The Street Fighter 6 Original Soundtrack Release Event

Hello friends, I have an extra special weekend posting for you. Earlier this week there was a special event announced by Capcom. Here is the official statement. 

Join us at Amoeba Hollywood as Capcom celebrates the release of the Street Fighter™ 6 Original Soundtrack Collector’s Edition Vinyl on Tuesday, February 20th at 5pm! Featuring a special performance by artists behind the video game’s songs “Not On The Sidelines” and “Legends” – GRP, Randy Marx, Rocco 808, and Jayy Starr – and an intimate conversation with Takayuki Nakayama (Game Director), Yoshiya Terayama (Lead Composer), Shuhei Matsumoto (Game Producer), and Koyo Sonae (Soundtrack Executive Producer).

The album, and the extras are perfect for collectors. I love the attention to detail that the studio put into the releases. I didn’t pick up the day of the signing, as I had just paid my car insurance. Thus I didn’t have extra funds, but I will hopefully be getting the set soon. I still wanted to support the Street Fighter crew, and the musicians as well. I decided to dress up for the event. If you have been following my blog then you would know that I was always eager to go to any Street Fighter event in the LA area.

Whether it was the original Street Fight Club, or the Super Street Fighter IV Launch Party, or the Street Fighter X Tekken event, then I would dress up in my El Fuerte mask, and show out. The original mask was made out of a white tee shirt, and foam sheets. The second mask from around 2009 was made by an actual luchador mask maker in Mexico. I had long since retired that mask, as it started showing wear, and tear from age. I don't think I've worn it in almost 10 years, but it will always be an important part of my memories. 

Given my size (6' 7", 300+ lbs) I wanted to put together a Zangief outfit, and possibly a Mike Haggar costume. I was always a Zangief main, with Hugo, Sodom, Alex, and Birdie also being secondary characters. But that cosplay was supposed to be for some point in the far future. Then six days before the Amoeba event I decided to get serious about putting something together. I got a haircut the night before the signing. My brothers had been trying to get me to sport a Mohawk for 30 years. I finally obliged. I guess the look does work on me.

The primary challenge was putting together the suit. I actually had a gray striped suit, black tie, and vest from a wedding that happened a few years ago. The thing that I didn’t realize was that I had lost a lot of weight from when I first got the suit, so it ended up being really baggy on me. I’ll have to get it tailored next time there is a Capcom event. I didn’t have a red shirt, but thankfully I found one at the local JcPenney.

I got an inexpensive watch chain, wrist watch, and pocket watch from eBay. I think I only paid $30 for all of those combined. To add an extra layer of authenticity the pocket watch was an old Soviet timepiece. I also bought arm garters, but I forgot to wear them when I got dressed the night of the signing. The only thing I’m missing is Zangief’s gold pin on the vest. If anybody has a 3D printer, or could help me source one then please let me know!

It was a rainy night in LA during the signing. The winter weather had been very strange in the southland for the past two years. It’s been much wetter than normal. Los Angeles County can go months, if not years without steady rain during winter. My wife, and I made it out to Hollywood, and found parking just in the nick of time. The crowd had already started growing inside the Amoeba Records.

The Street Fighter 6 team, and record producers did a Q&A session, while the record store played selections of the soundtrack in the background. I know somebody was filming but I don’t know when, where, or if the video will be shared.

The questions were thorough. We found out about the challenges of approaching a popular franchise with a new musical approach. The team talked about incorporating Hip Hop into the soundtrack, and searching for authentic voices that could capture the spirit of the brand. As for the special edition album, Koyo Sonae explained how he grew up with the Street Fighter II book, and CD. He said that it was very influential to him while growing up. He would listen to the CD while pouring over the illustrations.

I think Mr. Sonae was referring to the Street Fighter II Complete File book. It had a lot of concept art, and character art that was extremely rare. He wanted the SF6 albums to have the same reception with the current generation of fans. That’s why it came with an album sized book featuring detailed illustrations, and original art. It would be the kind of thing that fans would be pouring over again, and again while listening to the game music.

The translator did a great job memorizing the lengthy questions, translating them for the team, and then memorizing the lengthy responses, and letting the audience know. There’s no way I’d be able to do anything remotely close to that in English, and Spanish. I’d have to translate one sentence at a time just to keep up.

After the Q&A session the team took a short break. Amoeba then lined up the guests, and set up a table for the signing. For those of us that didn’t purchase the album, we were allowed to get a limited print for an autograph. That was a very generous surprise. I was prepared to go home early, as the web site said the signing was for purchases only. My wife, and I literally turned up just to show our support.

Takayuki Nakayama got a laugh out of my outfit, and commented that even my belt was spot on. On the other posters he was just signing, but for mine he drew a Zangief. That was the first blessing of the night.

Mr. Nakayama asked for a picture, and posted it on Twitter / X that night. I thanked him, and the team on his post. He then followed me! A second blessing! My night had absolutely been made!!! Thank you to Amoeba Music for hosting the event. Thank you to Takayuki Nakayama, Yoshiya Terayama, Shuhei Matsumoto, and Koyo Sonae. Thank you to GRP, Randy Marx, Rocco 808, and Jayy Starr! I wish you all continued success.

I encourage visitors of my blog to support the fighting game community, and the larger gaming world any way you can. If you can host a tournament that’s great. But if you can help mentor young players, share their interests, and encourage their hobbies that would be even better. I’m getting old, and gray, but my passion for Street Fighter has never been hotter. If you ever get a chance to attend an event I encourage you to do so. It’s a chance to make some friends, and learn what goes into making your favorite titles. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Marvel Contest of Champions Legacy, part 2...

