Originally known with the "MEGATEN" art name, Shinji Hosoe (細江慎治) is arguably one of Japan's most influential personality in the videogame music scenario, with his earliest works stretching as far as the late 80ies go. Born February 28, 1967, Hosoe started his career at Namco, where he secretly learnt how to make music for 8-bit games from former employees and put this kind of knowledge on test with many arcade titles, up until becoming a recognizable personalty for the music made for the earliest entries in the Ridge Racer and Tekken series.
After his graduation from Namco, a working period at videogame developer Arika and a few side projects signed under the 1992
Troubadour Records label, Hosoe is the founder (and current president) of the still-running
SuperSweep Records label, founded in the year 2000 and aimed to create commission music for any sorts of media, mainly involving the composing efforts of Shinji Hosoe, Ayako Saso and Nobuyoshi 'sanodg' Sano. With the other two aforementioned artists, Hosoe has been closely working together on a wide number of projects since the 90ies, with both NBGI's "Sampling Masters" units and the 1996-2001 "Sampling Masters" album collection being the bases of Hosoe (and Ayako Saso)'s most known nickname.
Shinji Hosoe's contribution in rhythm games spans many different franchises, with the most relevant ones being beatmania IIDX for supplying some of the first gabba/Rotterdam Techno songs for the series and Arika's Pitapat Beat game for i-devices, mostly filled with songs from both Taito gaming and Super Sweep Records musicians.