Psycho Soldier

For some reason, I've woken up several mornings this week with this song stuck in my head. "Psycho Soldier" is kinda important, I guess, in that it's the first in-game vocal soundtrack in a video game. When the psycho-soldiers were ported to King of Fighters as a team, they used a version of this song in several iterations of it (other times, they used the song "Tremble! Dora Shudders" which also seems to go by the name of "Shuddering Gong" on some soundtracks. By the time we got to the NESTS saga, the classic KOF songs were largely being replaced; in '99 we got "Psycho Sonic Trip (Dance at the Paddy Field)", in 2000 it was "Will" and in 2001, which probably had the most divergent soundtrack of any of the games in the series to date, we got "Psycho Guys." "Psycho Soldier" returns for 2002. The entire Psycho Soldier team gets a bye in 2003, although Athena still appears as part of the High School Girls team, with an all new song, naturally. When the team returns with a slightly revamped line-up in XI, they've got yet another song. Then again, everyone does. Athena also has a "special" vocal track in the PS2 version, if you have Athena appear on either of the concert stages.

Anyway... Athena's themesong, yeah. That's probably more than you cared to know about it over the years. The point is that the "Psycho Soldier" song has been in my head the last few mornings. So, I'm sharing the pain. Here's the Arranged soundtrack from King of Fighters '96 which brings the vocals back.