Looking back at my childhood I don't know if there was any game that I wanted to play more than Street Fighter II. I lived in a small town, but in the back of the video store they had a few arcade games, and one of those was Street Fighter II. My parents would only let us play on Saturday mornings and only for a few minutes, it was one of my favorite times of the week and I still remember those times fondly.
When I first was getting into VGM vinyl this was on the top of my "must get" list. So many of these songs are completely woven into my VGM dna to the point where someone starts one of these songs I'm automatically finishing it in my head.
Even when I take a step back and try to look at this objectively (that's impossible for me by the way), the game and music are a titan. This was possibly the first "real" fighting game. It set up so many conventions that are still used today. Multiple fighters to choose from, special moves that are vastly different from other characters, diverse fighting grounds, the list just keeps going on.
On top of the gameplay the music helped immerse the players into the battle. With so much going on in the backgrounds, the music had to match the intensity of both the battle and the setting. Nearly every single song on here does just that.
I know that these days this likely sounds dated, but that is part of the appeal of this soundtrack. Like all of my favorite soundtracks it brings me back to simpler times... times where the biggest thing I had to worry about was how much time I would spend at the arcade, or what movie to rent for that week, or what candy to get for Saturday morning. I miss those times.
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