Fighting Game Music (part deux!)

King of Fighters

SNK's main competitor to Street Fighter is a series that I'm not really familiar with. The games just play so weird compared to Capcom games. Not bad, just different. Anyway, the series has pretty good music and Japan team's theme "ESAKA" is considered one of the best songs in the series.



I also like the theme to the New Hero Team in KOF '99.



Samurai Shodown

I love this series. It was the first weapons based fighters to more or less do things right. Great character design(an Andrew Jackson expy anyone?), solid gameplay and a fair amount of gore makes this a pretty awesome set of games. The music is only okay as far as I'm concerned, it's often too atmospheric to really kick butt, but there's some decent tracks.



Fatal Fury

Rounding out the SNK games is Fatal Fury. It's always had solid gameplay, but has consistently been overshadowed by KoF. But it did introduce Geese Howard, the baddest motherfucker in fighting games. PRADICTABLE!



The final boss of Fatal Fury 2/Special, has a suitably epic theme that is actually based on a real piece of classical music!







Tekken

One of the first 3D fighters. Tekken was unique in that there was a button that controlled each limb on the fighters. It also attempted to incorporate as many characters and unique fighting styles as possible. The series is up to it's 6th installment, but I think my favorite is Tekken Tag Tournament.







First of the North Star

This game, based on a really famous and really awesome anime was done by the fine people at Arc System Works who also did Guilty Gear. I almost included Guilty Gear on this list, but honestly, it's probably deserving of it's own article.



Mortal Kombat

Finally, we have Mortal Kombat. I like the music in the first game of the series the best because I think it captures the supernatural Enter The Dragon idea that they were going for.