Shinkirou’s characters look like mannequins. They have no motion or life to them.
Further, they remind me of the art one used to see on the back of cereal boxes in the 1980s.
It’s dated, stiff, and often grotesque.
Shinkirou obviously has technical talent as an artist, but his art just doesn’t seem appropriate to something as vibrant as a fighting game.
Nona’s art has been controversial ever since his work on KoF2001. It’s often strange — but it has life to it. It’s often dark. It’s often a little disturbing. It’s gritty, and yet stylized.
Like it or not, Nona’s work has personality. And on that basis, I’d take it over Shinkirou any day.
I don’t know why Playmore chose to go with Nona for as high a profile game as this, however; I’d have thought that Hiroaki (the Bukiri-One artist, who most recently did the art for KoFEX2 for the GBA) would be more appropriate.
But whatever. I like Nona, if for nothing else than the fact that he’s different. And that so many people complain about his art without much of an attempt to understand it.
Nona’s fine, but yeah — it’s a little weird that Playmore doesn’t seem to be sticking with someone a little less controversial.
From what I’ve read elsewhere (such as The Stinger Report) Capcom doesn’t want much to do with this game. They’re annoyed that Playmore is even going through with it, and perhaps the only reason that they’re allowing Playmore to go forward with it is that Capcom is soon to be leaving the arcade business. Therefore, the game won’t be much competition for any of their upcoming projects.
Furthermore, Playmore doesn’t have a huge reservoir of money. So it makes sense to me that they’d stick with the artists they have on-hand.
However, of the artists that I know they have left — why Nona? I, personally, am very fond of Nona’s art. But I know that I’m in the minority. His art is often not very easy to understand.
I know that Hiroaki (Bukiri-One, KoF2000) is still with Playmore, and I believe that Tonko (Mark of the Wolves, Last Blade) is still around somewhere (given that Nona did the art for Metal Slug 4). Both of them are fantastic artists, and both are immediately appealing to just about any audience.
Plus, Hiroaki’s style is a little reminiscent of Akiman’s — Capcom’s main illustrator ever since Street Fighter 2. Personally, I think Hiroaki is far more talented than Akiman — but they work in a similar manner.
He’d seem perfect for a game like SVC CHAOS.
And who knows — maybe Playmore is using Hiroaki for the in-game art. All we’ve got now is a small handful of character sketches.
If you remember, Nona did the character illustrations to KoF2002 but Hiroaki did most of the in-game portraits and whatnot. I thought that this was a perfect balance.
For all we know so far, it’s entirely possible that they’re doing the same thing here — Nona on the outside illustrations and someone like Hiroaki or Tonko on the in-game art.
Probably best just to hold out and see how things go over the next few weeks.
If nothing else, the logo is very well-done.
* * *
Regarding The King of Fighters 2002 DC:
Buyrite is renowned for just plain false information, but there’s been discussion before about whether Playmore will bother with the extra chracters.
Just about everyone has expressed some consternation about the original MVS roster. King is my favourite character overall, so it figures they’d choose to ditch her (even though she’s been in every other KoF since the series began). Why they chose not to bring back Jhun, where Shingo went off to, and why we’ve got Rugal again (rather than, say, an enhanced Krizalid), I can’t really fathom.
Furthermore, why does 2002 — a dream match — have fewer characters than 2001? 2001 was a standard plot chapter. 2002 is supposed to be a no-holds-barred, over-the-top celebration of all that is KoF. With the game’s wimpy and unrepresentative cast list, it’s kind of difficult to get as excited as Playmore intends.
Basically, they had to cut corners somewhere. After all of the complaints about the backgrounds and music in 2001, Playmore devoted more time and cartridge space to that aspect of the presentation. Personally, I’d take the characters over the backgrounds — though I appreciate the effort (even if I feel it’s misguided).
With the Dreamcast, though, Playmore doesn’t have these space limitations. They can do whatever the heck they want to, really. This is the perfect chance to fix the game (or finish it, depending on how you look at things), and quiet their audience’s moans; to show that they’re really listening.
So there’s the obvious and immediate potential, right off the bat.
There’s a bit more, though, to raise a person’s hopes.
First, this is the kind of thing that SNK and Playmore have done with all of the Dreamcast ports so far.
’98 got a snazzy new anime intro, a 3D background, and other assorted bonuses;
’99 got better 3D backgrounds, a shop system, extra strikers (including Seth and Vanessa from 2000), and a really nice presentation overall;
2000 got a surprisingly-entertaining sliding puzzle and extra backgrounds and music;
2001 got even more levels (including “fixed” versions of all of the original 2001 levels), and a well-designed puzzle battle mode.
So there’s a history of some decent additions, most of which do a good job to fix some of the shortcomings of the games in question (although 2001 really could have used some added music).
It seems highly probable that Playmore will add something worth mentioning to 2002. The only question is what that might be.
