The Legend Becomes a Series Again

The King of Fighters '99 (The Newcomers)

     SNK was at an impasse when we last left them. The King of Fighters '98 had proved wildly successful, and with the Orochi gone, who were driving the series from behind the scenes, where would the beloved (and still lucrative) series be going from here? That's right- a drastic reinvention.

     From 1999 through 2001, Kyo Kusanagi and Iori were shoved to the background while a psuedo-terrorist cartel called NESTS attempted to take over the world with plots so lame they made Cobra Commander look like the Desert Fox. See, after the Orochi battle, they kidnapped a passed-out Kyo and extracted some of his blood for genetic experiments. The plot put forth in KOF '99, is (brace yourself;) to mass-produce Kyo Kusanagis to take over the world. Their unclear goals also involve artificial mastery of the Kusanagi flames, and beating the crap out of people to aquire nebulous 'battle data' that somehow will activate the clones to start attacking. So, among the (large) roster of fighter this year, there's also Kyo-1 and Kyo-2, with presumably lots more.

     The new hero is the 'cool and mysterious' K' ("The name's K-DASH; I do what I like!") See, K' is like Cloud from FFVII in that he is a 'failed' experiment, so the doctor never gave him a number. Too bad we never see him begging the boss Krizalid to give him one at the end. At his side is the trusty Maxima, a hulking Canadian in an exosuit, who is also not very pleased with NESTS' upper-crust management. K' and Maxima take over the first two slots on the Japan Team roster, much to the chagrin of Benimaru and Shingo.

     You might have noticed I alluded to that being a four-man team. Well, it is now, thanks to the Striker System. Kind of like the Partner system in MvS, you too can summon a teammate from the sidelines to run in, do something of questionable usefulness, then leave. On the plus side, this expands the already impressive cast by at least 25%, on the other, you'll always have one man functionally 'out' of it.

     The super system still uses multiple stocks, only now there's no option to change back to a more classic scheme (probably because virtually nobody actually used Extra mode.) The new gimmick is, when you get three stocks (the meter helpfully flashes "MAX") you can go into Armor Mode (you don't suffer 'injured' animations from attacks, but still take damage) and Counter Mode (infinite supers and cancels and bears.)

     In addition to the new protaganists, there are a couple other noteworthy additions. Foremost, Whip, who seems to be K' (or Krizalid)'s long-lost sister. She's the new Ikari recruit who fights using- oh, use your imagination. She also is packing a Desert Eagle that evidentally didn't cut it in the US release, because heaven forbid someone uses a gun in a fight with a Korean midget with Freddy Krueger gloves. Speaking of Team Korea, their new member is Jhun Hoon, who is the 'bad cop' to Kim Kaphwan's 'good cop.' Choi and Chang don't particularly like him either. With Mai on the Fatal Fury team and Yuri on the Kyokugen team, King had to resort to bringing Blue Mary, Kasumi Todoh and Li Xiangfei with her to form the hardest Ladies Team to use ever. And from China comes little Bao, who may be the worst character concept ever since he's a small target whose repetoire revolves around projectiles. Thanks, SNK!

     One thing this game really lacks in is just the FEEL of the series. Your teammates are no longer standing on the sidelines, cheering you on- in fact most levels are curiously abandoned. Team themes are at least back, preventing that ambient garbage from '97 from coming back. The most terrible part of it probably comes from Krizalid and the whole NESTS thing. "GOSH? WHERE DOES THIS ELEVATOR GO?" "I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS..." is what leads you into a painful battle with this painfully cheap boss. His first form has him looking like a half-assed Black Waltz with no hat or wings, and upon beating him, you sit through another badly written cutscene just to be soundly beaten by him after he strips down to his bondage gear and starts his 'Cheap Ryu' fighting style. His favorite move seems to be the Tornado Kick. This involves kicking slightly, which stirs up a massive sideways Tornado that reflects projectiles and makes approaching him impossible. Fortunately, this tactic makes him really easy to beat: All you need to do is select Leona and toss the weak version of the earring bomb (the version that bounces) over and over.

     Defeated NESTS villains have that whole vilain complex going on, where they are completely incapable of accepting their plans suck, let alone an obvious defeat. To wit: "I LOST? POWERFUL ME?"

     Krizalid talks to some light from above, who thanks him for his work and kills him with a rock (his last words being "YOU SICK PSYCHOPATHS!") As your team escapes the self-destructing base (get used to this motif, it comes up again and again) a booming voice declares "We are NESTS Cartel! The new world order!"

