King of Fighters XII's roster is well endowed, chock-full of flamboyant asians

I heard they were going to include Mai but the animators kept getting hand cramps, and I dont mean from drawing all the sprites, HUBBA HUBBA!

and no more Duo Lon, PLEASE! dude is broken no matter what game he is in.

I'm gonna die.

OMFG Andy is back. This will be a definitie buy for me.

I'M GONNA TAKE YOU FOR A RIDE.

Also, I'll teach you how to play fighting games if you want Brad, but only if you don't beat me up in real life.

No Mai = instant fail

Andy Bogard = instant win.

Geese is dead and has been for a long time.

My team of Terry, Joe and Iori are all there so I'm in. This game looks amazing and, if it's as good as XI, will play superbly.

I only see 20 characters. Where'd everybody else go? Maybe they have yet to be CONFIRMED FOR BRA--I mean, this game. Right?

...Two women? TWO? What the fuck is this, Street Fighter? And where the hell is MAI!? Denied, SNK. Peddle your shoddy wares elsewhere, I'll have none of this!

So it looks like I'll be playing Ralf, Leona, and I guess I should get better with Clark, keep the military team together. I was so glad they stuck Ralf and Clark in the new Metal Slug.

I don't get it. When the roster for MKvDC was revealed, everyone complained that it was too small and it had 22 characters. KOF12 has 2 less than what MKvDC had, so why is this considered a "large" roster?

Large? I hope thats a joke.

This is smaller than the '94 roster! Seems they tried to preserve some of the old teams though.

@ Jonathan Holmes

We spent friday night at my friend's house repeatedly yelling/singing

"I'M GONNA TAKE YOU FOR A RIDE!"

as we played MVC2 until about 3 in the morning.

No Mai and Yuri=fail

Samll roster but then again we may see unlockables or characters exclusive to the home versions.

KOF = instant win.

Goddamn fucking Raiden, why him why why why?!?! Also, why no woman's team? I'll miss King and Yuri.

@Cowboy TTop
Unless you're lobbing in the Maximum Impact series with the regular KOF series, I'd hardly call them yearly updates. Capcom just repackages an Alpha, III, or SF2 game every so often(not that I'm complaining). SNK brings out genuinely new characters with varying playstyles. They put alot more effort into their fighting games instead of using the same sprites over and over. As for 2d, it's a style. Maybe someday SNK will have the Maximum Impact series on the same level as Street Fighter 4 but until then they can have highly detailed drawn characters that rival Guilty Gear and BlazBlue.

Well, Kensou, Terry, Shen Woo, and Clark are all there, so at least I'll have a team.

Yuri being gone is unforgivable, though. I mean, how the shit did Raiden make the cut but not Yuri? If they wanted to bring back an old character so badly, why not somebody actually cool, like Jhun? Disappointing, but I'll probably buy the game anyway.

As a game, this looks good.

As a KOF, this looks awful.

First of all, the artwork, for reasons unknown, DON'T look like it belongs in the KOF franchise. I mean, they all have really square faces and the bodies are alot bigger than in previous games. IE: Look at Ralph, he look's twice as big as he usually does. Also, both he and Clark suddenly look like....they got a really really bad tan? Or maybe SNK decided to make them African American all of a sudden. And Athena looks like a little girl now with FATASS thighs. Not Chun-Li SFIV man thighs, just fat thighs.

Second of all, small, I mean REALLY small roster. This is smaller than 94/96. Both were siginificantly small. But this is ludicrous small. 20 characters is NOT KOF material. It's something Street Fighter could get away with, not this.

Thirdly, they got rid of alot of classic characters. IE: Mai, King, Shingo, Yuri, Takuma, CHANG AND CHO. But then again, who's counting?

Fourth, they added Raiden. RAIDEN! Need I say more?

Fifth, they made Kensou look like a....woman? To be honest, when I first saw the picture of the roster I thot kensou was Yuri. Yeah.

Sixth, the "teams" don't really make sense. I mean sure, you have some classic teams like Terry, Andy and Joe. Or Kyo, Benimaru, and Daemon. But what about Iori? Where does he go? Or Kim? Is Raiden the replacement for Chang? And okay, you have Robert and Kyo, who's the third member? Doesn't make a lick of sense.

I think it's looking really great. The only characters that I'm going to miss are Shingo, Yuri, Takuma and Geese. I understand Geese not being in it seeing as how KOFXII isn't a dream match, so I don't really hold that against them.

However, even though there are only twenty characters, I'm still having trouble deciding on which three I'm going to pick for my team. I've gotta have Kim-- Kim is my anchor. But then there's also Terry, Andy, Raiden, Ralf, Clark, Leona, Kensou, Daimon, Shen... God damn, they're all too good. Finding my perfect team in '98 Ultimate Match took me damn well forever.

I am excited about this game, but the roster is shit without Mai, Yuri and Geese.

Also when the hell is Rock going to make a real KoF debut (Maximum impacet/@006 don't count).

Aww...they gave Oswald the axe already? I liked that guy...

Oh well. Still gonna get it.