King of Fighters ’95 and Tekken

 32 Bits is a series where I revisit the most popular games of the recent past; from the launch of the original Playstation to the last days of the Xbox 360. Why?

• To chart the evolution of games.

• To destroy people’s nostalgic feelings by playing the “classics” they all know…alongside the detritus everyone played at the time, but no one remembers.

• To rediscover games unjustly forgotten by history.

The time is August 1996: eight months into the Playstation’s first full year. The Nintendo 64 is a month away; while Sega’s Saturn system is fading fast.

A full list of 32 Bits articles from the current season (1996) can be found here; further explanations of the “greatest hits” series and what games I’ll include can be found here.

Playstation Review #38:

KING OF FIGHTERS ’95

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Best-Seller in	Also On
SNK	SCEA	8/31/96 (North America) 6/28/96 (Japan) 7/1997 (Europe)	Japan (the Best)	Arcades Sega Saturn Neo Geo

SNK occupies a niche in gaming that was honestly unknown to me. A Japanese arcade game developer, they also created the Neo Geo console. Launching in 1990, the Neo Geo promised arcade perfect ports thanks to its basis in the Neo Geo arcade hardware. Of course, this accuracy came at a cost: the Neo Geo retailed at over $600 – but the niche audience it was pitched at were willing to pay.

My past experience with SNK is limited to scattered memories of playing their 2D weapon fighter, Samurai Shodown. I had vaguely heard of King of Fighters, a 2D fighter bringing together characters from different games of theirs – a fact completely lost on me when I started playing. New King of Fighters games were released yearly until 2003, and the latest is 2010’s King of Fighters XIII for PS3 and Xbox 360.

A 2D fighter, the key gimmick to King of Fighters are the team battles. The player assembles a team of three (while King of Fighters ‘94 made you choose from several pre-made teams, ‘95 allows the player to develop their own team from the whole slate of characters). Before each fight they decide which character goes first and second. Defeating one fighter sends out the next. Winning a round restores a small amount of health, but damage carries over from round to round. To win the player must defeat all three fighters on the other team.

Characters hail from SNK fighting games Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury and the developer’s non-fighting arcade games Psycho Soldier and Ikari Warriors. Others are original. The 2D sprites are entirely competent, though hampered by their traditional sprite style and the poor 2D animation of the Playstation. The characters are fairly generic, however, with the requisite martial artist types, national stereotypes and pop-culture knock-offs. The backgrounds are among the better 2D fighting game arenas I’ve seen and the game makes good use of the foreground.

Ironically, American gamers could not find this game on SNK’s own console. The American release was Sony-exclusive, confining the Saturn and Neo Geo versions to Japan. Unfortunately, the Playstation often had trouble with 2D games: I saw claims that animation frames are missing, but more glaring are the constant load times. Sony didn’t bring over anymore games in the series, and the only other King of Fighters game to make it to the Playstation in the US was King of Fighters ’99 – published by Agetec in 2001, in the wave of belated releases and shovelware after the debut of the Playstation 2. The same game’s Dreamcast version was released at the start of that system’s life in 1999 – and the international Playstation release lagged so far behind that the Dreamcast was nearly dead when it arrived.

A unique 2D fighting game and one of the better ones of its year, King of Fighters ‘95 may seem generic at first but is an admirable deviation from the Street Fighter norm at the tail-end of the 90s fighting game craze.

notes

• My research into this game’s cast was halted when I saw that the Wikipedia page for one (grotesque, overt fanservice) character contained no less than twenty-eight citations discussing her breasts. Not only are there people compiling lists of “the best side-boobs in gaming”, these articles’s readers collect their rankings. Ew, just…ew.

Playstation Review #39:

TEKKEN 2

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Best-Seller in	Also On
Namco	Namco	8/25/96 (North America) 3/29/96 (Japan) 10/1996 (Europe)	North America (Greatest Hits) Japan (the Best) Europe (Platinum)	Arcades

PREVIOUSLY: Last season I played the original Tekken. I praised its character design and fluid fighting, contrasting it with Battle Arena Toshinden, a weak game over-praised in its day.

Not a radical reinvention of Tekken so much as a gradual improvement, Tekken 2’s not as groundbreaking as the original. Neither is it on the level of Tekken 3, the series’ finest hour. But a retool of a great game…is still a great game.

All characters from Tekken return in its sequel, though the towering Jack has been replaced by the more mechanical Jack-2. Joining them are newcomers Jun and Lei. All sub-bosses are unlockable, from sumo wrestler Ganryu to boxing kangaroo Roger. The new arrivals are capable but not as distinctive as the original cast or the newcomers in its successor.

Tekken 2 retains the fluid fighting of the original. Oddly the character models in Tekken 2 are more rough and polygonal than the originals, a point of some scorn at the time. The arenas, which mix an endless 3D plane with still 2D backgrounds, are generic.

One of the best fighting games of its year, Tekken 2 doesn’t change much. Neither did Battle Arena Toshinden 2, then Tekken’s fierce rival. The difference is Toshinden needed fixing and Tekken didn’t. Toshinden 3 was a marked improvement over its predecessor, but no one cared. The boilerplate sequel destroyed their faith in the series. But Tekken was strong enough that even a minute improvement could hold people’s attention – and they would be rewarded in 1998 with one of the best fighting games of all time.

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Next Sunday: Nights Into Dreams for the Saturn.