king of fighters

Although I knew quite well that the game was released yesterday or so, I was still surprised when I was awakened by the UPS guy this morning. I honestly didn’t believe I’d ever hold the game — much more than in the case of Shenmue and Shenmue II, respectively. The time was simply far past for King of Fighters 2000 to be released on any consumer platform outside the Neo-Geo, and although the Dreamcast was the obvious platform, its own time is long gone.

I never expected the game to be announced, and up until the time I held it in my hands I had trouble entirely believing the story. This whole Playmore thing from the outset is more like some kind of a fairy tale than anything I expect to be able to touch. But no, Playmore does apparently exist. SNK is alive again, sort of. And for some reason they’re still supporting Sega’s hardware. And the packaging is neat-o.

Really, this is just like all of SNK’s packaging in the past — well, their Japanese stuff, anyway. Actually even in the US, SNK were one of the few publishers to print full-colour manuals for their Dreamcast games. It’s just that their packaging and advertising was incredibly tacky — and Agetec picked up on that, destroying the beautiful Mark of the Wolves cover art in the region 1 release.

My point is, it’s really well-done. It’s along the lines of what SNK were doing toward the end of their life; KoF’99, Mark of the Wolves, Last Blade 2, etcetera. Nice cover art; nice disc art; nice tray art (both sides), well-made manual. Very clean, classy, and elegant.

That evaluation, I could pretty much extend to the entire production. The DC port of 2000 is essentially what you’d expect it to be, only a little bit better in most places. It’s not anywhere as good as the ports of KoF’98 and ’99 (Dream Match 1999 and Evolution, respectively), as a lot of work went into each of those to make them native Dreamcast games and more than just a couple of ports. But I think it’s safe to say that there’s more here than in any of SNK’s other Dreamcast efforts (Cool Cool Toon aside).

In both earlier KoF games, SNK added 3D backgrounds. ’98 had a new — and long — animated introduction added, drawn, apparently, by the person who did the character art in ’99. While ’99 lacked this extra touch, it was generally a much more, well, evolved package. The concept of “Another Strikers” was pioneered here, and a store system was set up where one could purchase a large handful of additional striker-only characters, from most of the remaining cast of ’98 who got left out in this chapter to Fio, from Metal Slug. ’99 also got a snazzy new interface and an incomplete-but-still-useful inline move list which could be brought up at any time (as in Capcom’s recent efforts).

This port of 2000, meanwhile, hovers a little closer to MotW and Last Blade 2 in terms of overall effect and apparent effort. As with every other Neo-Geo game ported to the DC (aside from KoF’98), there’s a long pause at the outset while what must be a large part of the original Neo-Geo ROM set is dumped into memory. After that, unless one exits Neo-Geo territory (such as to the art gallery and puzzle mode), there are virtually no load times at all after startup. And as usual, Playmore has removed the typical Neo-Geo “How To Play” introductions to every play mode in the game. Why this is seen as a necessity for every Neo-Geo port, I don’t know. I find that they add a lot of personality to the game; just watch Kyo’s and Shingo’s demonstration in ’98 to see what I mean.

Also as with every other Neo-Geo port (and this was a bit of a surprise to me), Playmore was kind enough to lace an arranged soundtrack into this new port. One has the option to switch back to “original sound” — as with Mark of the Wolves — but I wouldn’t advise it in this case. Somehow in the transition, the excellent Neo-Geo music has become muffled and tinny, and has aquired a slight, yet (to-me) disconcerting reverberation. The sound level is also below all of of the sound effects and voices, somewhat killing the drama in Kyo’s theme, for instance.

I’m a little annoyed with these developments, as the original Neo-Geo music has a certain coarse, gritty edge to it which is almost entirely absent in the arranged score — and I think in some ways it fits the game’s visuals somewhat better. Nevertheless, the arranged soundtrack is fantastic on its own merits. There are details to the music which I never picked up from the original soundtrack, and it’s a lot more obvious what the music ties are to the score from ’99.

While I think overall ’99 has the more interesting score, 2000 certainly has one of the three best soundtracks of any King of Fighters game. It’s similar in style to ’99, and is in many ways more polished — think of the music in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, in comparison to the first game. Some people might disagree with me on both counts, and figure that the more polished music in the second game is superior. I’d be in no place to make claims against them, as the music is still terrific all around.

