The King of Fighters '99: Millennium Battle (UE) / The King of Fighters '99 (J)

[Source]
The King of Fighters '99 / SNK
Pony Canyon / Scitron  PCCB-00387  Aug 18, 1999

Generated by MAME 0.152, modded by Valley Bell,
using the Jukebox Player accessible with the
Universe BIOs.

After the dream match game that was "The King
of Fighters '98," fans expected something new
from SNK for its next "King of Fighters" game.
And it delivered--though not without
controversy. Most notable was the introduction
of the "Striker" system, in which you designate
a fourth team member to stand on the sidelines
and jump in to assist you during battle. To
many, it felt more like a novelty than an
important feature. It also started a new
storyline centering around a mysterious
organization creating clones of Kyo Kusanagi,
the series' main character up until this game,
with new protagonist K' (pronounced "K-Dash")
being a man who was kidnapped, had his memory
wiped, and had Kyo's DNA injected in him to
give him the Kusanagi fire powers. It... gets
complicated, in part because SNK went bankrupt
before the story arc could be concluded. It
was finished with the first game created under
the ownership of Korean company Eolith, "The
King of Fighters 2001," which... Uh, we'll get
to that one in my pack for that game.

One thing that fans _can_ agree on is that the
soundtrack is still superb. The sample quality
keeps getting better with each game, and here,
it gets a distinctly darker sound albeit with
a few exceptions. What stands out for me is
"Mechanical Bless," an industrial track that
perfectly suits the heroes being brought into
a machine room decorated almost like an
integrated circuit with no other company but a
strange man in a feathered coat. "Dear Falling
Angel," for when he burns off his coat to show
his true form, doesn't stick out that much in
comparison even though it's both badass and
appropriate for a strenuous conflict against a
superior foe. (And strenuous it is. He _is_ an
SNK boss, after all.) It's overall a well-done
soundtrack well-suited for a fighting game and
good for casual listening, like many
soundtracks in the series before it.

One thing to note is that there are both typos
and grammatical errors in the original
tracklist, specifically English names that are
capitalized incorrectly. All of these are
preserved in the Japanese tags but fixed in
the English ones. In addition, the original
tracklist listed only question marks in place
of the names of Kyo, Iori, and the final boss
Krizalid (for his voice sample collection,
anyway) to prevent spoilers for anyone who
bought the sountrack album before playing
through the game. These are preserved in the
Japanese tags as well, but replaced with the
characters' names in the English tags,
because by now, I don't think anyone's going
to care. ;)

Enjoy!

— The Golden Horse

Source: VGMRips