Personally, I thought he was little more than an angsty, uninspired twat, and I couldn’t be happier that SNKP erased him from the continuity in favor of Nameless (of course, it leaves quite a few gaps in the events for '01 since you can’t have him stand in for him and have it make any sense, but I couldn’t stand '01 anyway). That said, I agree on lack of relevance for the majority of the characters being an issue.
Man I have been reading that site for at least an hour now.
That’s pretty damn accurate. The worst was endings that nothing to do with what happened. Like in KOF 03, Takuma was beaten up and the dojo was trashed. Out comes XI and I along with many other people beat the game looking to see what happened after Takuma was trashed. And low and behold. Takuma is back 100% and is part of some plan to have King and Ryo become a couple. WTF happened to the dojo? Who was the villain?
Not exactly true, you can have characters playable in the game, without giving them a story mode so it doesn’t impact the story, fighting games used to do that all the time.
About Samsho storyline, the storylines of SNK games do make sense (plus they were supported heavily by drama CDs and articles in specialized SNK magazines), but SNK Playmore Samsho storylines often contradict with original SNK storylines, and are making loopholes. For that reason I think SNKP storylines should be set aside from SNK storylines, kinda like franchise reset. Recent Samurai Shodown Edge of Destiny is set in time period when Ukyo and Genjuro were already dead accordingly to canon SNK storyline, but yet they’re still alive in the game, so that says enough.
And no, Mortal Kombat is not better because it feels more inaccurate, has more loopholes and a ton of character resurrections; And I dislike the approach of “picking random mythological term and slapping it on something random to make it look cool”, when the Oni demons looked like shaved three-eyed gorillas in MKSM
plus samsho produced 90+ characters while MK 60+
That’s my greatest pet peeve in all fighting games. When there’s one golden boy who’s all important and everyone else is fodder. Tekken suffers from a major case of this. BB is looking that way, too…
And, KOF took characters who were genuine stars of their own games, brought them all together, and turned them into jokes. Terry who? All that guy ever did was knock some small town gangster out a window a couple times and punch some tall German dude in the face. KOF is the big leagues, son. Kyo and Ash all day, yo.
Interestingly enough, the SF4 storyline spreads the wealth pretty nicely. You’d think that Ryu would be the golden boy, being the series mascot and all, but he really isn’t the big news of the day. Seth, Bison, Abel, Viper, Cammy, Gouken, Akuma, Guile, and Chun all share the spotlight with Ryu.
Heck, even Sakura, Dan, and Blanka got in on the action during their combined endings with Ryu.
I gotta be honest and say my favorite game in terms of storyline is Street Fighter Alpha 3. It is like “Street Fighter”, the movie, without Van Damme.
I also like 3rd Strike for story (but little else) and the Samurai Shodown series. The King of Fighters was interesting (and even the NESTS saga held my interest), but this newest story arc is balls.
Mortal Kombat is terrible. It’s a story written by the same kind of people who thought “SF: The Legend of Chun-Li” was a good idea.
Story mode in fighting games should be done only one of two ways:
(a) SvC: Chaos style. Your two characters spawn on the screen, shit-talk each other, and get down to business. I don’t give a fuck who wants to get over their amnesia or avenge their master or dress Noel up in stupid outfits. (No, seriously. I nearly shot myself every time Noel came on screen in BlazBlue story mode. I hate that dumb bitch so fuckin’ much.) All I want is enough personality developed so that I can get hype about my huge wrestler guy/stacked-to-hell ninja chick/drug lord with the power of flight beating the crap out of his/her/its opponent. If I want a thoughtful reflection on human existence in a fictional setting, I got a bookcase not three feet away from my Xbox.
Yeah, some of the pre-fight conversations were pretty lame, but I admired the consistency in giving EVERYBODY something to say versus everybody else. If only that attention to detail could have been paid to things like collision detection and the charge system…
(b) JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure PSX-style.
OH SHIT HERE COMES A CAR
WHOOP
WHOOP
WHOOP
bew bew bew
ba-donk
SUCCESS
OH SHIT NOW HERE COMES A SHARK
I fuckin’ love that game.
I like the idea behind that in SVC Chaos, but the problem is by having dialogues for everyone, it got kinda forced.
Ryu: "Sup?"
Guile: "Sup?"
Ryu: "Let’s fight."
Guile: “Okay!”
Fatal Fury’s the only one i ever cared about and that’s because I like Terry and FFs cast the best over all from a character standpoint. It’s just got that whole revenge seedy city thing goin on. It’s also really straight forward and doesnt try to be complicated and super meaningful. Just bunch of dudes hate a bunch of other dudes for various reasons and kick eacho thers asses for those reasons until some guy falls out a window and Terry tosses his hat in the air. Whooo!
I don’t care about any of the universe cross overs like how AOF is connected or anything involving KOfs story. Just FF.
And SFs just cause it’s SF.
Ah yes, the pre-fight dialog between villains fighting the comic characters in SvC was hilarious.
Uncomplicated? Yeah.
Meaningless? No.
The recurring theme of the series is the failure of the father-son relationship in modern society due to urban decay and cultural values, as well as the difficulty of modern man in forging meaningful relationships due to masculine pride, post-industrial society which stresses the importance of materialistic success & individual competition rather than social cooperation, and the inherent antisocial nature of masculine identity.
In short, the major themes are exactly like Fight Club, only with more guys kicking each other off of buildings.
And I love you, because I’ve learned that platonic love can exist between two grown men!
This!
Watch out. It’s addictive.
EDIT:
Too late.
Really great post shiki, though kinda sucks as you realize when those games was released, and that the situation has only gotten worse worldwide. 
Most SNK fighters have good stories. I would say that Fatal Fury’s story was the best, followed by KOF’s story.
Judging by all Fatal Fury love in this thread, I’m wondering if SNK should drop KOF and rename Fatal Fury as their primary franchise.
I’d be happy if they just made a new game
It’s definitely between Evil Zone and KOF for me.