The good news is that Bic Camera, the outlet responsible for dropping KOF XII to 980 yen—down from its launch price of 7,140 yen (about $79 USD)—appears to have sold out of the 2D fighting game. But with the game on store shelves a little over three months, an 86% mark down on the King of Fighters revival must be hard to swallow.

It's not that uncommon for Japanese retailers to issue steep price drops for older games—we saw plenty of new copies of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the same price in Tokyo this year—but SNK Playmore is probably not pleased.

Retailers in the U.S. appear to be sticking closer to the MSRP, selling the game between $49.99 and $59.99.

The game didn't review that well here in North America, nor did it debut strongly on the Japanese game sales charts. Maybe SNK Playmore will have better luck with King of Fighters: Sky Stage. At least that game has the fan service friendly Mai Shiranui.

The King of Fighters XII Gets Pricing "Re-Birth" [Siliconera]

For those just coming to the series, The King of Fighters XII is a four-button, three-on-three fighter. Unlike Street Fighter, a series KOF is inevitably compared to, there are only two punch buttons (light and heavy) and two kick buttons (ditto). And unlike Capcom's brawler, players select a trio of characters before battling their foes. This system has always given the franchise a faint whiff of chess-like strategy as players try to mix and balance their portfolio of combatants.

Since SNK's financial woes caused the company to implode, there's a scrappy underdog quality to the game. The King of Fighters XII, with its lovingly hand-drawn graphics, was supposed to put SNK back on top of the fighting game genre. But is it a knock-out or just punch drunk?

Loved
Graphics: Since the game is, as SNK has claimed, a rebirth of sorts, the character models were all redrawn by hand. At its very core, this is an old-school arcade fighter — an arcade fighter in an HD world. So, yes, up close, some of the graphics do look pixelated, but that could very well be the point. And since when is pixelated a pejorative term? This game is beautiful.

Fighting is fun: It is, it really is. The basic fightinh mechanics are straightforward and intuitive and the new additions like the "Critical Counter" system keeps gameplay evolving during the match. After countering with a heavy punch, the Critical Counter System can cause your health bar to glow green and unleash a series of deadly combos. Likewise, the "Clash System" for when players attack at exactly the same time, causing them to clash and be knocked back to a fighting stance. The line-up of 22 fighters—while skimpier than the majority of KOF games and harboring glaring omissions—is rather balanced, making team building a cinch.

Hated
Needs more frills: The game is pretty much fighting, and that's pretty much it. There isn't really a story — the semblance of a plot is just that there is a fighting tournament, here is the final match, congratulations, the end. Well, that's totally fine for an arcade title. But if you are playing KOFXII in an arcade, you must likely won't be investing US$60 worth of quarters in the game. The offline single player is an arcade port, but without a proper story mode, the ability to unlock new characters and the addition of only two more fighters, the home console version seems rather light, unfinished even. The entire game is pared down to the fighting. That's the main focus, and that's fine for the arcade title, but at this game's price point, it needs better value for money.

Online is a hassle: Since single player is so skimpy, you'd think this game would nail online. Sadly, it doesn't. There are, however, cool and very welcome options like the ability to create a clan. But the simple act of getting online and punching some stranger in the face is far more complicated than it should be. It's sometimes hard to find matches. When we were able to finally get online, there were a few moments were we felt like we were fighting in jelly.

Menus are not user friendly: Outside of the main menu, none of the submenus seem intuitive. For example, once you began searching for a match, you cannot leave the pre-fight lobby area — say you cannot find a match or you end up sitting in the lobby area for inordinate amount of time, there is no way to easily leave this lobby. We pressed all the buttons and nothing would happen! Why can't the start button take us out of that menu? Each time we had to turn off the game and sit through the 20 seconds of game credits at the beginning. Know that these are credits that you cannot skip.

The fighting in The King of Fighters XII is solid, and the graphics are great. It's as if those are at the expense of everything else, like online multiplayer, story mode, a beefier line-up of fighters and even a worthwhile interface.

The King of Fighters XII is definitely a re-birth, but this game is a 15 year franchise in its infancy, finding its feet and learning how to walk again. Is KOF back on top? No. But this latest installment shows the series can eventually make its way back up the hill.

The King of Fighters XII was developed by SNK Playmore and published by Ignition Entertainment for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 on July 28. Retails for $59.99 USD. Played single player on both platforms to completion as well as online.

