Why I love Japanese Games Part 7: The King of Fighters Series

I didn't know Kyo had a move like that in the game

Yo this is your boy omegakatana here with another episode of my favortie japanese games series. in the past episodes I mostly review japanese series that are jrpgs, a platformer series and my list of favortie shrumps by niche company named cave. This time its on a series of fighting games by a famous or somewhat famous developer by the name of SNK. I know im going to be covering some of the best works like metal slug, samurai shodown, last blade 1 and 2, and garou mark of the wolves. But today im talking about their most famous and most popular work the King of Fighters series. KOF orginally started as a crossover series between art of fighting fatal fury ikari warriors and so on to see who is the best with the orginal bad guy rugal burstein being the main badguy but over time the series became its own universe with it’s own mythos, characters,personality, and style overtime to the point that newcomers get mistakened for art of fighting characters and fatal fury characters as orginal characters to the KOF series instead of being orginated from their own prepective series. After KOF94 was a success SNK made 95 96 97 98 and so on and those are a hit in the arcades in other countries. Due to the fact that arcades are kinda dying by the time KOF was starting to become its own shell after releasing 96 plus people mistaked it as a Street Fighter clone which far from it and I hate it when people say that to fighting games that arent popular as street fighter clones. Im not going to get into a story symopiths with the kof series because that will take FOREVER TO TYPE plus this about why the series is one of my favorite japanese game series after all.

How I gotten into KOF let me tell you a short condenced verison of it back in the early 2000's my famliy was bought a series games called Capcom vs SNK and we played the games to death thanks to street fighter characters we knew where crossover with these unique characters from a game company which I vaguely knew only from neo geo which has better designs better characteristics even more so than the street fighter series to the point I grew attached to the SNK characters or KOF in particular. And as a result I began to rather play or begged my father to play kyo in order to pit against iori yagami due to the awesome intro which street fighter character does that. or Terry Bogard thanks to watching the OVA adaption back in the late 90's when I was a kid. Fast forward a couple of years later my famliy bought KOF 2003 which is one of my faves still to this day thanks to the tag system of the marvel vs capcom games instead of the usual 3 vs 3 battle system. Although the game looked dated due to the fact that neo geo was on it’s last years of its life when this came out. my dad played it to death and it’s the last time I will ever see my dad play any video games ever besides playing soul calibur 4. I played it as well but wasnt as good as he was and I still enjoyed playing that game. fast forward a acouple of more years and I discovered KOF XI at my local flea market and bought it on the fly due to being kof I loved the game to death as well had that awesome tag system that the kof 03 was known for and made it better. Then two years later I discovered emulation which how I discovered the neo geo classics like samurai shodown, metal slug, and etc and also thats how I gotten to play kof 96-02 and those games are great besides kof 94 (to dated for my taste),95 (I didnt like this game besides iori at all), 2000(I didnt like it at all),01 (that game SUCKS),02(PLAY THE ULTRMATE MATCH EDITION) but I really enjoyed 96,97,98, and 99 during the neo geo era or emulation when I discovered them. Year down the road I played KOF XIII and XIV which are highly recomended games if you love fighting games and not play them for money or popularity power because the series in general is diffcult but rewarding due to increasing you skills in fighting games. For instance if you a beast in kof you will be a pro at street fighter im serious. The gameplay of the series is mostly the traditional 3 on 3 battle system meaning if one of your characters is down its your next character or you opporents and if manage to take out all of your oppents characters you win the match and so forth. over time it when to the striker system which is completly USELESS in my opinon due to having a forth character only using for special attacks or distraction complely wasting a slot. and the mentioned tag battle system of 03 and XI I love that system the most I know people will disagree with me on that point but its my opinon. So I end it with my recomendations/favorties out of the series 96,97,98UM,99,02UM,03,XI,XIII,XIV. So what are your favorite moments out of the series and also what do you think about the series as a whole in general.