     The endings here almost seem to go together for once. Whip confronts a dying Krizalid and reveals that, through some knowledge we weren't aware she had, that she isn't his sister, and K' isn't Krizalid's clone, but the other way around (Lovable Krizalid says: "OH, THE TREACHERY! [Even more lovable Whip calls him things like "puke" and "gruel breath."])

     That's not to say KOF '99 is a bad game. It's got to be the most widely available KOF out there, seeing widespread domestic Playstation release (awful port, though- it has to pause and load for a whole minute-- between characters in a match) and a couple versions on Dreamcast. (KOF Evolution is '99 with extras. The KOF '99 Dream Match is just KOF '98 with the year changed to reflect its publication date. Whee.)

The King of Fighters 2000

     Project Zero was the name of the NESTS game this time, which happened to coincide with the year and the person behind it. This time around, the story seems to be that everyone is trying to get their hands on K' and Maxima after they narrowly escaped the Ikari Warriors last year. The tournament returns to Southtown, or at least the finals did because there's a level with pyramids and a desert.

     The striker system has been revamped, and I have to say I rather like the 2000 iteration best. The person in the fourth slot can either be the striker themself, or you can use their 'Another Striker,' the vast majority of whom are cameo appearances from older SNK games. Even Kim's sons and Duck King make appearances, as well as a few 'concept' versions of characters (Like Iori in a trenchcoat and a version of Benimaru that makes the belly-button shirt look downright manly.)

     There's also been a pllatload of new fighters dumped into our laps. Seth, Vanessa and Ramon are all evidently from the same agency, which is sort of cooperating/competing with Heidern's unit over the Project Zero thing. Seth is another annoying niche character who is kind of like Heavy D! with counters, Vanessa is a housewife leading a double life as a secret agent who stole all of Rick Strowd's moves, and Ramon is an annoying little Mexican wrestler. With the addition of the ninja Lin, the mysterious 'Anti-K' Kula Diamond, and the strange decision to put King on the Kyokugen Team, the roster is bigger and better than ever. One complaint though...

WHY SO MANY MALE MIDRIFFS?!

     Seriously. K's little leather jacket rides up, Benimaru's always been that way, Ramon's white gut shows up when he stretches for certain moves... Hell, even Maxima's flack jacket doesn't cover his blue armored midsection. Just a question. It probably has to do with all the new fighters starting to pick up kind of a rave fashion look. There's also Hinako, a perky, 16-year old female sumo wrestler. Who is rather petite. It's weird.

     The incredibly stupid plot NESTS cooked up this time involves having a clone of Zero impersonate Ling, the operations chief for KOF, have him double cross Heidern to steal the Zero Cannon, and have the 'real' Zero fight the KOF winners to siphon their chi into a generator to power an orbiting weapon.

     Let that soak in for a second. They can clone their operatives, kidnap important officials, genetically engineer supersoldiers and (as revealed later) can put people, robots, and even a space station into orbit. Why do they have to steal a chi-powered orbital cannon? More importantly- WHY a chi-powered ORBITAL CANNON?! But I digress; Zero is uncovered and beaten, the Zero Cannon goes off by accident, and Southtown is destroyed. "We lost a city," Heidern muses, "...and we lost our pride. I wonder what our enemies have in store for us next time?"

     Kula Diamond makes her appearance as a hidden fighter and challenger if the player scores high enough. She is simply, the anti-K', who wields ice powers to counter his flames. She's also like a semi-perky Rei Ayanami that likes lollipops. She destroys the Zero Cannon and breathes in space in the end, and is saved by her android godmother Candy as they fall through the atmosphere(!?). Also at Kula's side at nearly all times are her foster mother Diana (Kula herself is of course, created in a lab) and Foxy, who I think is Diana's roommate. She waves a rapier around, so I'm not making any direct assumptions about them.

    KOF 2000 may be the best of the NESTS saga. The artwork is excellent, the system refined, and there's plenty of new things to try each time you play through. The translation is really pretty good, with more 'genuinely' funny sayings than the usual SNK-glish. (It's better than '94 by a long shot, and doesn't make up words as seen in '01.) The way the story is given actually made me care what the hell might happen to K' and company next...

     So, what exactly did Zero mean by his cryptic winquote that translates as "Only Zero can defeat Zero?"