 

In the previous blog I talked about how Marvel's Secret Wars was as influential to the development of the Contest of Champions mobile game as any other Marvel story arc. It was not however what I believe to be the most influential crossover event in '80s comic book history. That title would belong to DC comics. Writer Marv Wolfman did not like the different versions of the DC universe characters occupying the same space. Unless you had been following the DC comics for a long time you didn't necessarily know that Superman and Superboy were two different characters occupying two different Earths. You simply assumed that before Clark Kent became Superman he was naturally Superboy. There was actually a long-standing legal battle around who owned the rights to Superboy. To compound things there were different dimensions and different timelines happening where Clark landed on Earth in the '20s or '30s and thus interacted with different historical characters. Superman had been given lots of nonsensical powers through the years, super ventriloquism, super face shifting, super hypnosis, etc. There were also dimensions where there was a super dog (Krypto), a super horse (Comet), and even super cat (Streaky). To try and make sense of it all, de-power Superman and others, and streamline the DC canon Wolfman, artists George Perez, John Byrne, and the editors at DC agreed on an ultimate crossover, the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

 

What set Crisis apart from every other comic book crossover at the time was the finality of the events. Whatever the outcome it would determine which characters remained in publication, which "Earth" was officially canon and who lived or died. Thus when Barry Allen, the Flash, passed away it was a sacrifice that meant something to an entire generation of readers. His protege' Wally West, the Kid Flash, would have to become the new Flash. Comic books were starting to "grow up" and writers like Wolfman and Alan Moore made sure to write some complex and mature material that forever changed the way comics would be presented. In the Crisis series a villain named the Anti-Monitor was collapsing dimensions in his wake. Each alternate timeline, or dimension was labeled with a number. This is where you might have heard things like Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-Prime, etc. Imagine that in one Earth it was perpetually World War II, or that in a different Earth the Justice League was made up of criminals. It was a lot for fans to keep track of so DC needed to sort things out. Wolfman was using the gigantic Anti-Monitor as a sledgehammer to shatter each Earth. The fan-favorite characters that survived the onslaught managed to do so by traveling from Earth to Earth and joined all of the heroes for one final stand. If you are relatively new to comic books but have been to a movie theater in the past decade then this might sound like a familiar idea. Marvel had also created their own universe smasher and this one went by the name of Thanos.

 

The roots of Thanos and how he was worked into the mobile game Marvel Contest of Champions was inspired. In the previous blog I mentioned that the events in Secret Wars and the original Contest of Champions had a hand in shaping the development of the mobile game. But it went much deeper than that. Those comic runs from the early '80s focused mainly on the traditional Marvel heroes and villains, whereas DC had brought forward the idea of a battle royal across different dimensions, or the multiverse. In 2018 Sony Animated Pictures brought audiences the wonderful Spider-Man Into the Spider-verse. It helped introduce the concept of the multiverse to Marvel fans. Long time comic book readers knew that there were different Earths as well. Except they went by a different numbering system than DC. It was something that Alan Moore and Alan Davis made up. They called the traditional Marvel universe Earth-616, the events from other comics took place on other Earths, for example there were many different versions of Spider-Man. In one world we had Peter Parker, in another there was Penny Parker (Earth-14512) or Gwen Stacy (Earth-65).

 

There was a punk rock Spider-Man, the militant Hobart Brown from Earth-138. He wore sneakers and had spikes on his mask. There was Earth-8311 where all the Marvel heroes were cartoon animals, including the Goose Rider, Captain Americat, the Incredible Hulk Bunny and of course Peter Porker the Spectacular Spider Ham. These characters often appeared in one-shot comics or short run series, never to be seen again. Fans never forgot these characters and neither did the writers and editors at Marvel. They were waiting for just the right story to tell. Many of these alternate realities went into the Spider-Verse comic book run in 2014 and the Spider-Geddon follow up in 2019. The popularity of the original run gave Sony the inspiration to pursue an animated feature. Hopefully you have seen it because it is more than a great comic book film, or a great animated film, but because it is simply was a great film. MMC does feature the Peter Parker, Miles Morales and Gwen Stacy versions of Spider-Man but Marvel went much deeper than that.

 

There were many other alternate timelines in the Marvel U where heroes were not quite how you remembered them. There was the Fear Itself timeline, a crossover from 2011, where some heroes, and villains were given magical hammers. Similar to Mjolnir, Thor's hammer. Except the hammers possessed the bearer, and caused them to wreak havoc on the Earth. The mastermind behind this was Cul Borson, the evil elder brother of Odin. Then there was the Infinity Wars from 2018. This timeline had all sorts of weird twists. It was the dimension where Steve Rogers became the Soldier Supreme during WWII, and when Tony Stark was actually Tony Odinson. He created the enchanted Iron Hammer armor. These versions did make it into the mobile game Marvel Future Fight by Netmarble Games. Incorporating the idea of multiverse was really where the Contest of Champions shone.

 

The game from Kabam took cues from the live action films and television shows. Since the game took place during a nebulous period, far outside of whatever was currently happening in any one particular comic book it allowed characters from the past, future, and essentially any dimension to exist at the same time. For a Marvel fan this was the ultimate experience. Fans didn't have to worry about being locked into one canon, one continuity, one version of their beloved heroes and villains.  For example fans of the Hulk could actually take on the roles of at least three different versions of the Green Goliath. There was the classic green Hulk, the grey mob enforcer "Mr. Fixit" persona and even the evil future version known as The Maestro. Kabam had opened the floodgates for what it meant to be compete against other champions. The path that the company took and how they pulled the Marvel continuity into uncharted waters was nothing short of genius. We'll explore the adaptation process in the next blog. As always if you enjoyed this blog and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!