Shinji Hosoe

Note: This biography was written exclusively for Square Enix Music Online by Z-Freak and Chris and is under copyright.

Shinji Hosoe was born on February 28, 1967, in Gero Hot Springs, Japan. His interest in music started at high school, where he learnt to play the synthesizer and joined a band. Shortly after leaving school, he joined Namco in 1987 as a part-time CG artist. He had managed to infiltrate himself into the position, but for some reason or other, he wasn't quite pleased doing CG art, so he started composing music secretly. Namco wasn't aware he was behind the fun, catchy score that eventually appeared in the game — Dragon Spirit, a rather rough, old-school shooter that was fairly popular in the Arcades back then. It was successful enough that Namco ported it to the Nintendo. Of course, the sound took a hit in quality, but the music still shined. Afterwards, Hosoe worked on several early racing soundtracks, including the Final Lap series, Dirtfox, and Ridge Racer's earlier installments.

1991 marked one of Hosoe's most beloved projects, Dragon Saber, which was was the spiritual successor to Dragon Spirit. It featured more musical variety and better quality, and its tracks were catchier for the most part. In 1992, Hosoe was selected to compose the score of one of the biggest revolutionary titles in gaming history: Galaxian^3: Project Dragoon along with fellow composers Ayako Saso and Takayuki Aihara. The trio opted to take a Star Wars-esque orchestral approach for the music, which was fitting for the Sci-Fi theme the game adopted. Around 1995, Hosoe made quite a few high-profile works. These included Cyber Sled, Cyber Cycles, Rave Racer, Ridge Racer 2, and Dirt Dash. As well, in 1996, Hosoe collaborated with Yasuhisa Watanabe for the first time, creating an arrangement from Fighter's Impact.

Soon after, Hosoe and Co. quit Namco during 1997 to join the company Arika. Over there, they made even more interesting works. These included Custom Robo for the Nintendo 64 and the Street Fighter EX soundtracks, where jazz, rock, and electronica were carefully blended. After working on 1997's Bushido Blade, he scored a significant title for Square — IS: Internal Section. The intensely colourful shooter featured a wild electronic score written specifically to be in synch with the pulsation of the tube gamers travelled in. His successes continued when he composed Technic Beat, which he personally regards as his biggest contribution to video game music. During this period, Hosoe was also active as an independent artist, releasing works such as 2197 on his record label Troubadour record label and working on the technopop albums of Oriental Magnetic Yellow, a parody on the name Yellow Magic Orchestra.

In 2000, Hosoe with help of Saso made his move to form his own company, Super Sweep and its accompanying record label. They dabbled in a range of projects on establishment, including Tetris Grand Master 2, Technictix, Gundam Battle Online, Mega Man Battle Network Transmission, and pieces for Konami's bemani line. One of their initial projects was the unfortunate flop at Square, Driving Emotion Type-S; even if the music was undoubtedly the best part of the game, everything else couldn't save it from mediocrity. Other notable projects included Perfect Prince with Hitoshi Sakimoto, resulting in the company's involvement in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Hosoe's record labels also established a significant discography through publishing works by Yasuhisa Watanabe, Yosuke Yasui, Norihiro Furukawa, Masashi Yano, and Takayuki Aihara, in addition to non-game albums like Trash and NanoSweep.

In recent years, Hosoe has become a more popular mainstream figure. His in-game score for Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse was quite well-received despite a lack of soundtrack release. Hosoe's hard rock score to Cave's delighted gamers and the more electronically-oriented score to one of the final Dreamcast games Under Defeat was equally successful. He has also been a regular contributor to multi-arranger albums and bonus tracks of soundtracks like Metroid Prime's. His latest accomplishments are a mature ambient score to the PlayStation 3's Folklore and the well-received Rockman 1 ~ 6 Techno Arrange Ver. Indeed, as owner of one of the important companies in game music and having built up an enormous list of albums, the future is certainly bright, and it looks like there is no chance of him slowing down any time soon.

List of Game Projects for Square[]

List of Covered Albums[]