The King of Fighters 2001

     SNK was in trouble. They were beginning to suffer major losses, and the excellent KOF 2000 ended on a cliffhanger note. 2001 looked to be the last stand.

     KOF 2001 is the first King of Fighters Eolith/Playmore/etc. put out after SNK folded in that year. It's really a mixed bag; on the one hand, it has the most useful possible iteration of the Striker system (without resorting to MvC2 levels of tackiness) and now instead of being self-contained 'striker bombs,' you must spend a stock to call one or more strikers. It's vaguely evocative of the CvS Ratio system in that you can have say, four playable characters with one power stock (meaning no SDMs), three with two stocks and one striker (the best combination), two with three stocks and two strikers, and even one fighter with four stocks and three strikers. Your offense and defense is also tweaked accordingly.

    The system is 'loosened' a little in this one, basically meaning a move can conceivably connect with the other sprite even if on the ground or whatever. I've managed to divebomb people with Ralf while they were down. There's also the new 'wire' moves that send your opponent ricocheting off the wall for an easy juggle. Naturally, the CPU is more than willing to use this against you, most notably the INCREDIBLY CHEAP Igniz, who is infamous for a simple infinity combo involving his blade chain.

     This time, it's NESTS' last stand as they enter an official team in the tournament. The freak parade consists of Kula Diamond, Foxy, a scantily-clad wrestler/assassin named Angel, and the blatant Akira ripoff K-9999. K' is reunited with his sister Whip (whose real name turns out to be Seirah, for the record) with Maxima and Lin in tow as the anti-NESTS team. Kyo Kusanagi comes back to the Japan Team, much to the joy of Shingo, and apparently this was enough to get the hulking slow thing they call Daimon out of retirement.

      Remember the cryptic thing I mentioned that nobody could conceivably get without spekaing Japanese or consulting Gamefaqs? Turns out the 'real' Zero was another clone, which allows him to come back with a new head as Original Zero. O-Z is exactly the same guy, only a little slower and dumber to reflect his mid-boss status, and with three strikers backing him up- a black lion, Ron, Lin's nemesis, and freaking Krizalid.

     You fight Zero aboard a blimp that turns into a spaceship, a device that any James Bond villain would be prou- Actually, you know what? It still sounds, looks, smells and tastes stupid. But it does lead you to the NESTS space station for the final battle with Igniz.

     After a needlessly long cinema, you fight the blonde becaped prettyboy. Like anyone who uses the title 'CEO', he is evil to the core, responsible for all of the inhumane experiments performed on Kyo et al, and is striving for godhood. Defeat him and he proceeds to cry and be generally a poor loser by dropping the station to earth.

     K' and the rest are saved from the blast by... someone. As he swims to the surface, he meets Kula sinking headfirst in kind of a 'can love grow, even underwater' moment, So, Maxima heads off to visit a friend's grave that he never brought up before, Lin just kind of goes off somewhere, and K' and Whip set off on a journey with Diana and Kula (since K-9999 killed Foxy with his freaky drill arm.)

     2001 would have been excellent had they not resorted to a truly hideous techno soundtrack (if you look at the OST CD track list, the title theme "Flesh Reconstruction Project" appears in seven versions, and the new Japan theme "Matchless Flame" is... awful) and strange artwork. I guess it could be considered an abstraction or stylization since it omits detail in favor of the 'essence' of the guy, and some actually look nice, if not for the fact that it's all presented on searing, neon backgrounds, with 'futuristic' fonts in all of the voluminous dialogue. The only really new characters this time out are May Lee, one of Kim's pupils who loves sentai (think Power Rangers or more specifically Masked Rider) and appears to be wearing a Toastyfrog T-shirt; Angel, the NESTS assassin whose idea of fashion apparently involves a leather jacket, cowboy boots, and a thong; and the aformentioned K-9999, a drooling skinny maniac who vaguely resembles Ray Dennis Steckler. The rest are old returning fighters like Heidern and Goro.

     The english isn't so bad, if not for a few instances of made-up words. "I HOPE THIS GLADDIDITY NEVER ENDS!" quoth Choi.

     In spite of a rather nasty presentation, KOF 2001 is still a solid fighter, and at least a fight in space was a suitably interesting end to the series. At its end, KOF had evolved beyond the rather generic style of '94, with each character having their own unique little quirks and play style that made learning the game even more rewarding. Key example: Ralf and Clark from Ikari Team. They started out as virtually identical fighters, but over time, Ralf was just a straight on 'power' fighter, and Clark became a grappler.

