I just hope everything works out.
The game is showing some promise IMO.
Keeping my fingers crossed.
Bring back any 2 of Kula, Vanessa, Mary, K’, Shingo, Jenet, or Oswald and I’ll pick it up for both systems. Will certainly pick up one copy regardless.
Seriously depressing thinking that this could be the end. So much for there ever being a sequel to Garou if that happens 
. On a plus note keeping the arcade release at least a good four to six months ahead of console seems to be working for BB. I imagine if all goes well, we’ll get a console release in late fall/early winter with a fleshed out story and a couple extra characters. Please just let there be real netcode… please 
I absolutely love the franchise. The first game I got to play was 00/01 for PS2 and at first I had to get acclimated to things like strikers and the unique manner of the fireballs. Soon after every one was clinging on to their 3rd Strike I started to research KoF and low and behold I found out a great deal. The music has consistently been awesome. I love SNK’s sense of style and the way that rock and jazz are perfectly suited to battle in. I began to forget about Ryu and take up my Iori. The characters were so diverse and wonderful it was hard for me to return to SF. Every year came and advanced the story which I find pretty interesting. I know as fighting game fans we are not supposed to care about the story because its poppycock but I disagree. I wanted to see what happened to Kyo next, what the deal with the Orochi was, how the riot of blood worked, everything. In a few places SNKP has taken some stabs in the dark but I completely enjoyed everyone of them. Someone here said '96 was trash. I disagree. It was one of the most compelling games in the saga. The stages and music were great, the roster was awesome, it brought KoF to a new realm of playability. '03 was awesome too. It brought back the Orochi and sped up the system. The inputs all felt so natural in that game. It seems like SNK is a company dedicated towards listening to their fans. I do think it is a fruitful road. 12 brought us to the new age of SNK. While it disappointed a bit in a few areas I still want to give SNK a chance. The base of their game is excellent but their idea didn’t really catch up to their system yet. I’m willing to wait. Sure 12 felt unfinished but what they did have was promising and I enjoyed the new take. I can’t wait to play 13.
Man… I’m SO glad they removed that annoying zoom-in thing during the fight.
Like I said once, some companies just think they gotta go all out to compete. So they went through all this work, spent all this money, just to say we put hard work in so we should be considered competition.
IMO, they were working on XII, and felt rushed to put something out especially after SF4’s release. At first, they may have thought “We’re gonna drop a bombshell” but as time passed and money was being lost they realized this might take a while. So they threw out XII as a Re-Up. Somewhat of an appetizer to the fans, and a way for them to get some more money to keep the project moving forward. So now, it’s going on a year after XII’s general release, and they are retreating back to something closer to their traditional gameplay mechanics. It might not be total abandonment of the system you introduced a year ago which just needed polish, it’s more like reassurance that your game will be received well. I hate making SF4 references, but Capcom put a few things to catch SF players from ST and 3s. They gotta appeal to veterans and newer gamers alike. And yes, it is sad to say the fanbase almost runs how a game is developed.
This is just speculation, I’m gonna make this my last spec post being none of us will actually know the real insider story. Interviews and blog posts really won’t tell us the stress behind the project.
I agree. It’s more than just that to be honest. As a KOF fan I’m honestly very disappointed in this new sprite style they’re using. Some characters look fine(such as Shen Woo), but some look quite awful. King, Yuri, and Mai are some of the worst spritework I have ever seen in a high end 2d fighter. First off, King and Yuri are way way too skinny, namely their arms. They actually have skeletal looking arms. Mai seems fine, but she shares the same godawful face that both Yuri and Athena have, it makes them look like really ugly loli/dolls or something. King’s hair is poofy looking, it doesn’t even match her ingame art! We already know the problems with Clark and Ralf, so we need not mention that.
The stages are no better. They look really uninspired and bland, there’s nothing all that interesting about them. We went from fat people stages and that large generic looking stadium in XII, to that weird japanese arena surrounded by sumo, an elephant party in India, and some really bland UK stage that just looks boring(it oddly resembles that really boring America stage in kof 2001). Why no really cool stages like the ones from kof 99, or 96? The sewet stage in 99 was really interesting and looked to have much more thought put behind it than these stages, which seem to be just SNK slapping tons of weird looking people into generic bgs.
