The King of Fighters 2002: Challenge to Ultimate Battle

[Source]
KOF '02 Be the Fighter! Original Sound Trax
Scitron / Eolith (& SNK)  SCDC-00221
Nov 20, 2002
[Generator]
MAME 0.152 (modded by Valley Bell),
Universe BIOS Jukebox Player

The second and last of the Eolith-published
"King of Fighters" games, "The King of Fighters
2002" was developed by Brezzasoft, now "SNK Neo
Geo", as a dream match game like fan favorite
"The King of Fighters '98" since the previous
game concluded the then-current storyline (for
better or worse).
It's clear that there still wasn't that much of
a budget, as there is a lot of graphics
recycling (including a case where a character
throws a knife into the ground and it suddenly
disappears), the backgrounds still aren't that
good, and the new voice samples are still
noticeably different in recording quality from
the old ones. However, the gameplay improved
strikingly compared to "The King of Fighters
2001", as they went back to a regular 3-on-3
structure, but with a brand-new feature called
the "Any Cancel" that allowed sequencing
special moves together. While the balance
wasn't perfect, it was nowhere near as insane
as the previous game was.

The soundtrack, meanwhile, is an upgrade from
"2001's" in some places, and a downgrade in
others. There was finally the budget for more
than 30-second loops, so we get full tracks by
the series' standard, with not only original
music but also remixes of series favorites.
Unfortunately, it's clear that the composers
didn't have the resources they did under the
old SNK, and the music still suffers for it,
with the remixes of "Jungle Bouncer" and
"Beauty & the Beast" being especially terrible.
Not all is lost, however, as almost all the
stage music is decent ("Tacos Dance" and "The
Netherlands" standing out in my opinion) and
most of the other remixes aren't that bad. It's
still not up to the standard of the earlier
games, but at least it's better by that
standard too.

I made this pack and those of KOF2001 and 2003
over a year ago, but sat on them for reasons I
don't recall. Then I went back to them this
month and wound up improving the precision of
some of the loops, as vgmlpfnd's search of
YM2610 commands had been vastly improved since
then. With this pack in particular, I had
originally set "Last Dance's" loop point after
two loops as it was originally incredibly
difficult to find a working loop by hand with
vgm2txt. Then I used the updated vgmlpfnd, and
it found a good loop almost immediately.
Hopefully, you'll enjoy the results!

— The Golden Horse

Source: VGMRips