When it comes to shonen manga, anime and games, there are few with as much knowledge and love as the Shonen Otaku. Join me as we look at all different varieties of action-packed media. Mostly games.
In the real world, 1997 was the year of Princess Diana’s
death and the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong from the U.K. to China, resulting in Bruce Lee’s
relative Chin wiping out all 1.2 billion of the incoming Chinese immigrants.
In gaming, 1997 was cementing the dominance of home consoles
and PCs in gaming. With polygons and
storage space further evolving, we got games like Diablo, The Curse of Monkey
Island, Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy 7, one of the worst games I’ve ever
played, but would become synonymous with the Playstation because I guess
standards were that low. SNK
translations may be bad, but holy shit Final Fantasy 7’s is even worse. IT WAS THE MOST EXPENSIVE GAME MADE AT THE
TIME?!
Anyway, Capcom and SNK apparently figured they had to up
their game with brand new arcade hardware, both of which… Could’ve gone better.
Capcom came out with the CPS3 system, an arcade board that
would allow for even more sprites and higher capacity memory. It was a super powerful system that could
outclass the Neogeo’s ever-increasing cartridge sizes. It came out at the tail end of 1996 with Red
Earth, but of course what they really needed to sell people on this thing was a
new Street Fighter, leading to one of the most fascinating disasters of the era.
SNK made the Hyper Neogeo 64, a 3D system to try and
replicate the success other companies were having with this new dimension of
play. From what I understand it was only
marginally more powerful than the Nintendo 64.
Both of these new systems had almost no games for them. The CPS3 only had 6 games made for
it (half of which are updated re-releases) and the Hyper Neogeo 64 only had
7. Both their miniscule libraries were also difficult to port to home systems. In
fact, only one Hyper Neogeo 64 game has ever seen any re-release and it’s rare,
so I won’t be able to play any of them.
Regardless of the quality of the games, the fact is that
neither company got a lot of mileage out of their new hardware and they made
safer bets continuing to make games for their existing hardware. Which company came out looking the best as a
result will now be put to the test.
There’s an interesting story behind this article. I used to be a big reader of Nintendo Power,
and many of their writers are big inspirations to me, so of course, once I made
a Twitter account, I started following them on Twitter. It turns out that Cody Martin, one of NP’s
writers and interns, is now working for a PR company that has done work for
SNK, and since they had some spare review codes for iOS version of The King
of Fighters ’97, he gave me one. I appreciate
it Cody.
Wow. My first review
copy. So this is what it feels
like. Yes it's not much, but being my first ever, I feel it’s
my responsibility to write about it, even if there isn’t that much to say now.
The question when looking over this iOS port isn’t
whether or not The King of Fighters ’97 is a good game or not. I already went over that in my King ofFighters retrospective. It’s a solid
entry in the franchise and worth playing for its great storyline-closing finale
with three different boss fights, one of which has two variations. It also has a strong character count,
including all but one of the bosses (which are all unlocked from the start in
the iPhone version).
The question here is whether or not it made the transition
to the iOS properly. As much as I'd like to say otherwise, the only answer I can give is an unsure “maybe.”
Presentation-wise, there isn’t a problem. Maybe it’s because I played on a smaller
screen, but the excellent pixel art looks better than ever thanks to some video
filtering (which can be turned on or off) and HD display. The music too, despite being on little iPhone
speakers, sound perfect as well, although the option for using the arranged tracks
would have been appreciated.
The controls are the major deciding factor here, and,
predictably, it plays essentially the same way as King of Fighters i. Everything is done with a joystick and
buttons on the touch screen, with the pause button being under the timer.
In addition to the normal punch and kick buttons, the iOS version of ’97 gives the option of a dodge button, a knockdown attack
button (both also done in the Orochi Saga collection), and a special
button. The special button is for the
newbies. Like other simplified controls
seen in games like Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, the special button allows special
attacks to be executed by simply pressing it while the control stick is in a
certain direction, and by holding it down, characters can use their super
special move.
Notice that I referred to
the super special move singularly.
One of the biggest downsides to this port is that
every character has only one super special move, as opposed to the original
where everyone has at least two. A few regular special moves were cut as well. I don’t
understand why this was done. They could
have easily had each character be able to use one super special with the
simplified controls while the advanced players could use their quarter and half
circles to use the other ones. At the very least they could have let players choose which super special move to take in the battle. I'm not all that big a fan of Kyo's Serpent Wave Slash.
My other big issue is the controls, but the
reason my previously-mentioned answer is only a “maybe” is because I feel that may not be a problem
for others. All the touch
screen controls can be moved and adjusted in size, but even at the biggest
sizes my fingers were too fat to be pressing those tiny buttons
accurately. The joystick gave me trouble
too. My hand kept slipping off its
boundaries, which forced me to move my thumb in wider arcs that weren’t fast
enough to keep up with the combat.
"Ippen shindekoi!"
As I stated though, I think that may not be an issue for
others. I played this version of
King of Fighters ’97 on my sister’s iPhone, which means I was not only not an
iPhone gamer, but I was playing on a tiny screen, so my thumb took up a fourth
of it. Maybe the game works a lot better
on a bigger screen like an iPad, maybe the control stick would work better with
those joysticks you put on your screen you can buy at electronic stores, and
maybe regular iPhone players can use the touch screen controls better than I
can.
Either way, with the cut super moves in this version, the
other versions of the game you can get are objectively superior unless you
really want to get into the online multiplayer (with social media
compatibility, natch). If you want your
King of Fighters on the go and you loved KOFi 2012 or play on your iOS regularly,
this port should give you a fair amount of enjoyment on those long trips (it is King of Fighters, after all), but if
you already have the game on the Orochi Saga collection or Virtual Console, you
aren’t missing much.