The sprite style itself just isn’t that good honestly. Old school kof had very realistic looking sprites with realistic proportions on characters. These sprites just look really odd and like some weird anime, even the shading has taken a dive(if you notice, some sprites the shading seems off and not as detailed as in old kof sprites). What SNK should have done was make sprites in a style more similiar to the following games:
Art of Fighting 3
Daraku Tenshi
Akatsuki Blitzkampf
All three of these games have a much better art direction with their sprites, the characters have more realistic proportions and actually look good. I’d prefer if SNK had done XII and XIII in the style Daraku Tenshi used, it would have fit kof much much better. These current sprites feel more like something ArcSys would make, just with slightly more shading to be honest. I think for XIV SNK should go back to the drawing board, and redo these sprites in a more realistic style. I realize this would be hard, so they can simply edit the current sprites they have into something better. Perhaps hire Shinkiro or Hiroaki to work with the spritework. Anything but what they are currently doing, it just doesn’t look that good to justify the time wasted on it.
Personally I’m in full agreement with Shiki, here.
Corrected to protect the innocent.
ArcSys? Really? Does not look BB, GG, or anything they’ve ever put out. You should do a double take.
KoF 12/13 looks like what thay are, cartoonier takes on KoF. Love it or hate it, KoF has new look that is all their own. It’s about time kof got a little extra style all its own again.
But hey, chin up buddy. You’ll still have your doujin fighters and old ggpo games fer sum serious fightin game bizness.
It will be a pleasure not playing you in KoF 13.
IMO.
Your probably gonna buy it anyway.
They could at least fix up Mai and Yuri’s faces to make them look less like down syndrome people, and make King and Yuri have at least slightly larger arms, their arms currently look like freakin sticks!
As far as the art goes, who did the character select art for KoF2k2UM? I would have liked it to follow that style, but I still applaud anyone willing to mix it up and try something new. I do agree that netplay in the U.S. is just one of the things that really helps a game. What you need is to keep a community around your game long enough after it releases that they sort of become self sustaining in a manner until finally they squeeze everything they can out of the game or a new one comes along.
So far about the gameplay changes that we do know, I don’t have the KoF pedigree most of you have, are these good changes? (I only briefly got to play XII).
Please people stop the hate !
The man behind kof 2k2um arts is Hiroaki. 
About the design I’ll explain my opinion of the why they chose this style.
If you remenber kof 94, it was a time when SNK had a lot of series and games and by doing kof, they wanted to make a sort of dream match. Problem was to create a new graphic style because Fatal Fury already had the cartoon style and AOF had the huge sprites. So they decided to go for “realistic” and fashioned design with the characters, and it was a very good idea : they were able to have a single style very different that includes all kind of characters ! If you watch Fatal Fury chara, AOF, Ikari, Psycho soldier, all this chars are VERY different, and kof can uniformize the designs, a very good idea.
Back to the present ! Did SNK created a new IP this past ten years ? No or only one or two games like rage of the dragons. Do the young generation of players know SNK old games ? Not at all. When they watch a kof, are they able to say “ah this char must be from another game” or just kof is a big whole bunch of characters created for kof ? Second answer of course ! They are so many characters created for kof that they are taking half of the cast of kof XI ! Even Mai is not in the Kof XI arcade version… So is this really the king of fighters in the way SNK created it, ot did kof manage to create his own visual identity and is now a game that can’t fulfill his original behaviour ? Second answer again, kof is no longer the reunification of many series but a game that have his own chars taking more and more space.
So you have a bag full of money and someone says to you “do the new kok, reboot the franchise”. What can you do ? Use the characters made for kof ? Yeah but if there is not the old chars it’s not ok. Put only the old chars ? Maybe but people will complain about “their” char not being inside the roster. Damn that’s complicated ! And major answer : do we continue the uniformisation of the designs, is it really a necessity as… we already used all the chars and series SNK had and transformed them ?
You see it coming : instead of continuing the old way, they came back at the first idea for the roster and did the exact contrary SNK did 15 years ago for the design. Instead of redesign characters of now unknow series so they all look from the same world, let’s assume the past designs, let’s make a tribute to these old series everyone forget by giving them back their real design, the one that people do not remember, beliving that kensou was always this way for exemple. Let’s use several designs ideas for each series. For exemple :
- kof characters (created for kof like iori, leona, mature, elisabeth) will be closer to the original designs : fashion, thin physics, very stylish, very 90’ !
