Thinking about what sort of article to post for the Grand gaming.moe Revival, and right now I am thinking it's going to be about the lost world of fighting game image albums, some of the greatest relics of the 90s kakuge boom in Japan. My first real exposure to image albums came through my youthful Virtua Fighter fandom and Virtua Fighter 2: Dancing Shadows, an album which was used as the basis for both the Saturn VF character CG portrait discs and the legendarily bizarre Virtua Fighter Costomize Clip OVA. It's basically the ultimate example of an image album in my mind: lyrics and arrangements that are cheesy but strangely intense with a sound that is undeniably mid-90s Japanese music.
My favorite image album, however, is the lesser-known follow-up: Virtua Fighter 3 On the Vocal. Unlike Dancing Shadows, which was a bunch of original tracks, VF3OtV is all music from the game itself, but slightly arranged and with lyrics added. And Takenobu Mitsuyoshi sings all of it. It's rad as hell and want more people to hear it.
Anyway, if any of you fine folks have weird fighting game image albums to recommend for a future piece send some links my way~
