A much as I love the Real Bout games, I am going to have to disagree with you there. King of Fighters is too different in terms of gameplay system to be compared. The King of Fighters tournament held in South Town in Fatal Fury does not have anything to do with this spinoff.
Also, Real Bout 2 is not even the best Real Bout. The absurdity of breakblow (specifically in this game) and 1-line system really mess up the flow of the game. Unless you play it for the newbies (Rick and Xiang Fei), the game seriously messes up the movesets of the older characters with really dumb balancing relative to Real Bout Special. Additionally, I cannot turn a blind eye to how horrid the presentation is with its art style and cut intros/outros. I will admit that some of the stages in the game are really badass (Yamazaki/Cheng, Chonrei/Chonshu, Laurence/Krauser, Duck King/Blue Mary, Billy/Geese, and Sokaku), but the sharing of relatively static stage color swaps between characters is disappointing when previous Real Bouts had time transitions and stage interactions built in. The development team cut a lot of corners in this title and the game is not better off for it.
They spent 6 months developing the game, I mean yeah, it sacrificed the nice presentation from RBS, but Iād say in terms of gameplay, it blows all the other Fatal Fury games out of the water, especially with how they handled the planeshift system.
Also RB2 has the best version of Geese Howard in any game ever.
What are the KOF games played regularly by Chinese in their tournaments?
Most recent title (XIV), 97, and 98 vanilla. Thereās no 98UM/FE events.
Why Koreans?
I can understand Chinese but Koreans?! They donāt play KOF as much as they used to. Theyāre all into TK/SF nowadays. Only Koreans in EVO2017 for KOF were Madkof and someone by the name Nakodid (source SRK: https://t.co/7lwNRu7lgL). The ones that still play either go XIV, XIII, or 98 vanilla. Canāt say the same for 98UM/FE as there is no Korean streams or replays for those iterations.
Name like 7 very known Asian OG KOF players from the past decade that play 98UM/FE in the present?
Thereās None. Xiaohai, Cheng Long, Dakou, JoJo, Gosyo, 777, Dune, OZ, Kyabetsu, Madkof, Bashā¦etc all of them made a name for themselves through 98 vanilla.
To say Japan has no saying in this matter is kind of a reach given the number of tournaments, meetings, and rankings held for 98/2002/XIII/XIV each year in Japan (a-cho, Kouhatsu, Mikado, Taito Hey, Newton, Daytonaā¦ arcades in general).
There shouldnāt be any debate. Itās officially stated that 98 and 2002 are the most popular KOF games. Not 96, not 97, not XI, not XIII. While being popular does not necessarily mean the best, itās an advantage nonetheless over the remaining titles.
Tournament rules may prevent players from exploiting bugs, however, they donāt change the core mechanics of a game.
97 has team supremacy due to the fact that the advantage system is constant and does not change from game to game. Couple that with the unbalanced tier list and youāve got trouble.
97ās Max mode is one hell of a drug. You can do more than one SDM in a row, and even in a single combo (iirc). In addition, other stuff like chicken block, easy stun, and neutral hop normals being the same as neutral jump normals have proved to be problematic. All these things renders the game unbearable for me.
98 came and fixed all of those issues. I like its simplicity (less is more), its pace, its footsies, its style of whiff punishing, its pre 99 select order meta gamesā¦etc. Of course I hate a couple things but in general itās great.
Take any KOF after 2001, strip it it from complex meter system, aaand poooof! itās 98 with different cast.
At times I feel that but itās also the case for other titles. I mean is there any strong turtling/trolling/zoning/grappling characters in other KOF?
tl;dr
Japan: 98 has been played regularly sinceā¦ umā¦ 1998.
China: 97 & 98 diehard.
Korea: 98 still relevant.
98 is in top 2 most played KOF of all times.
98 is most watched KOF (some vids are above 1M views).
98 is most streamed KOF on youku/niconico/twitch.
Agree Japan is very strong in 98. Especially the regular A-CHO players. Iāve played against BATA, Naruto and other OGās like Maaā¦they are all very strong. They are not as strong as the top Chinese players of courseā¦maybe with the exception of JoJo these days, but they can definitely hold their own.
I have not been keeping up with the Korean scene for like a decade, but they used to have strong players.
If every KoF after 2001 had its meter stripped it would still pale in comparison to the gameplay of 98 without meter because corners were cut and dumb system design choices kept them from achieving the same quality.
In regards to 98 they still donāt match up to the top level on Chinese players. The best 98 Korean players of today such as Shinsun and NL have gone up against some of the top Chinese like Xiaohai, Xiaohei, Lao Hei, Feng Bo etc. They didnāt fair that bad, but honestly the difference in skill level is still apparent. The thing is there is already a pretty large divide in skill between China and the ROW and when you have the top Chinese players playing against each other nearly on a daily basisā¦Itās pretty hard for Japan and Korea to catch upā¦and ofc with the Chinese competition being the strongest, they prefer to just play with each other most of the time.
I like these type of arcade driven, almost underground, triennial-like events where itās community vs community and not just player vs another player.
Pride of a whole country is on the line = hype cranked to the max - esp. when you take into consideration how brutal and non-forgiven DMNE can be.
Japan vs Korea, Japan vs China, Japan vs Korea, Japan vs Taiwan, and now coming full circle w/ Japan facing itself. DNA is truly one of a kind. And you know whatās the best part? Itās a 98vanilla exclusive.
