The King of Fighters 2001

[Source]
The King of Fighters 2001
Scitron / Eolith (& SNK)  SCDC-00143
Dec 19, 2001
[Generator]
MAME 0.152 (modded by Valley Bell),
Universe BIOS Jukebox Player

Following SNK's bankruptcy, "The King of
Fighters" IP went to a Korean company named
Eolith.
Following this, the development of the next
game began with Eolith as the publisher, and
Brezzasoft, a company made up of former SNK
employees, as the developer. Eventually, the
series returned to arcades with "The King of
Fighters 2001", created with a fraction of the
budget the old SNK had--and it shows.
Painfully.

It's apparent in the graphics, where everyone
fights against drab backgrounds, and character
portraits are so stylized that they're ugly.
It's apparent in the bizarre gameplay
decisions: you can choose how many fighters and
Strikers make up your team to the point of
creating 1-on-4 fights, and the new characters
are so crazily-designed that one of them has an
attack that KOs both fighters when it hits.
It's also apparent in other ways, like the
confusing way it ends the NESTS storyline
started in "The King of Fighters '99,"
or the inclusion of a character whose only
purpose is to rip off a famous anime character
(so brazenly that the new SNK erased him from
continuity as soon as they could).

Most relevantly, it's apparent based on the
soundtrack. Gone are the lengthy, varied sound
and great instrumentation. Instead, what you
have are techno/rock loops that mostly last
around 30-40 seconds, presumably the average
length Brezzasoft and Eolith could afford. It
would be a decent soundtrack... if it weren't
in a "King of Fighters" game. The entire series
before it set a standard for exemplary
soundtracks, and the music of "2001" just
doesn't live up to it. Many of the best tunes
are _way_ too short to matter.

Why did I make a pack for this then, you ask?
Because if I'm going to help get the whole
series represented on VGMRips, I have to make
packs for the "bad" parts too. They're just as
part of the series' history, after all. For
what it's worth, "NESTS, the Rulers of
Darkness," "0" and "I Am the Strongest" are
pretty cool. Otherwise, though, listen to this
one at your own discretion. At the very least,
don't expect a soundtrack on the level of the
previous game.

[Side note about one particular translation:
"NESTS, the Rulers of Darkness" in Japanese
is "Nesutsu Yami no Shihaisha", where
"Shihaisha" is the word for "Ruler," only the
"sha" portion that means "person" has been
replaced with the word for "company", which
has the same On-reading. This qualifies as a
pun, one that translators seem to have missed,
resulting in awkward translations like
"NESTS, Ruler Company in the Darkness."]

— The Golden Horse

Source: VGMRips