Team Members
rosko vair, Wassim Rahmani, BYM Music Group

What was the origin story?
The original version of this song from 1996--composed by Takayuki Aihara--appeared in the game Street Fighter EX (search "SFEX Arabesque" on YouTube to listen), possibly the first-ever 3D game in the Street Fighter franchise.

The SFEX soundtrack had a big influence on me when I was growing up. Then in March 2022 I played ARIKA's more recent release, Fighting EX Layer, which includes many of the SFEX characters. This conjured up a whole bunch of nostalgia, and I started thinking about how I would compose level music for some of the SFEX characters. For this character (a Saudi princess who seeks revenge against the corrupt international Shadaloo order for brainwashing her beloved grandfather), I wanted to go with a less cartoony, more serious style than the original, and I was influenced by some of the Arabic-language pop artists I follow. I got busy in summer 2022 and dropped the project, but I picked it back up for this jam, worked with two musicians to record live performances, and produced the project.

I achieved two big goals in this jam: working with performing artists and getting more experience/knowledge about mixing and mastering.

Here's a link to the gameplay video: https://youtu.be/UnDIyAt_hT4

Thanks for checking it out!

-rosko