Mini Hyperfixations.

Entry 002: Ling Xiaoyu's Weird Battle Trax Theme

I first found this track on YouTube about seven or eight years ago, when I came across a playlist of Tekken 3 tracks I had never seen before.

Now, I love video game music, and Tekken is easily in my top ten favorite series, so finding a whole playlist of tracks I didnt recognize was weird. Apparently, it came from an album called Tekken 3 Battle Trax. I was curious, so I started skimming through the list.

Then I saw Ling Xiaoyu's theme.

Xiaoyu has always been one of my favorites from the series. I spent many hours as a kid kicking ass with her, so of course I clicked her track first. That was a no-brainer.

I pressed play, opened another tab, and went back to browsing like nothing.

I wasnt sure what I was expecting, but I figured it would at least sound somewhat like her original Tekken 3 theme. Her stage in Tekken 3 was a carnival, and her theme had this fun amusement park energy to it. It wasnt super cutesy, but it was bright, energetic, and fit her really well.

You hear it and think, "Yeah, this is Xiaoyu."

When the Battle Trax version starts playing and it sounds like I just walked into a dark alley at 2 AM.

This was giving secret underground fight club.

I actually had to click back over to the tab to make sure I picked the right song. And yes, it really did say Ling Xiaoyu's theme.

So I kept listening.

Not even a minute in, theres this creepy-sounding guy whispering into the mic. A lot of what he says is hard to make out because of the accent and the way the vocals are mixed, but the vibe is very clear.

Then a woman's voice comes in and says:

Since when?

The more I listened to the lyrics while writing this, the funnier it became to me. At first, I thought maybe the male voice was supposed to be a hype man. Like maybe he was cheering her on before a fight.

But the more I listened, the more it sounded like he was either stalking her, threatening her, or preparing to jump out from behind a trash can.

He mentions blood, fire, eyes staring, and all this dramatic stuff. Meanwhile, the woman sounds like she is ready to fight back and is not impressed by him at all.

It almost gives me Tekken Force vibes. You know, when you pick a character and start running around beating up random thugs and minions? That's the kind of energy this song has.

And honestly, that would be cool.

But it is also hilarious because this is supposed to be Xiaoyu.

At this point in the story, Xiaoyu was not some dark assassin. She was not a secret agent. She was not walking through alleyways taking out bad guys while someone whispered about blood in the background.

She had a pet Panda.

I'm not saying Xiaoyu cant fight, because she absolutely can. She was tossing people around in that tournament like everybody else. But this song makes her sound like she has a secret criminal record and a motorcycle parked outside.

And that is what makes it so funny to me.

According to her Tekken 3 story, Xiaoyu was innocent, cheerful, determined, and kind of naive. Her dream was to build her own amusement park. That was her main goal.

Now, "sweep you off your feet" does make sense because she is a martial artist. I'll give them that one.

But everything else?

The only darker connection Xiaoyu really has is Jin Kazama, but even then, her story back then was not fully centered around him. Xiaoyu was still doing her own thing. Her endings usually involved her own goals, her own dreams, and her own funny little situations.

Her Tekken 3 ending was literally about her amusement park.

So attaching this dark, strange, alley-fight track to her is such a wild choice.

Honestly, if this song had gone to Nina Williams, I would not have questioned it at all. Nina is an assassin. She is already connected to the darker side of the series. This track would have fit her way more.

That is what makes it so bizarre.

After looking into the album more, I found out that Tekken 3 Battle Trax came out in 1997, back when Tekken 3 was at its peak. I believe it was mostly released in Japan, though some of the album images and track listings are in English, so maybe it had some reach outside of Japan too.

Either way, this was before streaming and easy MP3 downloads, so not everyone had access to albums like this.

I didnt even get my first computer until 2007, and in the early 2000s I was still a baby on the internet. I was on kid sites, not digging through rare Tekken albums.

For years, I never gave the full album a proper listen until recently.

The whole album is basically arranged versions of the base character themes, but some of them go so far left field that I had to wonder what was happening in that studio. Jin, King, and Ogre's tracks sounded somewhat close to their original themes, but a lot of the others?

Not really my cup of tea.

Some of them do not even feel like Tekken to me. And that is saying something, because Tekken music can already be pretty experimental. Since Tekken 2, the series has had some amazing tracks, and the original Tekken 3 soundtrack is full of bangers.

But Battle Trax feels like they were just trying things.

The 90s were such an experimental era. People really did just throw things at the wall and see what happened. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it was confusing. Sometimes you ended up with Ling Xiaoyu sounding like she was about to fight someone in an underground parking garage.

From what I have seen, the album itself does not seem to have the best ratings. I wanted to give it a fair shot and see if I liked anything else on it, but honestly, the Xiaoyu track is the only one that really stuck with me.

And I think I only like it because of how bizarre it is.

Even on YouTube, where I first found the album, there were barely any comments or interactions. It feels like one of those weird little pieces of media you only stumble across by accident unless you are a really hardcore Tekken fan.

That is part of the fun, though.

Sometimes obscure media is not interesting because it is amazing.

Sometimes it is interesting because it makes you sit there and go:

And that is exactly how I feel about Xiaoyu's Battle Trax theme.

So what do you think?

Was Xiaoyu secretly the roughneck killer all along?

Was this track originally meant for someone else?

Was the whispering man hyping her up, hunting her down, or just saying random cool 90s nonsense into the mic?

Whether you are a Tekken fan or just a curious passerby, I'll let you decide.