This game is so full of win right now. Definitely couple of steps up in my "Expectation" meter then SFIV.

I'm excited but I don't know why everyone is going gaga over the hand drawn thing. It's not like the idea has never been done before.

awesum
cant wait to try it

indeed great year for figthing games

I admit I'm a SF2T whore but I really never understood what people loved about this series. I always considered it the poor man's Street Fighter as it would only be in the corner drug store that couldn't afford a legitimate Street Fighter (variant) cabinet.

Man, I'm so conflicted. I hate the combat in KoF, but the Art direction is so fantastic that I might have to buy it for that alone.

AWESOME!!! no word of a console release??? Cause I'd love you forever if you did that SNK you sexy bastards you

DO WANT

@Forkball: You are right the idea has been explored before, but what makes people go gaga over the hand drawn "thing" is the art expressed in those graphics and the time invested just to deliver an amazing experience.

I might have to check out the local test.

Maybe if I have time / depending on the location.

@okenny :): SF 1 came out 1987 and SF2 in 1991. The first KOF came out 2004, it came out way after SF1 or 2, but with better graphics and gameplay. SNK came with a new KOF each year after that and the game evolved from there, sometimes for good or sometimes for bad, although it still was great. You missed playing those great games in those corner drug stores!

I've never been fond of Falcoon's designs, but like Ashley Wood, his work shows it's full potential in motion. Though I'd rather see 2D animated sprites of Shinkirou's deigns, the beauty of this game is no less hindered.

I can't wait to see some more gameplay footage from the location test.

The first KoF came out in 2004? Is that why there's a KoF 94? Bit of a typo there?

@neoraul20: I might have this game mixed up with something else completely different then... my apologies. I'm far too young for my memories to be failing me now :(.....I'm I dying?:(

@neoraul20: You mean to say 1994.

@okenny :): Not to rude against Street Fighter. But when SNK started developing its Fighting Games they had much more substance compared to Street Fighter. Fatal Fury had the two-plane system (Character could shift between a foreground and a background) and Art of Fighting with their special charge meter and Super Attacks. As far as The King of Fighters being a "poor man's Street Fighter" KOF94 had WAY more gameplay mechanics did than Street Fighter ever did. Dodging, Front and Back Step, and 3 on 3 Matches.

SNK Pioneered at lot of the fancy stuff you see in games like Guilty Gear and Melty Blood. So this isn't a third rate game made by a third rate company.

@KeroseneClimax: Falcoon did the character designs for KOF2003. It was Nona who worked on KOFXI and KOFXII. Falcoon's character designs are only used in the Maximum Impact games.

@Mr-Karate: It was never as popular though. I remember how after school would be field with people crowding around the SF machines queing up their quarters. I was pretty good at SF but I never had any technical understanding of it and it wasn't uncommon to see me get smoked when a really good player came in.

You're probably right about KoF, I really have very little memory of it. It could have been one of the many other fighters out their back then... it was all a blur (with the sex and drugs of the 60s) and in they way you described it, it seems pretty neat. I just don't remember many of any of those in my neighborhood... or the faux-arcades (with 6 cabinets max)... it didn't stand out.

LOL, again... I'm probably talking out my ass here because the game(s) I saw may have not even been an earlier incarnation of this one but it stood up like a sore thumb when I read the name so my apologies. I'm just reminiscing at the expense of this game.

@EggmaniMN: You are right, I meant to say 1994. Sorry guys.

@Mr-Karate: Totally agree.

Actually the first King of Fighters was Fatal Fury 1 - King of Fighters 1991. The official name of the tournament is 'The King of Fighters' in the game. This can be verified if you look closely the promo poster seen in the name rankings. Later SNK would use KOF for rest of the series starting with "The King of Fighters '94".

@okenny :): Never popular? Maybe in the USA. SNK is THE fighting game company in Latin America and much of Asia.

@Dave Silva: LOL! For all I know, It might have been the shit outside of my neighborhood. I'm not even sure what was popular back then outside my city with my limited world view back then. Sure I had the internet (Hi-speed 9600 buad dial-up baby) back then but hell if I knew what "the fighting game community" back then was.

@Mr-Karate: In regards to the endings, I'm pretty sure it was Nona for XI, but in the case of the promotional art, it was Hiroaki. While I would have preferred Hiroaki being the one to handle the art for XII, what's been shown of the Nona style seems promising.

