3 – Terror‑Instinct Music with Ayako Saso Spikeout: Battle Street 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 SuperSweep 2009 Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors Music 2010 Fate/Extra Music with Keita Haga and Daisuke Nagata 2012 Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward Music 2016 Zero Time Dilemma Music 2021 Pac-Man 99 Music with Ayako Saso 2022 Alice Gear Aegis: Op. Halzion Music 2025 Tetris: The Grand Master 4 – Absolute Eye Music with Ayako Saso Hunter × Hunter: Nen × Impact Music with Ayako Saso, Takahiro Eguchi, and Masashi Yano

As a contributor