(One thing over which I think there will be zero debate is the new Garou theme. This marks the first instance where the Fatal Fury team’s music actually blends into the rest of the score — and it’s just fantastic. It is, by freakin’ Flea Man leaps and bounds, the best theme this team has ever had in a KoF game.)

And in this case, the mix is very crisp and clear — and each theme goes on for far longer than I’d expect. I think most major tracks must be at least three or four minutes in length before the loop. This is especially impressive when one looks at the travesty which is KoF2001’s soundtrack. But we’ll face that monster when we get to it.

I don’t think the voices and sound effects were resampled for the Dreamcast version, as they obviously were in ’99. It’s not that they’re of a poor quality, but I think they must have been directly lifted off of the Neo-Geo cartridge rather than from the original recordings. They sound fine; the acting quality is of typical SNK standards, and the effects are varied. I’m just saying.

In terms of what’s unique to this port, the most ballyhooed new addition takes the form of a whole bucketload of new stages which have been added to the game. One of the largest complaints I keep seeing about the original version of KoF2000 has to do with its backgrounds. For one, people seem to feel that there aren’t enough of them. People also seem to generally agree that the stages in 2000 are a huge step down from what we saw in the previous game — washed-out in terms of palette, and generally uninspired.

I’m not sure I agree with this evaluation; although ’99 certainly had some of the most stunning backdrops in the series, I’m not sure what that has to do with 2000. As it is, there are several native stages in this game which I find entirely impressive. The thing is, the ones which strike my fancy are the ones others tend to point out as lame while the ones which bore me are the ones which seem to amaze everyone else. I guess that’s pretty typical.

Nevertheless, it is true that some more variety is needed — and if nothing else, variety is what we now have. The new stages are all in fact old ones, rehashed from everything from Fatal Fury (all three subseries) to every previous edition of King of Fighters even to Samurai Spirits/Shodown in one instance. (Beyond this, for some reason the VMU save/load screen is taken (I believe) almost directly from Mark of the Wolves. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know. But I knew. So I did.)

The rationale for these stages is that they’re all tied to various “Another Striker” characters present in the game. For those not familiar with the more recent KoF mechanisms, a “Striker” is an extra team member who can be called in at any point to contribute a single attack of some sort during a battle — very much like what one sees in the Marvel vs. Capcom games. Usually this striker will consist of one of your standard team’s members. For instance, if one were to choose the Hero team (K’, Maxima, Ramon, Vanessa), one could choose the first three characters as fighters and Vanessa as the Striker. Or, since she’s neat and Ramon is annoying, thrust him into the Striker role instead.

In the DC port of KoF’99 and in any version of 2000, there are also what are known as “Another Striker” characters; they serve no purpose but to be strikers, and aren’t actually playable within the game. They’re more of a fun addition than anything really useful, as they allow cameos of all sorts of odd characters from SNK’s arsenal who don’t otherwise get a chance to show up in the game proper.

In the DC version of 2000, whenever one is fighting against an opponent who has an “Another Striker”, a particular background stage will generally be tied to that striker. For instance, I mentioned Samurai Spirits a couple of paragraphs ago. The reason that there’s (apparently; I’ve not yet seen it — perhaps it needs to be unlocked?) a stage representing that game is that Nakoruru is one of the extra Strikers present in the game.

I’m not sure if this means that when Awakened Kaede is chosen as a Striker, the background will switch to a stage from Last Blade, but it seems likely. The thing I’ve noticed is that none of the “odd” characters — the ones from other series not immediately related to King of Fighters — have any of their stages available from the outset; when they’re chosen, the round defaults to a random native level from 2000. I’ve read, however, that there are more stages to unlock later in the game — so we’ll see, I guess.

Anyway, the new backgrounds do help a lot in terms of spicing things up. The only problem is — well, problems are, I should say — the varying sources of the original rounds. You see, some of the backgrounds are really dated. I mean, really dated. Fatal Fury 1 dated. It’s not uncommon to see highly-shaded, bloated, brightly-hued cartoon characters cheering the fighters on. Often the scales are all messed-up (consider how large the character sprites are in the Real Bout games, in comparison to KoF), and invariably all of the neat line-scrolling and interactive background elements (including round intros) have been removed entirely. This leaves a lot of the early KoF and most of the FF levels looking a little flatter than I remember them. Beyond this, the earlier KoF backdrops were often framed to take into account the “benched” team members on each side, standing off to the side, cheering and jeering at the ongoing battle. Since this detail has been oddly removed from the series ever since ’99, the backgrounds again are left looking a little more bare than they were probably intended.