@Mr-Karate: Yeah, your right. I confused the artist because of their similar design styles these days. Back on KOF 2001 and KOF 2002, Nona's style was actually WORSE than Falcoon's overall to me, but he's definitely improved significantly. Falcoon also does some of the ingame art of SVC Chaos: SNK vs. Capcom and Card Fighters Clash.

Also, without repeating myself about some of the differences between SNK and Capcom in the design department from awhile back, I wholeheartedly agree with your statement above. King of Fighters has always had more innovative features than Street Fighter in terms of gameplay and design.

Can't wait to see the gameplay and the system. If they can make it like XI it'll be great, if it reachs the level of balance that KOF98 had, than it'll probably be the greatest fighter of this generation and certainly one of the best fighters ever.

Btw, SNK games were the stuff on Asia, Europe and Latin America, specially the KOF games. I wonder why their games never had a huge following on North America.

wheres my new samurai showdown..
:(

While I prefer SF games, it's hard to deny that KoF characters have a lot more personality and are generally just much more bad-ass. It's too bad that I suck at KoF games. The only KoF-related game that I'm good at is Capcom Vs. SNK, which - obviously - doesn't count.

The two systems worry me a bit

Guard Attack- I see that as either CD counters, or maybe a RB-style breakshot

Attacks cancelling into each other- BC mode from 2k2, which was kinda broke, or Roman Cancels?

I hope this doesn't end up a Guilty Gear clone.

@Forkball: Have you ever played KOF before?

@Capt-Fury-: dunno...haohmaru killed the devs?

---------------------------------

mmmmmm can't wait.

Haven't played much of the KoF series, but I'm actually kind of looking forward to this.

Any suggestions on King of Fighter games for someone new to the series?

@ManjiKengo: Uh, yeah I've played it before. I'm not an expert on the series, but I have KoF 2000,2001 and KoF XI. I'm just saying that while the art style looks nice, it's not like there haven't been hand drawn fighting games before. See Guilty Gear.

I haven't really played the KOF games too much, but this is really looking good. I love 2D fighting games so this is definitely high up on my "things to buy" list.

@Forkball: It's not the same. Guilty Gear has a couple of frames and poses drawn, the rest is computer animated.

KoF will be 100% hand-drawn. Everything.

@DanTheMagnum: KOF 98 is easily the best of the series.

OMIGAWD OMIGAWD!

KoF 98: Ultimate Match and KOF XII

I wonder which will be better. But I'm betting that it will kick the 2 SFs coming out this year

Capcom vs SNK at its finest again!

But I really hope they have an explanation for Terry going back to old school costume again

@arstal: Attack canceling refers to clashes (such as two attacks of comparable priority canceling each other out, like with the clashes in GG), not a combo mechanic.

@Polywhirl:
Heh, shows that you are not an artist... Computers don't draw and animate 2D for you... What you are talking about is 3D animation and that is not Guilty Gear =/

Anyway here's what's known about the game system:

3 on 3
Wall Stick
Hit Clash
"Guard Attack" where you can instantly switch from Attacking to Guarding.
Location Test in April, Tokyo Area

-------------------------
Past SNK Locations Tests has been done at Hey Arcade Akihabara, so this is just a guess but it might be there also.

@Polywhirl: Err, no. You don't know what you're talking about, clearly.

In Guilty Gear, first keyframes are drawn by hand as high-quality ineart, which are scanned in and turned into 2D sprites by sprite artists. The completed keyframes are then passed on to in-between animators, who sprite the frames in between the keyframes and complete the animations.

There is no "computer animation" involved, I have no idea where you even get such nonsense.

What's more, KoF XII isn't actually "completely" hand-drawn, but rather, the animations were done in 3D CGI first, and then drawn over.

Guilty Gear, on the other hand, is drawn as lineart right from the first stages (the Guilty Gear X Drafting Artworks artbook has pages upon pages of the original lineart keyframes).

Want TRULY impressive 2D hand drawn sprites? Look at the sprites in BLAZBLUE -Calamity Trigger-, the spiritual successor to the GGX series: [japan.gamespot.com]

looks great

@Zio: Thanks! Gonna check that out sometime this week.

