My absolute personal favorites from EX series. Yeah I love the more chill themes haha, but EX’s soundtrack as a whole is just pure genius. They need to look back to this and 2I/3S for inspiration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viXb0JR_kBk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgLTuNVRrtM
In all fairness to the Capcom composers…they seemed to do a mildly better job in SF4 starting from Super onwards. They put on a lot better tracks after that point.
Then in SFxT, most of their stage music was fucking horrible…but the Rival Fight/Boss Music Tracks were relatively good too (which was a slap in the face as you can’t fight in Multiplayer with the actual decent tracks). I still consider the SFxT Akuma theme as his best one.
Then you just come to the realization that…Capcom is actually a bit inconsistent with tracks going back all the way to SF2. The goal should just be to have a majority being better than not but at least even in their worst outings they still show flashes of quality.
As for music direction, well you can already tell the divide in here. Some prefer more pounding tracks that get the blood going and increase the energy and tension. Others prefer the more chill, easy going tracks. I lean more towards the former but I respect the latter as well (I mean, you can’t beat Jazzy NYC). I don’t think that there’s a clear better option between the two.
Lots of good points in this thread. I’ve loved so many of the past hits Sf2 (of course started it all), Alpha 2, Some of alpha 3, Ex@ was fantastic, and so on. Man, I miss Spinning Bird from EX@, Stronger and Amusementive Crime so badly.
With SF4 I felt there was lots of hit and miss for me. I loved Rufus’, the Volcanic Rim is fantastic, Crumbling Laboratory, and some of the remixes are good, but I felt a lot of them themes just didn’t fully reach the finish line. I’ll give an example, in USFIV, Hugo’s theme is a perfect example of not quite reaching the finish line.
https://youtu.be/yzTRUgmsQhY
I like the start of it, particularly 16 seconds in, but 50 seconds, the electronic wailing (I suck with music terminology) ruins it for me, but it slightly recovers around 1:23 for me.
Another theme I want to talk about is Gen’s
https://youtu.be/J_Jex53s45w
This, in my opinion doesn’t really fit him. It’s too modern and electronic for an old man. It sounds befitting a Gen-Y apprentice, someone like Yun and Yang – practitioners or the art, but still very modern teens who like to skateboard and rollerskate.
Listen to his Alpha 2 theme:
https://youtu.be/OUS-fxZCQw8
That’s forever tied to the image of his stage. To me, it’s after midnight, in a dank, dark alley, no one is around except for you and Gen. You’re standing face to face with one of the greatest assassin’s in the nation and he’s barley breaking a sweat as you’re giving him your all. It’s such a rich theme, it’s intense, it’s dangerous and dynamic. The new one simply just resembles some of the beats, but ultimately doesn’t feel tied to Gen.
They’re not bad to me, but they lose too much of their identity due to the urge to conform to modern music stylings.
I don’t know if the SF5 trailer themes will be in the game (Charlie’s is already existing: Epic Action & Adventure Vol. 10 Composed By: Aleksandar Dimitrijevic, still haven’t found Bison’s though), but I hope they’re trying to be a bit more cinematic and less Dance Club.
honestly, i just want an SF3 sounding soundtrack, but i doubt that will happen, the only reason SF3 got that sound track that it did cause it was the late 90’s, and hip hop was on the rise, and had tons of controversy going on, aka hype on the genre at the time.
Yeah Gen’s Alpha 2 theme is untouchable.
The EX soundtrack…eh sounds like they fit better with the anime that was based on SFII.
Oh yeah, I also forgot to say this:
I hope in the future we at the very least have the option to turn off the effect that makes the music change when you or the opponent almost get K.O. or have a full meter. It was kind of interesting that the music would react to the match back in Super SF, but I really just want to enjoy the theme all the way through. It kind of kills my hype when the Volcanis Rim’s awesome theme just starts a short loop when both me and my opponent are down to 1 hp.
Well, that kinda emphasizes our issue with the really bad SF4 songs. LOL Volcano Rim ain’t exactly one of the best, but Drive-In At Night, Blast Furnace, and Inland Jungle, to me, are 3 of the best SF4 tracks overall, and does the “danger” music right. Though SF4 doesn’t do it exactly like in SF2, where once the KO sign flashes, the music changes (except in Super SF2 where that happens in the 2nd round), in SF4 the music changes when the Ultra meter reaches the halfway meter, and then again with the full meter.
I actually like when the music changes to emphasize the “danger” aspect of it, though I prefer it change more when KO is flashing and it’s at least the 2nd round like they did in SSF2T, and even the first 2 Killer Instinct games. They didn’t put that in the Alphas, or in the SF3 games so it may be omitted again this time but that’s something about the music I’ve enjoyed.
How dare you not like the volcanic guitar solo loop!
has any of the SFV music been released yet?
to all the haters of SF4 music, go listen to Cody or Balrog’s theme again.
Those are actually the ones I dislike the most. Balrog’s theme with that charlie brown adult voicebox bullshit effect shivers
Balrog’s theme is probably the worst example you could use…
I love SFIV’s OST. Many memorable tunes there. Alpha 3 is still my favorite to this date, though. I, however, hate 3S OST. Get that hip hop junky punky ass outta my fighting game. Of course there are exceptions like Ryu, Akuma, Urien and Q, but that’s about it.
I think it would just be too risky to try that again. They got very lucky that it didnt come out sounding like red rapper after a couple years.
I quoted you a while ago on that showing how there’s really only like two hip-hop tracks in the entire game. I guess you didn’t read it though.
He must think that acid jazz, house and jungle are also hip-hop music.
Granted, if SF5’s OST took cues in modern urban music, it wouldn’t sound like 3S at all. 3S sounds very 90s.
The only acceptable thing on that post is hating the 3s OST (minus liking some bgm’s, all of them suck), Alpha 3. 3s and SFIV OST’s suck monkey balls.
Alpha 3 is the one I dislike the most. Every single track uses the same backbeat and the loops last like 30 seconds. Some of the loops are extended but it’s artificial; just the initial 30 seconds plus some odd downbeat or something like that. Liking it is a matter of taste, but musically speaking it’s terrible.
Yeah but honestly it makes the most sense for a fight. No point in making a beautifully written two minute track when a lot of fights finish in half that time. When it comes to Fighting Games I’d prefer something that tries to make an immediate impact.
Save better written music for Arranged Soundtracks…or just fighting games with longer fights (see KoF).
A3 is just about my least favorite SF soundtrack ever. Way too much low-register droning, flavorless samples, a lot of homogenous rhythms and very little in the way of memorable melody. The short loops didn’t help it. Plus it abandoned that late 70’s flavoring that A1 and A2 adapted pretty well, which to me was unforgivable.
3s did a good job at establishing a stronger, more unique sound for the series so I accept it, but I still prefer SF3’s versions of just about every theme except maybe Yun/Yang and Alex.
IMHO the best possible soundtrack for SF5 to imitate would be SFEX but that’s probably not going to happen.
Killer Instinct doesn’t seem to have trouble with possibility of fights/rounds being short thanks to dynamical tracks. SF could use this as well, increase the tension/hype even more. But not like SF2 when the music just sped up and started playing in higher pitch or the SF4 volcanic rim eternal guitar solo when the KO icon starts flashing on the screen
Capcom really can do so much with music in Street Fighter