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Mai's absence in The King of Fighters XII is being felt keenly by fans, and while she could be showing up as a downloadable character somewhere down the line, it's still a rather sore subject. So why would a company release a video on the evolution of the series that punctuates the hardest part of that evolution to handle? It's cruel and unusual punishment, I tell you.

That's according to The King of Fighters XII Facebook page and Twitter account, putting an end to the torment that is the 2D fighting game's fluctuating release date, social networking style. We're getting it two days before our brethren in Japan, so try to be that much more excited.

Thanks to Collin for the tip!

Sure, we could have edited the slate ourselves, but then how would we preserve the excitement? Simply telling you about it? That never works. The little date code at the beginning of this "Triumph of Combat" video shall be preserved in its entirety, to show the world just how thrilled Ignition and company are to have been picked as the best among such a crowded field of 3 or four titles, if that.

Oh I kid. Good job guys!

Thirteen classic SS characters and eleven newcomers gather in this latest entry to do battle with the villainous Golba, rendered in high-resolution 3D, which means we also get high-resolution decapitations and dismemberment, and isn't that what video games are all about?

Here at Kotaku we try to expand our horizons. And sometimes our horizons are expanded for us, like when I drew the assignment to meet with Ignition Entertainment at E3 last week. I was ready to play their pretty side-scrolling Muramasa: The Demon Blade and, what do you know, I previewed it.

Then, my former colleague in games reporting, Ignition's director of business development, Shane Bettenhausen, welcomed me to try King of Fighters XII. Me, the guy who lost in Street Fighter II to Soulja Boy.

I let Shane play. I asked questions.

Tell me, I requested, what someone who doesn't know anything about The King of Fighters XII should know.

From my notes: Fighting game (obviously). All hand-drawn. The artwork for each character, rendered in 720p, took 18 "man-months" to complete. Lighting was faked by drawing different sprites for the characters depending on where they stand in the playfield. Three-on-three fights, as is tradition. Not much of a story in this one, and a pared down roster. All dream matches.

Oh, Shane said, something else: did I see this character he was playing as? Ash Crimson? That's the main character. He asked me to guess Ash's gender.

Female?

No. Male. The King of Fighters series, I was told, has been progressive with introducing characters with alternate lifestyles, like cross-dressing. "It seems that most fans are warming up to him," Bettenhausen said of Ash, "Even though he looks like a girl and wears his hair in a bob."

So progressive are the developers of The King of Fighters — and so impossible is it to erase the inquisitiveness from a journalist even after they cease being paid to be a journalist — that Bettenhausen told me that he asked the new game's developers at SNK Playmore to clarify the sexual orientation of those characters for whom such a thing may have been ambiguous.

The evil (naughty?) secretary Mature? Bisexual.

This guy Shane was fighting in the game named Benimaru, who Bettenhausen pointed out wears a halter top, fingerless gloves and flicks at his tall head of hair when he wins he fight? "Apparently he's a hit with the ladies," Bettenhausen told me. "He has tons of girlfriends."

Interesting. I didn't dare play the game. Time was short and I needed to get to more Muramasa. But now I know a little more about The King of Fighters. Enough to make me curious, for reasons I didn't expect.

The King of Fighters XII is out in July for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Five of The King of Fighters XII's characters get the showcase treatment, letting fans peruse each frame of three animation sequences, just so you can see how much work does into designing an uppercut in two dimensions. They also offer a clear, pixel level detail of two of the game's stages, so you can see every single chubby French woman without the distraction of fisticuffs.

SNK also offers a brief look at how it progressed from old-school Neo Geo era The King of Fighters graphics to where we are now.

2D Dot Graphics Gallery [SNK Playmore]

So who are these two new ladies, and where do they fit into the ongoing King of Fighters saga? Here's the official word.

Mature is pretty quick on her feet and favors speedy attacks when in combat. She used to be Rugal's secretary, but rumor has it she may have been a spy. She is a babe, but she can also be somewhat ruthless and cruel. Elisabeth's fighting style is more orthodox, but she can be tricky despite her minimal move set. She once invited Benimaru Nikaido and Dup Lon to France to form the Rival Team. Elisabeth has a special relationship with Ash Crimson

A special relationship? I'm on the edge of my seat here! You guys check out screenshots and video of Elisabeth and Mature in action while I scoot backwards a bit. It's quite dangerous, sitting on the edge like that.

