Sega announced some news that will send Virtua Fighter fans’ fists flying — into the air to the beat of the game’s soundtrack, which is set to release on vinyl record.
The official Japanese Twitter account for the Virtua Fighter franchise announced the soundtrack release today, saying in Japanese that it’ll be a two-disc LP including a full-color double-page spread jacket containing two different arrangements of music from the arcade and Saturn versions of the seminal 3D fighter.
Chicago-based record label Cartridge Thunder is producing the vinyl. Preorders will be available April 5, and Cartridge Thunder’s webpage for the release has a field where you can enter your email address to be notified when preorders go up. There’s no word yet on a release date, though.
That page also has a video produced to market the vinyl with some footage of Virtua Fighter director and producer Yu Suzuki commenting on the game’s music. He said that he wanted to emphasize Virtua Fighter’s atmosphere by creating music that would fit the theme of each character, like British rock tracks for English characters Jacky and Sarah Bryant.
Suzuki also said in the video that he had once been an aspiring rock musician, and that, after seeing many people give up on music who had struggled to make a living from it, he set up a sound team at Sega to support musicians and composers to do what they love.
This isn’t Cartridge Thunder’s first Sega-related vinyl soundtrack release. The company has been involved in a few others, including House of the Dead 1 and 2 as well as Comix Zone. Shiro reported on their House of the Dead release last year.
As with House of the Dead, Virtua Fighter’s LP will be distributed in Europe by Black Screen Records, according to a tweet from Cartridge Thunder. And in Australia, PixelCrib will distribute it as it did for House of the Dead, according to another tweet from Cartridge Thunder.
Danthrax is a contributor to the Shiro Media Group, writing stories for the website when Saturn news breaks. While he was a Sega Genesis kid in the ’90s, he didn’t get a Saturn until 2018. It didn’t take him long to fall in love with the console’s library as well as the fan translation and homebrew scene. He contributed heavily to the Bulk Slash and Stellar Assault SS fan localizations, and has helped as an editor on several other Saturn and Dreamcast fan projects such as Cotton 2, Rainbow Cotton and Sakura Wars Columns 2.
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