Written by Chuck Allen.
With this release, SNK Playmore has given fans of the long-running KOF franchise the first 5 games in the series in one convenient package at a fair price of about $30. It was a nice surprise when it was announced that this collection would contain KOF '94 to '98, as in Japan the KOF collection only contained '95 to '97, the three games the compromise the Orochi Trilogy. For the uninitiated, The King of Fighters has been SNK’s flagship fighting game that contains characters from several of their franchises such as Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, and Ikari Warriors. Fighting is done in a sort of tag-team style with teams of three fighting one combatant at a time. The story -- summed up -- consists of a fighting tournament started by the evil Rugal Bernstein which eventually blows up into a plot of awakening an ancient evil known as the Orochi with different teams trying to prevent this, aid it, or steal the power for themselves. While it’s never been the best-looking fighting game, The King of Fighters games have always had a memorable cast of characters and catchy themes for each team. Thankfully, this compilation doesn’t lose any of what made the original games successful.
The series started with the 1994 edition. This game really shows its age as the music sounds really muffled compared to later titles and the character sprites are extremely pixilated. The play control hasn’t changed from the original, in that it requires dead-on precision to pull off some of the special moves. '94 also has the distinction of being perhaps the hardest game in the package as even on the lowest level of difficulty, the final boss Rugal can take you out with one combo. Thankfully, unlike the Virtual Console release of KOF '94, instead of having only three continues, you get as many as you need to get through the game.
KOF '95 is essentially the same game. All of the teams are the same, with the exception of the Sports team from '94 being replaced by a new rival team that served as an introduction to the series for now longtime KOF character, Iori Yagami. The final boss is Rugal yet again in perhaps an even cheaper form -- which I have yet been able to defeat.
Thankfully, the series really improved with KOF '96. The sprites are brighter and have more fluid animation. The music doesn’t sound as bad even after all these years, and the announcer is audible and understandable in this edition. The roster also increased in this size and had more familiar faces from past SNK games making their debut, like Geese Howard. This is also the first KOF game to not feature Rugal as the final boss. While the new boss still has the classic “SNK Boss Syndrome,” he is nowhere near as bad as Rugal and even novice players will be able to beat him.
'97 was a mixed bag for me. Story-wise, it completes the Orochi saga as the evil beast is awakened and must be stopped. However, this KOF seems like an unfinished product in retrospect as many of the teams do not have any background music during their fights which results in a lot of silence through the course of the game, which is an odd departure for a series that has always had memorable music from the original OST’s or arranged soundtracks.
The final game in this package is KOF '98, which serves as a “Dream Match” of sorts, with a larger roster of characters, including ones that had previously died in the storyline. This also allows my least favorite boss, Rugal, to return. Thankfully, in this edition he is not as impossible to defeat. Out of all the games included, '98 also features the smoothest play control, as many of the combos and special moves that were harder to do in previous games can now be pulled off with ease.
Aside from the games included in the package, the KOF collection contains a challenge mode which serves as the means to unlock music (both original and arranged) and art collections. One negative part of the challenge mode is that all challenges are done in KOF '98, so you are limited to using the characters in that game to complete the challenges. For example, if you wanted to do a challenge as Krauser, you’re out of luck as he is only in KOF '96.
Looking at the package as a whole, all of the games are emulations of the original arcade games. Thankfully, the emulation is done perfectly, as the games run smoothly with no slowdown or lagging. Load times are short. The only time you will encounter loading is when you first pick a game. While it is loaded, you are shown a portrait of a character from that particular game with a special move from his/her move set shown. Each game also has a list of moves you can pull up at any time which is very convenient, seeing as how many characters have appeared in these games. Play control is smooth for all the games except for '94, but that game was hard to control originally. However, you should use a Classic Controller or a Game Cube controller, as playing with the Wiimote is difficult with the button placement. Unfortunately, due to the fact that these are straight ports of the arcade editions, this means that there is no versus mode in any of these games. Furthermore, you can only play these games with the original soundtrack. This is a real negative on the whole package as previous SNK compilation games allowed you to play with either the original or arranged sound tracks. You can listen to the arranged tracks in the game but can’t have them during actual game play. It’s like a nasty slap to the face to have it available on the game disc but not being able to use it.
