With the King of Fighters ’95 SNK truly established KOF as their flagship game, and once again proved to be one of the best 2D beat ‘em up developer there are. But that was 1995, so how good is it some eight years later?
Overview
This game first saw the light of day in 1995 (as the appendage ’95 suggests), and is in fact part of one of the longest running game series ever. This is for a good reason: the games are great. For those not familiar with this series, you shouldn’t make the error of mistaking it for just another Street Fighter clone. In fact SNK have always brought us new ideas and top quality fighters, and the KOF series can be found at the top of that top list. And regular as clockwork, SNK (now SNK Playmore) develops a new version every year.
Graphics 7/10
But back to KOF ’95; the first thing you notice is that this game looks cool as hell. The intro makes your blood boil and gets those fighter-juices flowing. The character design is great, the sprites show a lot of detail, and the game has some of the coolest backgrounds I’ve seen in this type of game. I especially like the ‘fear factory’ from Iori’s team. However, the animation is somewhat choppy by today’s standards.
Gameplay/Controls 8/10
The game uses a four button set-up, two for punches and two for kicks. But there’s more: pressing soft punch and soft kick performs the side-step attack. With this your character ducks in the background for an instant. This can be used to evade attacks. This feature makes a great contribution to the game by making it a lot more tactical and diverse. Of course the 24 playable characters are also equipped with a number of special attacks and desperation attacks. These desperation attacks are perhaps better recognised if we call them supers; they can be performed if the pow-gauge is full or when your heath is near zero.
The controls are responsive, but some of the special moves are a bit difficult pull off, because a rather difficult button combination has to be made. This makes it a bit more difficult to learn your way around KOF ‘95, but you are rewarded with deep, involving gameplay.
Sound/Music 8/10
There’s some very good music in KOF ’95 and plenty of it, as each stage has its own track. Also the tracks are quite long so they don’t repeat too often. The samples are pretty good, nothing outstanding, but they get the job done. Although Iori’s evil laughter after winning a round is a real classic.
Replay Value 8/10
As always, one-on-one fighting games have tremendous replay value when you’ve got a friend handy to fight, and the team battles in KOF just add to this. There are always more moves and combo’s to learn, and the sheer pleasure of trying to pulverise your friends is great. On the other hand, if haven’t got a human opponent handy you’ll miss the biggest reason to play these games, but you’ll still enjoy it, even if the computer is rock hard.
Overall 8/10
KOF ’95 was king of the world when it was first released, and frankly it’s still good after eight years and seven sequels. Question is: will you want to play this game when its sequels have more characters, special moves and better animation.
- By Leila
