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Overview

Well, these mythic series don’t need any introduction to you, fighting game fans. In 1994, SNK mixed characters of some characters of their main series, like Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury or Ikari Warriors to create a 3on3 fighting game. Ten years has passed, and this year SNK decided to port their series in PAL regions, starting with Metal Slug 3 and this bundle, just for 30 $.

Graphics 7/10
This is the greatest problem of this game. KOF 2000 is 4 year old, and KOF 2001 3 years old. At that time, Neo Geo was already at disadvantage with Capcom’s CPS3 engine and Street Fighter 3. Now, Sammy’s Atomiswave took the lead with games like Guilty Gear. King of Fighter’s graphics are below average, but they still look attractive.

KOF 2000 had probably the best backgrounds of the series, and KOF 2001’s pixilated bgs have been fixed. Also, new versions of these stages have been altered to look better. Character’s sprites are also the same in Neo Geo. They look good, but Guilty Gear sprites have much higher resolution, and Street Fighter 3’s have much more frames.

Special effects like fireballs or energy blasts are the same with some transparences, which don’t really add anything impressive.

Last but not least, KOF 2001 main menu has been totally remodeled, it is a very nice blue skyish background. Also, the horrible portraits were fixed with the official art of the series. Life bars and letter type are still the same in both games.

Gameplay/Controls 9/10
We reach the point that makes King of Fighters be one of the best games out of there, and one of the deepest fighting games. We find typical kind of games like throws, strong and light punches and kicks, special moves and desperation moves. You need one stock to perform this powerful combos that may take a lot of life. And we also find Super Desperation moves that need two stocks. They also add a special light effect that reverse the colors of the background.

You can also roll pressing light punch and light kick, run pressing forward twice, and do a back step pressing back twice. If you press C and a direction button, you can avoid throws, and pressing roll while receiving and attack, you will roll avoiding the attack in exchange of one stock. Up to jump, down to crouch, back to block.

The pace of matches is fast and fluent, and controls are responsive. Actually, the controls are good, but this game is impossible to play in a normal PS2 controller, so I suggest to buy a new one. Also, controls should be more customizable. You can custom light and strong punch and kick, taunt and strikers call (which is with R1 trigger by default). But it would be really useful to custom some triggers as a combination of two kicks and punches to perform the super desperation moves.

King of Fighters is a very special saga because, instead of thousand of shotocopies, it has very different and original characters. There are very few projectile characters, maybe Athena, but she can be used as a close range character as well. Kyo has evolved a lot, and his Ara Gami combos and some counter moves make him a unique character. Some classic characters like Terry or Iori are still different from shotos, even though they are similar, but their charisma is so special that after 10 years they are still the most used characters. Kyokugen crew is the closest shotos, but Yuri and Robert have their own moves. Kim is a kicker that will never be a boring or repetitive character, we have charge characters like Leona or Choi, we have awesome grapplers like Clark or Ramon, punchers like Vanessa, or combo characters like Angel or May Lee (both only in 2001) And there are lots of original characters that could never be described like Ralf, Whip, K9999, Seth, Chin, etc

I should also state some differences between the two games.

First, in KOF 2000, when you reach the maximum gauge, three stocks, you can press L2 or R2 to enter the counter mode or armor mode. With counter mode you can perform as much desperation moves as you can, and super cancel moves into specials or DMs, but you cannot use SDMs. Armor is a defensive mode to earn time.

KOF 2001 installed a revolutionary system in the strikers concept. 4 character that can be used as fighters or strikers. You can choose from 1 to 4 characters to fight. The more strikers you have, the most stocks you can get, and the stronger your characters become. Also, your gauge bar fills faster.

For example, if you pick 1 character and 3 strikers, your gauge fills very fast and you can get 4 stocks, you only receive half damage, and deal a lot more.

Sound/Music 8/10
Music has always been very good in the King of Fighters series, but now we find two games with different music.

KOF 2000 has the best music, some cool guitar and bass music which makes combats really entertaining. Even though the sound quality is still similar to the Neo Geo version, is still great. The character selection music is good as well, even the continue music sounds good!

But KOF 2001 is not that good. Most of the tracks are very different from the other KOF music, and they don’t fit in a fighting game. There are several good tracks, like English bgm, but it is really below KOF 2000’s level.

Voices and sound effects are same as always, good. You can find some hilarious voices, like Shingo’s, cute voice, like Athena’s, or cool voices, like Keidash’s. There is even K9999 voice, which is the same of famous anime characters like Gaara from Naruto and Tetsuo from Akira.

Replay Value 8/10
Another of King of Fighters weak points. You can easily beat the story mode, which consists in 6 battles (in KOF 2000, you can fight Kula as mid boss) and a final boss (in KOF 2001 there are two final bosses).

There are both Single Play (1 on1 matches, the first to win 2 rounds beats the other one) and Team Play, the arcade version of King of Fighters which consists in matches between teams of four characters. If you complete the Team Play mode with a default team you earn special endings, which can be funny sometimes.

There is also practice, and the party mode. Party mode is a kind of timed survival to unlock features. First, strikers like Ron, Krizallid and Gulga in KOF 2001, and a lot of extra strikers in KOF 2000, for example the USA Team, Krauser, or Mr.Big. In KOF 2001 you can also unlock different versions of stages and the bosses of the game, Original Zero and Igniz, and you can also unlock Zero in KOF 2000.

And this mode is… a shit. You can stand it in KOF 2001, since you can unlock all the features in one time, but the shitty music makes it boring. In 2000, you got to restart the game every time to unlock new strikers. The IA is very poor, and only tries to defense, it doesn’t attack most of times. This could be good if only some characters did it, but everyone… oh, not everyone, there are some characters that just eat your attacks in the first stages.

Finally, you can unlock intros from KOF 94 to 99 in KOF 2000 by reaching certain objectives like an amount of ability points in Single or Team Play, some huge combos or playing an amount of time. These objectives can be challenging, and entertaining, and is very cool to watch openings of other editions (’97 and ’98 rock especially).

And, of course, you got the VS. mode, where you can play against a human opponent. With this feature, the replay value can just become infinite.

Overall 8/10
This is one of the best fighting games in the market (especially PAL regions), and two games for 30$… a must buy specially for fans. Finally SNK Playmore ports its titles to Europe and Australia, finally is time to enjoy them.

- by Joan Miquel Domínguez