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SOJ Virtua Fighter · Arcade to Saturn
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How did Virtua Fighter's music change on the Saturn?

Same themes, second composer. The Saturn version is a rearrangement, not a copy.

Virtua Fighter (1993) has two soundtracks by design. Takayuki Nakamura composed the music for the Model 1 arcade original, the first fully 3D fighting game. When the game came home to the Saturn, Takenobu Mitsuyoshi took Nakamura's themes and arranged and diversified them for the new hardware, fuller and resynthed rather than simply ported.

The split became the series habit, arcade originals and arranged home versions issued as a pair, and it lasted. The soundtrack albums began in 1994, including an arranged disc performed by Sega's in house band B-univ, and nearly thirty years later the remastered vinyl release still presents the two scores side by side across two LPs, arcade on one, Saturn on the other, with liner notes and a new interview with series creator Yu Suzuki. The Library's Virtua Fighter shelf is built around the second game; this page documents the first game's music, where the two version tradition starts.

ONE SCORE, TWO LIVES

Arcade original, Saturn arrangement
Virtua Fighter 2 Japanese Saturn box art
The Sequel's Shelf · 1995
Virtua Fighter 2, the game on the Library's shelf, continued the pattern: Nakamura and Mitsuyoshi sharing composition, Mitsuyoshi handling the arranged Saturn versions.
Virtua Fighter 2 American Saturn box art
The American Saturn Release · 1995
The arranged scores were the versions Western home players actually heard, which is why the Saturn arrangements, not the arcade chips, are the nostalgic ones.
Maximum Mania
The 1994 album Virtua Fighter Maximum Mania collects Mitsuyoshi's Saturn arrangements of Nakamura's themes, all songs written by Nakamura, all arrangements by Mitsuyoshi, as its own credits put it.
B-univ
Sega's in house band performed the earliest arranged album in 1994, half arrangements made for the record, half the arcade music itself, a soundtrack released like a band album.
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THE FIRST WORD

New pages and new pieces, first.