The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions are due to ship stateside in less than two months, but Ignition hasn't firmly decided on which King of Fighters characters will appear on the game's box art. You get to decide. Err... again. The publisher is offering up another round of box art voting, pitting the previously voted upon version against the more coveted by nature of being Japanese designs.

Of course, if you want the exotic CERO rating and lone SNK Playmore logo, you can still import. But that would be kind of silly, don't you think?

I'm putting my vote behind "Whatever has meaty Athena not offering upskirt visibility on the cover."

Rock the Box Round 2: Vote for your favorite King of Fighters XII PS3 box art! [Ignition Forums]

The ESRB has weighed in on the console versions of SNK Playmore's newest 2D fighter, giving it a T-rating. That's par for the course for The King of Fighters. But what potentially rules out appearances from jiggly, cleavage-baring contenders like Mai and B. Jenet is the lack of "suggestive themes," the kind of themes that could potentially offend those flustered by the exposure of too much flesh.

The game description offered by the ESRB makes it more clear.

According to the ratings board, The King of Fighters XII is described like so: "This is a 2D arcade-style fighting game in which players compete in one-on-one combat with a large international cast of selectable characters. Players engage in hand-to-hand battles by mostly kicking, punching, and blocking their way to victory until the opposing player's life meter runs out. Players can also trigger special moves to cause larger amounts of damage to their opponents."

Sorry, kids. No "female fighters [that] wear clothing that exposes their posterior and cleavage" and no "bouncing breasts... depicted during battles" as seen in previous, racier entries.

Despite speculation that would indicate otherwise, you'll have to settle for the more buttoned-up Mature and Elisabeth Blanctorche, the two newly announced additions to KOF XII's lineup.

Looks like this is your final roster for now. Perhaps when The King of Fighters XII Ultimate Match is announced, you'll get the K' and Mai you were expecting.

The King of Fighters XII [ESRB]

The King of Fighters series has always had its own distinct style, and the official website for the latest entry in the series is simply oozing said style from every pixel. Each section could be a page from an art book. They've got biographies of each combatant, the aforementioned history of the series, news, trailers, screens and of course, the fan art contest.

The contest runs through July 31st, with the winning fan art entries eligible to win limited-edition KOF figurines, copies of the game, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles, or the grand prize of $1,000 in cash. Simply head over to the website and click on the Fan Art link to get started. Oh, and they prohibit nudity, so you should probably keep all of those Mai pics to yourself for now.

After watching the intro a few times now, you probably could have just skipped it anyway and not have missed all that much. The seizure-inducing graphics flashing by the screen and the horrible music simply drive home the fact that a fighting game needs to focus on the fighting. An unexciting intro trailer must indicate that they were too busy making a quality fighting game to worry about the bells and whistles, right?
So don't worry about it. Just mash start until the menu comes up when The King of Fighters XII hits the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this summer.

While SNK Playmore has yet to officially announce who those characters are, even releasing screen shots that still show a character select screen that features the stock 20 characters, they may have given us a hint about who's new. The official King of Fighters Anniversary web site now has illustrations of the oft-requested Mai Shiranui and K'. Yeah, so?

Well, those new illustrations are done in the style of The King of Fighters XII, leading many—including us—to believe that we'll see both Mai and K' added to the console versions of the game.

Clearly, SNK doesn't want to miss an opportunity to release another suggestive Mai statue, this time focusing on the underexploited side boob exposure she's giving KOF fans in the official artwork. That's leaving money on the table.

Unfortunately, this is little more than speculation at this point, but we'd bet it's speculation in the right direction.

The King of Fighters Official Web Site [SNK Playmore via Mognet]

New shots of the game in action were released today, showing off an optional anti-aliasing graphical style, one that makes SNK Playmore fighting royalty a little less pixelated. These shots represent our first look at that mode, according to Joystiq. Never was a fan myself. Specifically, of anti-aliasing on 2D visuals.

In other The King of Fighters XII developments, producer Masaako Kukino reveals in the newest issue of Game Informer that when the 2D fighter comes home, it will do so with a roster beyond the 20 confirmed for the arcade release. Any requests?

Mull it over while enjoying four new screens.

