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Australia's King of Ninjas kicks some pixelated arse
Publisher: Ignition Entertainment (I think)
Sat, 8 October 2005
by: Australian Ninja
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After various shenanigans, including the bankruptcy and resurrection of SNK, KOF 02 arrives on the merry old PS2. Considering the spotty releases of old school 2-D fighters in PAL regions it's almost a miracle that this game made it to Australia. To put things in perspective the first Australian KOF release was KOF's 94 and 95. Around 1995-96. No more were released here until KOF 2000/01 on PS2 in January 2005. Which means that KOF's 96-99 have only been released in Japan and US territories and those of us who have followed the series would have had to import to play them.
Enter KOF 2002. Finally...good gameplay has come back to the KOF series. Over the years it's had its ups and downs but I can honestly say that 2002 is one of the greatest of the King of Fighters series. Other people may mention the dated graphics and archaic technology it's made of. As an unashamed fan of 2-D chunky sprite pixelated graphics (especially the 16-bit generation) all I can say is that I LOVE how KOF looks and I always have. Some may say I'm wearing rose coloured glasses and living in the past. Well, all those people can go drink an ice-cold glass of "Shut The Hell Up."
 | | smell the glove |
Like other 2-D fighters it's a game that some will get excited about and it's a game that will turn others right off. If you're into 2-D fighting games then I recommend it highly. However, if you've never played a KOF game before then I don't recommend playing this one unless you know someone who can teach you how. Seriously, this game is not friendly to casual gamers and unlike say, Tekken you can't just pick this up and be good enough to finish the easy mode in two days worth of play. Basically KOF is a bitch for first timers and frankly unless you have the patience to learn the moves, supers, timing etc then you'd be better off playing Guilty Gear or Street Fighter. Both of those series are far easier to learn to play and have overall better game design.
2002 features a mixed cast of previous KOF's and no storyline [not that there was much of a story to begin with] or endings. Which makes it very much like KOF 98 – in my opinion the best the series had to offer from 1994-2000. In addition to being another "Dream Match" 2002 features most of the characters from 98 and their alternate versions. The seriously twisted Orochi team returns (Yashiro, Chris and Shermie). A total of forty-four characters are playable – ignore what it says on the back cover – that number is wrong.
Some characters have "alternate" versions such as Kyo 94. Plenty of old favourites return including that bad mofo Rugal Bernstein. This guy has more lives than a cat in Stephen King's Pet Cemetery. For one of his old poses he scratches himself with a metallic hand and draws his own blood. How ludicrously hardcore can you be?
Gone is the distracting [though sometimes amusing] striker system. Straight three on three battles are back along with MAX supers. That is, the powered-up versions of the regular supers. Which is louder, Ralf's MAX Gattling Gun tackle super or Medal of Honour gunfire? It's very close - I checked - and Ralf is louder.
The poor MIDI sounding wails in this game just sound crap. Every other KOF I have ever played had at least two stand out tracks that had 'something' that grabbed your attention. KOF 2000 featured some nice tunes and it's a shame to see the music go downhill in this version. Even tracks taken from previous games [such as Yashiro's music] sound worse than the games they originally appeared in. That's just sloppy, we're not talking about complicated orchestral music or funky Tekken beats. The music quality really should sound better.
The sound effects are best summed up by one of my favourite kids books: "Extra Crunchy Game of Fun" to paraphrase Captain Underpants. The sounds are as strong and distinctive as ever. Iori is laughing at you right now, can you hear him? Some of the voice actors are different and it shows. I liked the new voices, although the old ones are better. But the new voice actors are not bad and so trivial that I hardly noticed them at first. Some of the appalling English speech in the game now sounds even more vaguely like the English language. Don't get me wrong, I like the all the fruity voices and they add to the charm of the KOF series. Especially when an older KOF had an announcer that pronounced "Clark" as "Crack" and "Robert" as "Domart" or "Lomart". The voices are rather crisp in '02 and stand out well from the music and sound effects.
My personal voice actor highlights of the series though include Choi's super that sounds like he's saying "Whatcha-know-cookie-jar: and one of the female fighters that says "Beat-the-Bible". These phrases are Japanese speech for anyone who is confused – they just sound like other things to English ears. If you've ever heard Chun-Li's poses on the old Street Fighters then you'll know what I mean.
The graphics are outstanding in their field, that is the field of ten-year-old 16 bit style graphics. You may be forgiven for thinking you are looking at a Super Nintendo game. Some folks would even say the graphics are ugly, useless and should have been replaced / updated several years ago. Those people are wrong and when the second renaissance of 2-D games comes I will be standing near them with a camera. To take pictures of their shocked and bemused faces helplessly watching as their precious 3-D games fade into obscurity. Seriously though I'd really like to see a KOF game with graphics of the same / better quality than Guilty Gear.
Don't ask me why but the alternate colours for the characters are ugly as sin. Usually the colour schemes are pretty good, but most of the colours had me frustrated so much I kept quitting the game until I found something that was less of an eye sore. I think the "create your own colour scheme" should be standard by now. It's been in other SNK games.
 | | There's a "hot coffee" cheat for sheep shaggers |
The backgrounds are a mixed bag. Some backgrounds look pretty swank with Capcom vs. SNK inspired pseudo 3-D backgrounds. At the very least they are interesting to look at. The one that in particular is plain ugly though features sheep that look like somebody got their five year old kid to draw - and then scan onto the computer. Then pasted the letters K, O, and F onto three sheep. To be blunt it looks shit and is probably the worst looking background ever in the whole game series.
Thankfully an art gallery has been included and contains some stunning pieces of original artwork. They can all be zoomed in on too, why this isn't so in more artwork galleries I don't know. If you're going to include beautiful art in an extra menu then allow us to zoom in and actually see it. So thanks to SNK for nice zoom-in-able art galleries. Top stuff.
You may get the idea that I don't like this game with all the criticisms I've made. However, regardless of its drawbacks KOF 02 plays superbly and is more fun than you can shake a stick at. Like an old war hero it's loud, out-dated, obnoxious and it refuses to die. If you've got the patients to play it, get into it. For fans of the series, what the hell are you wasting time reading this for when you could be playing the game right NOW, shame on you.
In other countries KOF 2002 and 2003 were released together on a single PS2 disc. The same was done in Australia for KOF 2000 and 2001 for around $50. It's quite bizarre then than 2002 should get a single disc release followed by 2003 in a few months time. Even more confusing is that it's at a budget price already so it's not like anybody's making big dollars from separating the two games. Even stranger is that the release of 2003 has been pushed back several months with no explanation at all; even the retailer I talked to was baffled.
Don't you just love how Australian gamers get such special treatment with game releases? I'm looking in your direction Capcom, with your mysteriously absent PS2 version of Street Fighter Three. The US got it, but here only on Xbox.
Personally I'm grateful that 2002 and 2003 are being released at all, good fighting games are few and far between these days. Don't forget, 2002 sells for Australian $40 so it's quite the bargain even though missing the second game. It runs at 50 Hertz PAL or 60 Hertz NTSC. I mention this because playing at 50 Hertz is like playing the game in slow motion and basically ruins the whole game. So if your TV supports NTSC signal as most modern stereo sound TV's do (it will tell you if it does when you load the game) then KOF will run at normal speed, same as the arcade versions.
In summary, there is a massive selection of flamboyant characters ranging over the whole series available. Unfortunately load times between rounds are back
- there's no excuse for that - the strikers are gone (woo-hoo!), the gameplay is brilliant, music is rubbish, backgrounds mediocre (some are nice), and it's hell fun to play for those who know how.
by: Australian Ninja
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