Still, it’s kind of neat to have the stages around. I just wish SNK had at least kept the silly line scrolling. Would it really have taken up that much more space?

There’s one other addition to the game, which hasn’t received a lot of attention; a new puzzle mode has been added, in the gallery submenu. There are three separate galleries for the game, containing Shinkirou’s annoying character drawings, promotional art and posters, various sketches, and so on. More art (and perhaps other secrets) are unlocked by completing a series of sliding-panel puzzles. I realize how lame this instinctively might sound, but I actually find the puzzles to be kind of entertaining, in a Minesweeper-ish way.

It’s a neat escape from the redundant nature of the various fighting modes, and it’s actually executed a little better than I thought it would be. There are satisfying sound effects accompanying every action, and tiles can be rotated to the left and right as well as shifted in any direction. When the final tile is slid or rotated to its right position, there’s again an entirely satisfying flash and fanfare — and from then on, that piece of art will be viewable in the gallery. I’ve only completed about a dozen puzzles so far, so I really don’t know what else (if anything) is hidden in there. But I’m glad Playmore decided to add it, even if I can’t figure out why they would have.

Something else I could have mentioned earlier is that the game seems to be entirely in English now, save the plot and ending quotes. The menus and striker names and everything. I guess I can just turn to a FAQ if I want to know what’s going on in each of the teams’ endings, but I’m glad to see how navigable everything else remains. The only bit of Japanese I’ve even seen in the game, aside from the above, is in the aforementioned VMU management screen. At first it’s a little confusing whether one has saved the game correctly, as there isn’t even a VMU chirp as a signal — but that only takes a few moments to figure out.

One annoying omission, coming off of ’99, is the lack of any sort of a movelist within the game itself. The manual, again, is great — but even as incomplete as the lists were in the previous game, the fact that they were there was incredibly helpful. I have no idea how to play Ramon, for instance. I could look up a FAQ, or try to decipher the kanji in the manual, but it would just be nice to be able to press two buttons and pull up some help, y’know? I suppose the original Neo-Geo game didn’t have one, and it was more of a bonus that one was ever included in Evolution — but darn it all.

Beyond an analysis of the game itself, there are only a few more random details to mention. First off, I’ve played King of Fighters 2000 pretty extensively in NeoRageX. The romset is a little corrupted, so none of the menus or ending quotes are legible — but that just makes it all the more compelling to pick up the Dreamcast version, as if I wouldn’t have jumped at it anyway.

The thing is, for some reason Mai’s chest received a makeover from ’99 to this game. In ’99, she was still as boingy as ever — perhaps even more than before. In 2000, however, something was wrong. It took me a while to figure out what, aside from that she seemed stiffer than I remembered. But then it dawned on me — her body might as well have been made out of wood during its idle animation. Her bounce was kept in all of her other movemets, but when she stands still in the US Neo-Geo version, her boobs might as well be painted on. Her entire body is stiff. I just assumed that the designers intended to change her animation a bit, but due to a rushed schedule forgot to add the frames back in before the game was yanked from their hands and they were disbanded.

This tiny detail left the game feeling incomplete to me. It could have been any character’s animation sequence, but how could they forget Mai’s bounce? And what’s more, why did Eolith forget to put it back in in KoF2001?

Well, see what I really know. After playing this version of 2000 for an hour or two, I realized that Mai was boingy once more — and how. I think she’s trying to compete with the Dead or Alive girls now (I’m speaking of the original game here). At first I was even more impressed with Playmore’s attention to detail than I already had been — but then I had a thought. I went back into my emulator and I switched it to emulate Japanese regional coding. I booted up KoF2000, and lo and behold — all the boing one could ever need.

All I have to say now is that this is perhaps the most retarded bit of censoring I’ve seen yet in an SNK game. The white blood I can understand, though it seems needless to me considering how cartoony everything is anyway and what the nature of the game is. The removal of all of King’s references to alcohol has seemed a weird to me, considering the fact that Chin exists — but again I’ve more or less understood why the changes were made, as little as I agreed with them either aesthetically or in spirit. But — just, why?!

A disconcerting change, in its small and harmless way, is the removal of all previous instances of SNK’s logo in the introduction and menu system, and its replacement with that of Playmore. Now, I’m not sure what to think of this — as KoF2000 is not a Playmore game. They might own the rights to it now, but it was developed by SNK. They deserve the credit, I think. And what’s more, Playmore’s logo is strangely-shaped, and it’s mostly green and yellow. SNK’s logo is simple, sleek, and blue. It’s icy. It’s stylish. It blends into almost anything. Playmore’s logo pops out like the packaging to a Fisher-Price toy.