The King of Fighters series finally makes the jump to current generation hardware with The King of Fighters XII, coming this July to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It's the first title in the series since 1996 to feature completely new graphics, though by way of trade off it currently only boasts 20 combatants - the lowest in the history of the franchise. It's a bit like what Capcom did with the recently-released Street Fighter IV, bringing the game back to a core set of characters, relaunching with a new look but retaining the classic feel.

The July release further clarifies the Summer 2009 target shown in the game's latest trailer.

"I couldn't think of a more appropriate way to commemorate The King of Fighter's 15-Year Anniversary than with a gorgeously animated, high-definition installment that updates the KOF legacy for a new generation." said Shane Bettenhausen, New Business Development Director of Ignition Entertainment. "While other fighting games have abandoned the time-consuming process of creating beautiful 2D art, KOFXII fully embraces the refined aesthetic beauty that only human hands can produce."

Other fighting games have abandoned 2D? Whoever could Shane be calling out there?

That's because the game apparently has a North American release window, which was, frankly, (good) news to this casual King of Fighters observer. The trailer dates The King of Fighters XII for a PlayStation 3 release this Summer.

Ignition Entertainment lists no other platforms on which KOF XII will "kick. some. ass.", but we'll bug them for clarification. While we wait... WOOO! SUMMER!!!

After all, it's been a good six months since she's been sculpted into a T&A-showcase pose. Or has it been six weeks? Who can keep up with all these otaku-catering sculpts? The newest, due March of next year, is based on Mai's KOF: Maximum Impact appearances.

Set aside 16,590 yen (just shy of $180 USD) if you desperately need one for your secret shelf. Or just peruse the gallery to get your kicks.

It arrives strictly for the Nintendo DS — an Xbox Live Arcade version is due later — doing little to take advantage of the platform's unique hardware. What it does bring are seven new stages, three new Metal Slug vehicles and six familiar run and gun soldiers to choose from.

Is Metal Slug 7 the luckiest of entries? Read our review to find out.

Loved
Consistently Gorgeous Presentation: The Metal Slug series has traditionally wowed with its amazingly detailed sprite work, its over-the-top animation and effects providing almost as much entertainment as the run and gun gameplay. Metal Slug 7 doesn't disappoint, with lovingly crafted characters, vehicles, bosses and backgrounds. It's a visual feast, even at such a tiny screen size.

Tried And True Gameplay: SNK Playmore may get some grief for not spicing up the Metal Slug recipe enough with the seventh core entry in the series. Fortunately, Metal Slug 7 does more right than it does wrong in attempting to keep the series fresh — even if some of the more amusing added flavors from previous Slugs are missing.

Combat School Mode: There really isn't much meat on these bones for anyone who won't obsess over collecting every prisoner of war or single-credit play throughs. But Combat School — a series of challenges with specific requirements and graded performances — gives one something to do once they've seen everything in Main Mission mode. Chatting with your drill instructor Cynthia provides literal seconds of "enjoyment."

Hated
No Multiplayer: Metal Slug 7 doesn't take advantage of the DS's wi-fi capabilities for multiplayer, making the game strictly a single player affair. Granted, having two people on the wee LCD screen amid all the explosive pomp may make for massive confusion and double the deaths, but we'd have loved the option.

Really Doesn't Exploit the DS: It's not just the multiplayer via wi-fi, it's everything. No Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection support for leaderboards and stat-tracking, pointless touchscreen interface, no shouting into the microphone to switch weapons. Okay, that last one would be a horrible idea, but Metal Slug 7 feels a bit out of place on the Nintendo DS.

For better or worse, Metal Slug 7 is a capable, familiar entry in the twelve year old series. It's squarely aimed, like most SNK Playmore stuff, at a small subset of fans of old-school gameplay. The new Metal Slug vehicles, particularly the Metal Gigant, are a blast to pilot and add a much needed dose of variety for anyone already six Metal Slugs deep. The graphics remain top notch and the gameplay is still solid.

Fans will likely be satisfied, but anyone who hasn't yet gotten on board with Metal Slug by this point might not see what the fuss is about. But I'm more interested in ever in picking up the Xbox Live Arcade version, just to see these mechanical wonders at full-screen.

Metal Slug 7 was developed by SNK Playmore and published by Ignition Entertainment, released in North America on Nov. 18 for the Nintendo DS. Retails for $29.99. Played through single player Mission Mode, completed multiple Combat School mode challenges.

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