Q&A: HIDEKI ASANAKA
SNK’S composer on the importance of music in the popular crossover series
How hard was it to come up with new themes for established regular characters each year?
KOF is a game series with an emphasis on its storyline. With Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami as the two main characters of this story, we always made sure their main themes would reflect their current situation in the story. Terry Bogard was simultaneously the face of Fatal Fury and of SNK, so we would often just use his theme from the Fatal Fury series. It’s not like we were forgetting about the other Fatal Fury characters, but Terry always tended to be at the forefront thanks to this popularity.
Is it difficult working and remixing existing tracks such as Psycho Soldier?
It depended on the titles. The Psycho Soldier theme was based around the character of Athena Asamiya, who was a fighter and an idol singer at the same time. We could adapt the new Psycho Soldier song to the music trends of that year. However, Geese Howard’s theme was a different story and never worked out as easily. As the incarnation of evil, it was really hard to rework his theme, as we didn’t have a lot of leeway.
King Of Fighters ’97 had an unusual sound design, using mostly background sounds that fit the scene rather than music. Why was this approach taken? As KOF ’97 was the first KOF title in which there was no longer one unique stage per team, and the CPU consisted of randomly edited teams, we were unsure how to create team songs after the first three titles. We worried that players wouldn’t recognize the team songs when playing the game. Moreover, as KOF ’97 is set as a worldwide tournament broadcasted on TV, and there were requests from the planners to emphasise this aspect of the game.