The other factor which is getting at least my hopes up is how long the game seems to be taking. 2000 and 2001 were each ported pretty quickly, and released mere months apart from each other. 2002, however, was announced way back in the middle of December — and it’s not to be released until some untold time, this coming summer.
Part of the delay, I imagine, is so as not to interfere with sales of the Neo-Geo cartridge. But the fact is, this is a pretty long wait for what should otherwise be a simple Dreamcast port. Playmore’s got lots of experience with the DC. They know how to do this by now.
So what’s Playmore doing with all of this extra time, then?
It sounds kind of suspicious to me.
On the other hand, this is all speculation.
As for the complete cast for the DC version — all that’s been announced beyond the original MVS release is Shingo.
For the full cast of the MVS version, look under the Neo-Geo FAQs section.
It is my understanding that Shingo was originally intended as a character within KoF2002 (thus the rumors of him popping up in the early public tests), but that Eolith and Brezza removed him in the final version (for whatever reason).
This would make some sense, as his sprite doesn’t appear to be in any of the backgrounds. Just about every other major KoF-universe character makes an appearance, so it seems odd that Shingo isn’t even referenced.
With luck, we’ll see some more characters added back in. It seems absurd to me that a “dream match” game like 2002 has fewer characters than a standard plot chapter. (There are 40 characters + 2 bosses in 2001; 39 characters + 1 boss in 2002.)
Further, it seems pretty ludicrous that the cast manages to be such an awful compromise that it isn’t representative of anything in particular. One of the most long-standing and representative characters (King) is omitted. One of the bigger recent fan favourites (Shingo) is left out. And few of the remaining characters have much of anything to do with each other.
In ’98, most characters had a large number of special introductions and/or endings. It was a reasonably tight group. The characters had reason to joke with each other, to taunt or threaten each other. There was a lot of personality going around.
Now… well, what is this? We’ve just got a bunch of random characters thrown together, with no context at all. It’s so cold.
What’s even weirder is that even amongst the characters who have some obvious connections — their interactions are omitted!
Kyo versus Iori? Nothing.
Mai versus Andy? Nothing.
Terry versus Billy? Nothing.
Terry versus Yamazaki? Nothing.
And the list goes on.
There still are a few random intros in there (Kensou versus Athena), but — well, you get the picture.
This game needs a lot of work — and I’m hoping that Playmore does a decent job at finishing it for the DC release.
The inclusion of Shingo is a good step. It’s very encouraging. We’ll see what else they polish up.
Akaimizu: That’s true, with the alternate characters; I don’t really count them any more than I count the alternate characters in ’98, but it does depend on how you want to look at things.
If that’s the way one is going to measure the game, however, I can’t help but wonder where all of the other alternate characters are which were present in ’98. We’ve gone through two whole eras at this point. You’d think there’d be a lot of history to cover and to try to encapsulate in a Dream Match like this.
But no.
As for that other person:
No, this game is far from perfect.
This has nothing to do with the details, specifically; I bring them up only to illustrate a point.
KoF2002 is by far the least coherent game in the entire series. It is arbitrary; it has no reason to exist, in the form that it has been executed.
It has potential, and certain elements are individually executed very well. The backgrounds are nice. The character portraits are pretty. Some of the characters’ new moves are nice. It’s nice that some of the older characters have finally seen some new frames of animation.
But compared to the direction the series was going in with 2001, it’s a pretty huge step backwards into irrelevancy. This is unfortunate.
I fully intend to pick it up, for the sake of posterity and because I want to support Playmore. But I’m still disappointed on a number of levels.
You would be as well, if you were to pay more attention.
Let’s see if anyone can anyone answer me this:
What is the point of KoF2002, as it currently exists? What does the game accomplish?
Why did this game need to be made?
I can quickly tell you the answer for every single other game in the series, from ’94 up through 2001. For 2002, it’s not so easy.
Try as I might — and believe me, I want to like this game — I can’t understand what its purpose is, beyond simply pumping out another KoF game for the year 2002.
Anything it might feign to hold up as a tangible goal, it fails in — aside from being generally prettier than 2001 in most of the obvious aspects.
There’s no reason for a Dream Match right now; we’ve still got some plot threads unresolved from 2001. But okay, it’ll make Eolith a bunch of money before they hand the development back to Playmore at the end of their contract. So whatever. Let’s make this a blast to remember, as we did four years ago!
In ’98, every character save the Boss Team, Eiji, and Kasumi returned. Okay, and the post-Rugal bosses. But we got Saisyu as a playable character and we got alternate versions (pre-’96; ’96-and-on) of most of the major characters. We got a ton of interaction amongst the characters.
The game had a general air of fun; one big party, where everyone is invited. One big storyline is over with. Now we’ll make the KoF to end all KoFs; the one game which, above all else, is representative of the heart and the history of the series.
We could have had another one of those. That would have been neat. But what did we get?
What is 2002, exactly?
Why do we need it?
I’d like someone to explain it to me. Because I don’t understand.