Mamoru Samuragochi, a man credited with composing classical music and video game soundtracks, "has admitted [to] hiring someone else to write his music for nearly two decades," the BBC reports.

The 50-year-old Samuragochi was thought to be deaf, drawing comparisons to Beethoven, but that may be untrue as well. "In a surprise twist, the man who says he was the ghost-writer of the works, Takashi Niigaki, claimed in a press conference Thursday that he did not believe the acclaimed composer was deaf at all," according to CNN.

Time profiled Samuragochi in 2001 after he was credited with writing the score of Capcom's Onimusha, a PS2 game.

Samuragochi "created a rich, textured symphony that elevates a game with a mundane plot—a samurai must rescue a princess from a bunch of demons—into a story of epic proportions," the Time article said. Samuragochi "browbeat the producers into employing a 200-piece orchestra, including musicians playing such traditional instruments as a Japanese flute and taiko drums.... Perhaps the most dramatic aspect of the Onimusha score is the fact that the composer can barely hear it himself. At 24, he was found to have a severe hearing disability, and today he is completely deaf in his left ear and can hear only slightly with the help of a hearing aid in his right. His condition has brought him a certain celebrity, which he fears may detract from an honest critique of his work."

In addition to Onimusha, Samuragochi has been credited with composing a soundtrack for the Resident Evil series in 1998, "Bio Hazard Symphony Op. 91 Crime and Punishment." A review on Square Enix Music Online said that "[i]t is usually classified as an arranged or image album for the original Resident Evil even though it has little in common thematically and stylistically with the original score. In fact, it is an entirely new score created for the second release of Resident Evil: Director's Cut, known as Resident Evil: Dual Shock Version."

Samuragochi is also credited with writing a symphony titled Hiroshima, which was finished in 2003 and sold more than 100,000 copies in Japan.

Samuragochi may not have been very well known in the US, as his profile on the English version of Wikipedia was only created today. The news that Samuragochi didn't write the works credited to him created a stir in Japan, however, where "Nippon Columbia, Samuragochi's record company, said it was 'flabbergasted and deeply infuriated' by his revelation," the BBC wrote.