In the world of 2D fighting games Capcom is the mighty king, his competition sparse and lacking the popularity to ever overthrow his rule. It always saddened me that most people won't ever make themselves familiar with that competition. Though I appreciate the level of technical detail in Street Fighter and understand that as a competitive series it's a genuine masterpiece, I still find myself occasionally resenting it. It's the father of fighting games, and yet at the same time it's such a fucking attention hog. Street Fighter IV in particular made this apparent to me. After some 8 odd years of fans waiting for a sequel, I can't help but see it as simply keeping the series on life support. Compared to Third Strike I consider it a significant step back. That said, it will probably be the most played 2D fighters for this decade. How much of that will have to do with the quality of the game and how much will be simply brand recognition I would really like to know.

Like I said I do appreciate Street Fighter and being popular isn't a crime, however a series fonder in my heart is King of Fighters made by SNK. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if the grand majority of the people reading this basically know what the series is called and that's it. Still, I've seen a small group of people on D-Toid who seemed to fancy King of Fighters XII. Perhaps you'd like to know a bit more about the series and its history. Rest assured, the King of Fighters series does have its share of flaws and quirks, but if you've managed to take an interest in the series despite XII's complete lack of features I think we're past the first hurdle. Having the vast history it does, you could easily write an essay about King of Fighters. Be prepared for a lengthy, but hopefully enjoyable read.



King of Fighters--often abbreviated as KoF--was an odd beast. It was one of the very first team based fighting games ever conceived. It's also the only fighting game series I can think of that was released annually. To be honest most fighting game series were released at least that frequently during their prime, but King of Fighters actually embraced the fact by numbering each title based on year. Another one of its strange quirks is that for eleven years the series stayed on the same gaming platform. It recycled character graphics for just about as long. It's actually kind of incredible how long the series lasted that way, quite possibly thanks to its extended popularity in countries such as Mexico and Korea. King of Fighters XII was a huge deal for long time fans. We'd been staring at the same sprites (with tweaks and updates) from 1994 to 2003. It is simply amazing how long things went on that way.

Whether passersby looked at these quirks as flaws or not, the series obviously had a lot of work put into it. These quirks remain a part of the series history and ultimately part of the fan's fond memories. King of Fighters took a different approach to fighting games, as each new game would introduce a new part of an overarching storyline as well a constant shuffling of character roster to accomodate. Newcomers playing King of Fighters XII would have never known, but as of this writing King of Fighters has gone through 3 story arcs. The Orochi Saga, the NESTS saga, and the Three Treasures saga still ongoing. Respectively each of these story arcs put emphasis on different main and supporting characters. Thanks to this approach King of Fighters is one of the few fighting game series out there where fans genuinely care about the storyline and characters. It's a really rare trait the way people gravitate towards either loving or hating certain characters, and there's a lot of them.

King of Fighters must easily have a total roster of over 80 characters at its disposal within the main series. This is part of why all the "No Mai, no Buy" stuff is absolutely ridiculous among fans that actually understand the nature of the series. Some years your favorite character shows up, and sometimes they're replaced by fresh blood in the constant roster shifting. Even when an individual KoF game can have a huge roster of over 40 characters, that's barely enough for half of the current total. Eventually your favorite character has to sit on the bench for a while for someone more relevant to the plot, but thankfully those who can look past a missing character can look toward a new one to be among their favorites.

Really when you get down to it, King of Fighters is all about the characters. Don't get me wrong. KoF is fun as hell, but when people discuss the characters in another series it's never with even close to the same degree of passion. Certain icons like Terry Bogard and Iori Yagami in particular are extremely polarizing characters that lead to heated debate. Admittedly fighting games at their core are not meant to be about the story, but KoF makes as strong an effort as any series can within the genre. There really is a deep enough tapestry to produce a pretty decent animated series, and that's just based on KoF's own original plot. SNK in itself has an extended universe from which KoF burrowed its initial history



King of Fighters basically started as a crossover between Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting: two series that flew under most peoples' radar. The story goes that SNK wanted to develop a crossover beat 'em up game, but when Capcom made Final Fight they felt the thunder had already been stolen. Obscurity of the source material aside, KoF took various characters from those series and assembled them into national teams, while at the same time injecting a handful of original characters and cameos. Looking back, it was probably the first crossover as well as the first team based fighting game series.

Eventually most of those freshly made characters would go on to be plot devices in future games, but King of Fighters 1994 itself barely has a story. Considering the fact that the American team was a group of athletes who wanted to apply their sports skills to martial arts tournaments, I wouldn't say KoF actually began with the intent of having a gripping storyline. Rather than refer to it as the beginning of the Orochi Saga I would moreso call it a lead-in. The plot is simply that a rich drug and arms trafficker named Rugal Bernstein has revived the King of Fighters tournament previously seen in Fatal Fury and has gathered the best fighters in the world. Upon winning the tournament, whichever team you chose finds out Rugal wants them for the absolutely absurd purpose of turning them into stone statues for his collection. Needless to say Rugal loses and seemingly commits suicide by blowing his ocean liner to hell. Yeah, it gets a lot less stupid the next time around. The ironic thing is that SNK's development team often refers to Rugal as the ultimate King of Fighters boss, but starting off he was a pretty stupid villain. Considering King of Fighters is downright famous for its boss battles (or rather their difficulty), it's an interesting beginning.

In terms of gameplay King of Fighters introduced some new ideas, including the ability to charge your own Super Meter Dragonball Z style. Seriously, your character grunts and energy swirls around him and everything. Another innovation was the ability to side step out of the way of attacks. You didn't need to charge for a super when you were low on health either, which makes sense considering King of Fighters refers to its supers as Desperation Moves. By the standards of the time it was pretty playable. It was regarded as a good game and garnered enough popularity to lead to various sequels. Personally I don't think the original King of Fighters has very much to offer, at least compared to later entries in the series, but it went on to spawn what I consider an incredible series and as such can't be ignored.

Stay tuned for the Orochi Saga
I give many thanks to anyone who was able to maintain interest through this long love letter to SNK, and I whole heartedly suggest you come along with me and further explore the vast history of the series. Next time we delve into the deeper past of King of Fighters, going over the gameplay innovations and storyline from one saga to the other. We'll be starting off with the Orochi Saga, or King of Fighters 1995-1998.