     SNK was gone, and KOF was over. But it seems that this story has a happy ending...

NESTS Inspirations

Most of the NESTS characters are based on characters from anime or pop culture (either loosely or directly.) For example, Zero shares attack names with Fist of the North Star, and Igniz is a pretty transparent reiteration of the Sephiroth-style prettyboy who longs for godhood. (The NESTS space station looks alarmingly like the factory satellite from Robotech/Macross itself.) The whole Zero Cannon concept is like the bastard offspring DBZ and Gundam technology. Kula's design has a sort of Rei Ayanami air about it, which might lead one to suspect K' to be a rather tan Kaoru Nagisa if not for the fact that he has nothing to do with him besides grey hair. (Yuri's taunt and win from '96 and '97 were possibly Evangelion references, however: her "Anta baka?!" and "Service, service!")

The most obvious of course, is K-9999, a transparent poke at Tetsuo from the movie Akira, right down to the gigantic mutant arm attack. In 2002, he even gains the 'inexplicable giant explosion' ability. He actually shares Tetsuo's voice actor, a fact made fun of again in 2002 when the evil Kyo (dubbed Kusanagi) is voiced by none other than Kaneda's seiyuu. Naturally this was an excuse for him to yell "KUSANAGI!!!"

Angel (pronounced the Espanol way- "Ahn-HELL"), besides being another fanservice fighter, is an amalgam of pro wrestlers, including The Rock. Her 2002 opening quote is alledgedly "Can you smell what Angel-sama is cooking?"

I have no idea where the idea behind Foxy and Diana came from. Or why Diana appears caucasian in-game, yet has more ebonic features and a darker skin tone in 2001's cutscenes.

Pantheon of Bosses: Final

Krizalid: Krizalid was probably the deciding factor in my dislike for the 'new generation' KOF. He fights like a hyperactive cheap Ryu with a wide angle wind blast he uses without abandon. (He apparently can channel fire, but saves that for his supers.) So, if you ever wished that a computer could duplicate the experience of playing the average human opponent, here you go. You little weed.

Zero: Imagine your every move being countered by a spinning coat lined with blades. Now imagine someone who looks like someone's dad is wearing it. I can't stress enough how cheap Zero is. Not to mention he has so many elaborate moves you're more likely to lose to the timer running out than actually getting beat. Of course, he can be defeated by putting Mai first and not doing ANYTHING until the time is up. Oh yeah. He also has a multi-hit black hole attack that takes up the whole screen.

Original Zero: ARGH. Scratch that. Apparently, the Zero from the last game was actually a clone, so he gets to come back as an absurdly overpowered mid boss in KOF '01. Now he has his usual moves, as well as a trio of horrible strikers. Including the infamous Krizalid. Also, Ron/Long, Lin's nemesis hops in to break your guard, which sets you up for the brunt of Zero's stupid black hole move. And now he has infinite supers. But it gets... worse.

Igniz: Give a guy enough money and he thinks he's God... Igniz was a farewell groin blow to the world from SNK. In addition to being a very pretty man, he has enough counters, ridiculous priority moves, and of course, unlimited supers to make me GLAD to see Rugal again in 2002. Particularly annoying is his chain whip, which leads easily into an endless air juggle if he corners you. He also has an SDM called Brutal God Project, which has him slam you into a wall, rake your chest with his blade chain, mutilate you with his cape attacks, and finish it all off with two gi-normous energy balls. Total damage: somewhere around 90%. Defeat him, and your reward is the be all and end all of crappy last sayings... "Is this the end... of lovable Igniz?"
Good riddance.

Import Mini-Review: KOF EX

King of Fighters EX: Neo Blood is a bit of an odd duck. Not as odd as Duck King. But it was a Playmore-sponsored Gameboy Advance port of KOF, developed by Sammy (Pachinko Sexy Reaction, Vice: Project Doom, and more recently the Guilty Gear series), of all companies. In other words, SNK had very little to do with this title.

Instead of using super-deformed fighters (a standard not only expected from the Neo Geo Pocket Color games, but from the Sammy-made Guilty Gear Petit,) EX uses proportional versions of the characters, In fact, they look damn near identical to their Neo Geo MVS selves in still pictures.