Retro|Spective 078: The King of Fighters

[Asura]

I like them all tbh. KOF 96 will also be my fav though... I loved that intro and it was also the time when I was young, in work and single, most of my mates were either in collage, work, or Uni. So there was always a day, weekend, when we would all get together and plays games in a gang regularly. We used to team up in 2 groups and when one of the fightings was killed in your group, you'll have to had over the joypad, so your mate could take over. So we used to have ace competitions and such fun.

Bloody hate getting old

Admittedly '95 is probably my "best of the rest" for similar reasons. I was at uni, and this was in that period when the Saturn was old, but not retro - so you could get good condition machines and games for very little. It allowed me to hoover up a bunch of games I wanted back when the machine was new, but couldn't have bought because I had no disposable income. KoF '95 was really high on the list. The people I lived with had never played an SNK fighter before, and we had a fair few evenings on it. Not enough for anyone to really master it but enough to let me know just how good the game was.

[Team Andromeda]

. Not enough for anyone to really master it but enough to let me know just how good the game was.

None of us really master the KOF games tbf. But KOF 96 just came in that time when me and my mates were young adults, were either in work or Uni and where at least one day in the week, you'll always get together to have a huge games day of playing loads of games, with a few drinks and where extra joypad could be got on the cheap.


Drunken 8 player Fifa 96 was ace laugh too

[J0e Musashi]

KOF ‘94 has the best attract mode of any game in the history of the universe though.

[dataDave]

'95 I played the most (because I was still at school and on a very tight budget).
'97 is my personal favourite.
'98 is by far the best.
'99 is another personal favourite because of the risks they took in making it wildly different from the pinnacle that was '98. The Striker system works well and the game gets just as many punters as '98 in the Singapore arcades. Actually a lot more I think because you can find it everywhere. You have to specifically go to Bugis for '98.

'01 is the best of the SNKP era. However if I were to start collecting carts again I'd stop at '00. The Playmore era leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
'02 is the only one (and the only AES title) that I've baught at launch. I wasn't a fan at all.

[Baseley09]

96 best everything , it's a work of art.

[dataDave]

'99 has the best arranged OST:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaVichLnmvk&list=PLE5A25FFD8DE9EECE

96 best everything , it's a work of art.

I reckon it's the best all-rounder after '98. It ticks all the boxes, just that '98 ticks them all with really aggressive red biro.

[Leon Retro]

I remember thinking KOF95 was totally stunning back in the day. I also really liked how it played, so I spent loads of time with it. After that, I wasn't particularly interested in later versions. I think I played '98 a little bit and thought it was really good.

I've always felt there were too many games in the series, which made me have a "meh" attitude towards the games. I think I'll go back to '95 and see if I still enjoy it.

[dataDave]

When you watch KoF'99 running on a really nice CRT and think about how it's twenty years old and how modern video game pixel artists sincerely struggle to hit that level of quality today...

3S, too. Twenty years old. FFS.

[Nu-Eclipse]

For me, KOF jumped the shark by '99 at the very latest.

The franchise was unquestionably at its peak during the Orochi Saga storyline ('95 - '97 but pretty much now generalized/considered to be '94 - '98).

And my personal favourite is '95. Unbalanced AF but pretty much the first KOF that I started playing and enjoying properly.

[dataDave]

The very best KoF theme is from 2000 though:

[Neon Ignition]

I'm surprised XIII doesn't get more love, it's a small wonder SNK managed to put together what they did with that one. I think the one I have the least time with and least memory of is probably King of Fighters XI, seems to get easily overlooked that one.

Clue for 079: Foot on the pedal, you're running out of time

[Dogg Thang]

XIII has some of the most amazing art I have ever seen. It's a pixelart masterpiece. I just haven't played all that much of it.

[fuse]

I've always been in this weird position where I love the series dearly, but as I never really had the opportunity to play and study each (early) iteration as it came out, I don't find myself in the same position as I do with say, Street Fighter, where I have strong memories for individual entries, know when certain moves / characters were introduced, what works in one but not in others, and so on. This probably loses me a lot of credibility points here, but a lot of the early entries tend to blend into one for me.

What I do know, is that I do enjoy even the ones that a lot of people don't. 2003 wins points with me for including Tizoc, for instance. I like XI a lot, and even had a lot of fun with XII (though the roster is very disappointing), and man, XIII... it's possibly my favourite fighter of that generation. Excluding the spin-offs and portable games, the only one I've not really spent any quality time with is Neowave, which is a shame as I know it gets a lot of love.

[J0e Musashi]

Clue for 079: Foot on the pedal, you're running out of time.

Point Blank is not a spin-off.

[Neon Ignition]

I suspect a bravo is in order