KoF2000 has perhaps the keenest intro sequence in the series, and there’s one key moment (in an intricately-timed orchestration of images) where the screen fades to black, save a small, quiet, subtle “SNK” logo — which then quickly vanishes. This has now been replaced with “Playmore Presents”… and, well, it’s jarring. I almost laughed the first time I saw it, as it was so unexpected. I guess it’s not a big deal, but it seems little strange to me.

Lastly, I never actually made it through the game on my emulator — so I’d never seen the credit sequence before. Just to mention, KoF2000 has a really neat set of credits. Perhaps I’d best not get expectations up too much, but they mirror the opening sequence pretty well in how they’re arranged. And then…

Hmm.

Remember how at the end of Sonic Adventure 2, there’s that quote? How does it go… something like “Another day brings a new dream… But for now… Rest easy, heroes”. Seeing everything that was going on with both the series and Sonicteam and Sega at the time — this is a kind of a poignant way to end things.

Well, after the obligatory “CONGRATURATION!” (Really, I think they must do this on purpose) — most SNK games end with the same message: “THANKS TO: ALL SNK STAFF”. And then, sometimes, there’s another bit tacked on — “AND YOU!”

This time, there’s just a pause and a black screen — and then the game prints out “Thank you all with love.”

…

Now, consider this. This is the final game by the original KoF team. They were disbanded immediately afterward. I don’t know if SNK made another game in-house after this. And it was released in late 2000, after the US, European, and Asian branches of SNK shut down. After the NGPC was pulled from the market. After they’d filed for bankruptcy. They continued to taper off for a little under another year before closing last fall. But this was really the end.

It might sound a little silly, but this final message kind of touches me, in a way. I’m not really going to say any more about it, but I thought it worth throwing out there.

Now for the game: It’s NESTS-era King of Fighters. It doesn’t play as well as either ’99 or 2001, in my opinion. It’s a little unbalanced, and the teams are set up kind of strangely. It’s an in-between game, in the series. But it’s still King of Fighters, so it’s still better than most stuff you’re going to find in the genre.

It’s probably the pinnacle of the series in terms of presentation. It just doesn’t get any better than this; 1999 was a step in this direction, and 2001 was several steps down. The art style is great, the interfaces and atmosphere are highly polished; the music is (as mentioned) terrific, and smooth.

A few new characters are introduced; some of them neat (Vanessa!), some of them useless (Hinako) or annoying (Ramon). Many characters have received some large alterations to their movelists, for better or worse (Kyo, Iori). And the last boss, Zero, is typically cheap although — notably — perhaps the least appealing KoF villain I’ve yet (at least, as far as I’m concerned).

The Armor and Counter modes, I find even more annoying and useless than in ’99. I far prefer the old styles of power meters from ’98 and before, and I’m glad Eolith chose to ditch these modes in 2001. They’re just not needed so far as I can see, and yet I keep feeling guilty for not taking more advantage of them. The striker system is a bit more useful than before, though not nearly as refined as it will be in the next game. Everything else feels as it should, to the best I can tell.

Although, unless one has a large and quickly-accessed mental resevoir of kanji, there’s a lot to be missed a lot in this edition, there are a lot of interesting plot developments in 2000. Again, it’s a middle chapter — so nothing really important happens. But we see the introduction of Kula, some important developments with the Psychic Soldiers team, and one of the most shocking turns of events in the series (even if it lacks the drama that perhaps it deserves, in the short time it’s given).

For a rundown, the game has the best SNK presentation you’ll get short of Mark of the Wolves; it’s pretty, it sounds good, it’s got good variety. It’s a little unbalanced, and the teams are set up strangely. The gameplay is as solid as ever, though the mechanics aren’t as evolved (for my brain) as in either ’99 or 2001. The port is perfect in nearly every way, and has several nifty additions. Playmore didn’t put as much work into it as SNK did with the other Dreamcast editions of KoF, but they did a much better job than I expected and better than SNK themselves did with their other Neo-Geo ports.

Playmore are real, and they seem to at least be competent. Now that I have this game in my hands, my respect for them, and what they’re doing, has been solidified. And now I’m really looking forward to what they can do with 2001. Heck, maybe they’ll even be able to fix the soundtrack. I can’t imagine it getting a lot worse…