@Suzaku: The GG sprites are stil "pixel perfect", meaning they're more sprites than drawn. Just because they were drawn at one point doesn't say anything, I bet that's true for KoF and SF too. And even BlazBlue has this pixelated thing going on. I expect the KoF-sprites to be smooth.

Anyway, what's really the big deal here is that SNK is actually remaking graphics at all. It's major!

"Scans" and "pictures of a magazine" are really different things. See the big shiny part in the middle caused by the flash? It's only making the images worse.

Big SNK fan, here. I'm also a big SF fan. SF carries more nostalgia, but SNK takes the cake for better characters.

@Suzaku:

Why would you use THAT pic as an example of the hand drawn sprites? I can't even tell what the hell is going on there!

Yea, the sprites in GG are pretty, but that is about it, even in what we are seeing in BlazeBlue, sharp, but animation isn't too smooth. I still haven't seen anything on par with 3rd strike still to this very day in terms of tight game play and animation. Even if SNK did "pioneer" some mechanics as some of you claim, then how the freakin hell do they still not "get it" when it comes to crafting a competent fighter? Even to this very god damned day, how the fuck do they see giving a character such as Terry or Tizoc a special/s with high damage, long range, VERY high priority, VERY fast start up, VERY fast recovery time, and bounces/repositions them away from an opposing fighter, all the while being spammable as IT FUCKING GETS, and somehow ISN'T considered broken to hell and back by the design team? And this is KOF XI people, you think they would have this a bit more "polished" by now. "Broken Hydoken" my ass, real fucking great SNK, good job.

And about that Hydokun spam bitching, bitch all you want, there are ways around it in every iteration of SF, either by using specific specials to cut through it, or simply jumping over the projectile and kicking Ryu in his face because of the moves fairly decent recovery time, especially in later SF games. You getting this you SNK tards? There is a DAMN good reason why you don't see pure SNK fighters at EVO. There is all sorts of problems with most SNK fighters, such as how there isn't a big weight/speed/handling difference between characters in ANY SNK fighting game, making any stat differences between characters completely pointless. I could go on and on, how most of the time you can simply cancel a shoryuken type attack, or even supers with a basic punch, defeating the purpose of such an attack, massive character imbalances, and ESPECIALLY about the BS in games such as the latest Melty Blood (oh GOD, the first was a complete wreck) and Guilty Gear's EXTREMELY sloppy ground combat, you know, "normal too normal" combat, because the way things work out in GG:AC, with using your normals to try and poke and chain, even with specials and supers (over drives) is just one of the worst damn things I've ever witnessed in a fighting game. With some characters, especially in a mirror match, you might as well just turn the game off and start throwing dice to figure who's gonna win a match, how in the HELL the game figures what has priority over WHAT sometimes in the latest installment is just, god doesn't even know, I even asked him, wait, in fact, he asked ME first.

He said, "Bando, why is GG:AC so fucking broken?" and I said "God... I just don't know anymore, I just don't fucking know." Also, FUCKING TRAPS! Who the hell thought it would be a great idea to give a character the ability to lay TRAPS in a fucking 2d, side scrolling fighter? Especially with the ability to lay MULTIPLES of said traps, and of different types, FUCK! Don't even get me started on Eddie. Scrubbiest character in AC. PERIOD.

It may seem like I'm leaning more on the side of ripping on SNK fighters, but... YES! HELL YES, I am TOTALLY ripping on SNK fighters :p

@Bando: Wow. Did you read even read half the stuff you typed? A lot of the of the "Hydokun" spamming is counterable when you have characters like Athena, Shen Woo, and Eiji who have a reflection ability against those type of attacks. They're all easy to perform and even if you don't have a character with a reflection attack, the fireballs are easy to hop over and really punishable in SNK games. What did Capcom do? "Oh let's give Zangief a reflector attack that has more frames than the fireball, making it harder for average Joe player to counter it!" Last time I recalled seeing them fixing up their Hadouken attacks was with parrying in SF3.

Please, don't antagonize SNK fighters when don't even know the correct terminology.

Where ever Terry Bogard is, I am there.
I should find my Dreamcast just to replay KoF '98...
Or maybe just go back to Fatal Fury... hrm

Please be good, please be good, please be good, please be good, please be good, please be good, please be good, please be good...