- Ikari warriors chars (clark, ralf) were inspired from old good 80’ movies like commando (Governator is back !) so let’s assume this past and give them the old culturist look heroes had at this time !
- Fatal Fury chars were inspired by 70’ and 80’ movies (the warriors, ninja creepy movies) and very cartoon. Let’s give them back their original lookout : terry is old fashioned (ah 70’ jeans…!), Andy inspired from ninja movies, may from cartoons with big boobs characters, the whole is like a japanese animation movie with ultra badass male chars and ultra sexy girls !
- Aof was know for the very distinct attitude of the chars : very tall and agressive looking for all the chars. Even if the inspiration for AOF is the same than FF, they are very different.
I don’t know for you but i’m glad they did kof XII and XIII this way. If it had to be just a HD adaptation if would be… useless. We have a lot of kof games with old designs, and now SNKP is very respectfull of the franchise and chars by making a wonderful tribute in the new kofs.
You sir, just hit the nail! :tup:
Yes, *“let’s build our whole art direction of multiple games over the style of a freelancer that doesn’t even work for the company, and piss off all the artists that actually work for us!” *
am i reading this right? u r seriously complaining because SNKP is giving fans EVERYTHING they had been crying out for? YES the basic game is back to the way it was… with the new features being ex moves which i think adds depth to the game… and drive cancel which also lets u save urself after a screw up which also adds a defensive depth to the game… u can say these 2 features r copying SF or BB… ya the idea might come from them but lets just wait and see how good they apply them… so far i dont see anything unreasonable… ex moves will most likely eat some of ur super meter and add extra options to every character… while we saw athena save herself from a “D” phoenix arrow with a psycho ball at the cost of maybe 1/3 of hyper drive meter… and if u do manage to save and build up the whole hyper drive meter then u r rewarded with a 2k2 MAX mode type combo if u manage to land it… which u do have to work quite an amount for as u can see from the kyo exhibition…
on top u got more characters… better, faster gameplay with no zoom in… so ya …u r like the ONLY person i’ve seen complaining so far… u say they were trying out something new and unique? well that something new and unique sucked so bad that barely ANYONE ever played the game and the ones that did including me… i tried my best to like it abandoned it after they couldnt take it anymore… and so goes for the copying ideas from SF and BB not really even BB since Garou had breaks so u could say they r taking the idea from there …SF4 copied enough shit from KOF… and r they successful? YES even though i dont like sf …so as long the FANS like it GO for it… SNKP is finally listening to their FANS and giving US what we WANT… most of use anyway so take ur complain to somewhere else… and let us have a decent NEW KOF game that we can enjoy…
btw please snk give me back my throw priority… i’m sure that would make all the grappler whore players in kof happy…
I find it funny that Neithan exactly point how stupid KOF fans are here :
Just to see some of them react exactly how he described them. Incredible.
And well, if he ( Neithan ) don’t think they are, I do.
Neithan, tu es le franais du site basgrospoing ? Tu traine sur No-Arc et console league aussi non ? Moi je serais d’avis que tu fasse profiter tout le monde de cette partie au moins parce que c’est tellement vrai… Peut tre pas original, mais tellement vrai.
Question bonus : Y aura t il un podcast sur KOF13 ?
Chloro : ouep c’est moi et je ferai sans doute un article crit sur tout ces points dans les jours venir. Pour le podcast sur Kof XIII on fera a mais dans longtemps.
Sorry guys.
Nope, its never coming back. Clark will never be the same…
sry.
I was thinking it is going to be great to have new KOF’s to choose from just like the Capcom community has SF to , some still play HD-Remix and some play SF IV and some still play 3rd strike. Capcom community has so many option of games to play and we should have the same thing.
Even when KOF XIII comes out you will still have people playing 2k2 UM, 98 UM, KOF XII. What makes it so great is just like EVO we have are choices of KOFs just like they have their choices of SF games, but over all they are suporting the same company. Lets support SNK in all ways across the board.
Aren’t you against KOF XIII?
Looks like hes taking the money rought. But that is bussnass.