MARTIALBEAT2 is a fascinating collision of two early-2000s obsessions: martial arts fitness and rhythm gaming. This arcade and PlayStation title had players throwing punches and kicks to the beat, and the tracklist is a wild eurobeat and dance-pop time capsule.
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You've got 2 Unlimited's "Maximum Overdrive" in a KC Club Mix alongside MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This" reimagined as a Miami Booty Mix -- the kind of remix culture that defined the Japanese arcade music scene of that era.
The presence of NAOKI with B4 ZA BEAT performing "KISS KISS KISS ~super euro version~" is a dead giveaway of the Konami-adjacent rhythm game DNA running through this project. NAOKI Maeda was one of the architects of Dance Dance Revolution's sound, and his influence here is unmistakable.
Tomoki Hirata's "FOREVER" and Shoichiro Hirata's contributions "LET'S GO NOW" and "HYPER GLIDE" bring original compositions that hold their own against the licensed covers. "YOZORA NO MUKO" by EUROBEAT LOVERS adds a distinctly Japanese flavor to the mix.
Geri Halliwell's "It's Raining Men" and the eurobeat cover of "Never Ending Story" by CREAMY are gloriously of their time, perfectly suited for a game where you're literally punching air to a beat. The whole album radiates that specific Japanese arcade energy where Western pop gets turbocharged through a eurobeat filter.
It is unapologetically fun, thoroughly cheesy, and a genuine artifact of a moment in gaming history that will never come again.