I’m not going to give this one a review score simply because
I feel it’s a bit too far out of my comfort zone, but I hope this review
informs readers enough to make their own decision on it.
Now will you please let us download KOF 2000-2003 somewhere SNK?
With only a year between releases, following up on the major
turning point that was KOF 96 with another overhaul was pretty much
impossible. So, as one would expect, SNK
simply made the sequel much like its predecessor, but with its share of additions
and omissions. In some ways, The King of Fighters 97 is an even more solid game.
The King of Fighters series has never been anything short of
epic shonen action since KOF 96. Thanks
to its colorful character designs, soundtrack, and dynamic backgrounds, every
fight is a memorable one, and that goes doubly so for the climax of each game
(excluding 12). You could choose the closing
fights of almost any King of Fighters game, and it would count as an epic
gaming moment, but I’m only sharing my favorite: the climax to King of Fighters
97, one of the most epic of King of Fighters finales. Not that it's major for a fighting game, but.... spoilers.
The beginning of the end begins at the end. You’ve beaten all the challengers and have
been declared the King of Fighters.
For some reason I always imagined a buck-toothed Asian stereotype saying this. Does that make me evil?
However, Iori (who is now spectating after killing his
teammates last year) starts feeling strange.
His half-orochi blood is being stirred by some nearby force, and he
can’t control it, so he outright assaults the champion team in a wild rage.
That is unless you have Iori in your team, in which case
it’s team Ikari’s Leona (the other half-blood) who goes crazy.
The fight that follows is the first part of KOF 97’s endgame. Both Orochi Iori and Orochi Leona are pretty
much the same fighters as their normal, less-crazy counterparts, only hunched
over and much faster. That speed puts
you on the edge and requires you to up your fighting tempo, creating a hyped-up
high-speed brawl that will probably take at least 2 of your teammates to win.
Someone can probably come up with a better caption than me for this picture.
Making it more epic is the background and music. The background is a red filter over the
previous stage with time standing still, and the music is a guitar-heavy,
fast-paced song that encompasses the feeling of danger, rage, and conflict all
at the same time.
After rightfully defending yourself, the source of Iori and
Leona’s unrest are revealed to be the New Faces team, who have been using the
fighting energy produced by the King of Fighters tournament (it’s kind of like
Yu-Gi-Oh 5D’s ener-D) to finish what Goenitz started in the last game and
revive the world-destroying entity Orochi.
However, they need a little more power, and fight you to get it.
Now, since fighting gives Orochi his power, you’d think you
should just run and not fight….. You’d
be extremely boring.
So you fight the new Orochi team in probably the most epic
(pardon my overuse of the word) battle in the King of Fighters series. There are a large number of reasons its so
epic.
First, it’s unexpected.
Previously, the New Faces team was dance battlers on par with most of the
other characters in the game in terms of strength. Suddenly, they’re all using devastating
elemental powers. The fight reaches all
new extremities for the series, with firey explosions, lightning balls, and
hand blasts somehow sucked out of the earth.
They’re not so harmless now.
Their victory poses show off their revealed powers too. Chris holds out one of his flames, Shermie
raises her hand and catches a bolt of lightning, and Yashiro hunches over and
shakes the earth like a Dragon Ball Z character. They’re certainly skilled in the art of
intimidation.
It’s worth mentioning this new team is comprised of evil
counterparts of the main characters, the Japan team. Chris, like Kyo, is fast and uses fire. Shermie, like Benimaru, is tall, thin, and
uses lightning. Yashiro, like Goro, is
bulky and uses grappling moves and earth.
They also have the honor of being the only team of bosses in the series (unless you count the boss team in the
previous game, but they didn’t get an introduction).
The explosive fighting all takes place on one of the best
stages in the game: the Orochi altar. It
starts out as a simple radial pattern with a big purple fire in the middle of
it, but once Shermie comes up to fight, the mountains in the background become
covered in clouds, and as the fight goes on, the pillars are demolished by
bolts of lightning, emphasizing the power at hand. But the destruction comes to a new high when
Yashiro comes up. The altar starts
shaking under the fighters’ feet, the hole in the middle becomes filled with
bubbling lava, and the mountains in the background get their own lava flow. It’s a good thing you fight on a 2D plane,
because it’d be easy for Yashiro to throw you in the lava pit if he could.
At last, to top off this battle... The icing on the cake… The music: Rhythmic
Hallucination. A simple, catchy tune
with heavy beats to, once again, emphasize the Orochi team’s power. It seems to be a combination of a chant and
rock ballad, which, considering the Orochi team members are both worshippers
and a rock band, so it’s a perfect fit.
After sustaining god knows how many third degree burns and shattered
bones, the Orochi team reveals that the fight gave their god the energy he
needs, and Orochi uses Chris as a vessel to be reborn and grow a few feet
taller. The final battle of the Orochi
saga begins, as your team takes on an otherworldly entity!
He doesn't exactly live up to his god status when a bunch of martial artists can beat him.
Sadly, the fight with Orochi isn’t as impactful as the last
2, nor is it as difficult. What makes
Orochi a challenge is his ultra-powerful projectiles and super moves. He’s not a great hand-to-hand fighter, though
he did somehow learn Rugal’s genocide cutter.
By far the worst attack he has is one move in which he calls some kind
of holy force from the sky to obliterate your entire life bar if you’re not
guard-
