Fighting games have evolved a great deal over the years since their heyday in the early nineties. Since Street Fighter II’s arcade appearance in 1991 catapulted the fighting genre into the gaming mainstream, the genre has endured and evolved for over a decade. Chugging right alongside that evolution through to the modern era of fighting games, SNK consistently released many different fighting titles, including the launch of its flagship King of Fighters series in 1994. Even through SNK’s financial turbulence and the brief Eolith development era, a KOF game was still released every year for almost a decade. Now, SNK Playmore has released an online-compatible two-disc set featuring the 2002 and 2003 entries of the King of Fighters series for the Xbox.
The look and feel of KOF 2002 at first glance appears quite dated compared to the fighters of today. The edges of the sprites appear blocky, and some of the coloring looks a little washed out. Even the art style of the characters look like something out of the Dreamcast generation’s design sensibilities, perhaps even outdated by 2002’s standards, and the music sounds rather old-school as well.
"as you play more of the game...the retro look and feel grows on you"
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These choices in presentation may have been artistic, or they may be partly attributable to the venerable Neo-Geo system’s technical limitations at the time. However, as you play more of the game and get accustomed to it, the retro look and feel grows on you as something that is charming instead of corny.
A huge part of the charm of KOF 2002, and of the whole series in general, is the exquisite character design and realization. In KOF 2002 a gigantic eclectic selection of 28 initially selectable fighters spans many fighting specialties, and a sizeable portion of the fun is finding the characters whose styles match your sensibilities. There are mighty high-damage bruisers, furious slashers with rapid arcing attacks, quick tricky sparrers, weapon wielders, and fighting style masters with multiple stances and modes. Basically, every classic fighting game archetype is present along with several others that are rather original entries to the fighter taxonomy.
To the casual observer, a quick glance at the game’s selection screen might give the wrong impression that there are too many similar looking fighters and not enough variety. True, KOF uses all humanoids; there are no fighting dinosaurs, guys with owl heads, or knights with giant swords that take up half the screen like in other fighters. However, once you actually start diving into the game and seeing what each fighter has to offer, you start seeing the surprising amount of individuality each possesses.
"no one can deny that KOF still has soul."
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All of them are brought to life with art and animation brimming with distinct personalities and attitudes, especially in their facial expressions and body language. This is more than could be said for many modern fighting games. While the modern titles may be flashier on their shiny surfaces, no one can deny that KOF still has soul.
With the deep variety in choices, it would understandably be very difficult to balance out the powers of each fighter. There actually are a few underpowered and overpowered characters, but the game’s team-based selection system mitigates this issue greatly. In the default mode, you pick a team of three fighters to use to square off against assorted pre-picked teams. Instead of using rounds, when one fighter is defeated the next one comes in at full health, squaring off against the opponent who keeps their current health. Whoever runs out of fighters first loses. At the face-off screen, you secretly pick the order of your fighters, which adds a layer of strategy.
The feel of the game is very nostalgic, as any veteran of the fighting games of the nineties will instinctively recognize the game’s system. The game uses punch and kick buttons each with a weak and strong flavor for a total of four buttons. Throws are powerful, and using weak punches and kicks can disrupt your opponent’s timing to set up your stronger moves. Familiar joystick motions pull off the bulk of the moves of the game, and you have power meters that fill up to enable your finisher moves. While the game retains its classic timeless feel with many of the characters’ move sets, some of the newer ones throw in interesting twists to shake things up.
With the sheer volume of moves in each character’s repertoire, a very handy feature is the quick access to move lists in the pause menu. For the series newcomer who may need a little more help, a full-featured practice mode has been included as well. Still, it would have been nice if the developers had also included an interactive demonstration mode that showed the timing of some of the more complicated multipart moves, a feature that is present in some of the more modern fighting games.
"you don’t have to be a KOF veteran to get into the game’s intricacies"
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Given the notorious difficulty of SNK boss characters, the KOF beginner will likely appreciate the Continue Service feature, which gives the player a choice of ability bonuses that they can apply to their next fight if they are defeated. In short, you don’t have to be a KOF veteran to get into the game’s intricacies, and the game even goes easier on you if you need it to.
On the other disc, the 2003 entry adds a few twists on the previous version, the biggest being the addition of swap-outs. While fighting, the player can press the right trigger to bring in another member of their three person team in a dynamic seen in other fighting game series like Marvel vs. Capcom. The swap-outs can only be performed when the game tells you that the feature is ready, so you can’t shuffle fighters in and out with rapid impunity. Supposedly, this game starts off another three game story arc, but as the tale makes absolutely no sense at all perhaps it’s better just to ignore it. The character roster has been increased to 32 initially selectable fighters, including three all new fighters for this installment. Actually, of the two games in this double pack, KOF 2003 seems a little less dialed-in on the game play side, and the new characters aren’t terribly interesting.
Above all, the most potentially interesting new feature of this KOF double pack is the addition of online play. At the time of writing this review, though, the online activity of the games seem to be non-existent, as the Quick-match, Opti-match, and Lobby areas are all empty for both titles regardless of what time of day you check them. If you are planning on taking advantage of online play, it looks like you will have to coordinate with a friend to do so as the likelihood that you’re going to find a random opponent out there is close to nil. Aside from online play, there are a couple of extra features thrown in that were not present in the arcade version: survival mode and the ability to customize the colors of the characters, neither of which prove to be especially exciting.
If you are looking for some classic old-school fighting action with lots of soul and lots of variety, KOF 2002/2003 is certainly worth picking up, but if you were hoping for a bustling online component with lots of networked opponents to square off against, you will unfortunately not find what you’re looking for. Still, if you can convince some of your friends to pick it up as well, at the very least you’ll be able to compete against each other while saving yourself some quarters to boot. While SNK Playmore’s future in the arcades may be over, at least its legacy lives on through console releases.
