At the start of each battle, players choose three of their selected characters to fight with the fourth serving as a "Striker" who can be summoned at any time during the match. The King of Fighters '99 shook up the format by upping the number of characters per team to four. By comparison, the KOF style of choosing three fighters but only using one at a time was less fresh.
Even other Neo Geo games like Kizuna Encounter featured swappable fighters. Capcom's VS-series of Marvel fighting games were 2-on-2 contests where switching fighters mid-match was an essential mechanic. But by 1999, there were a lot more team-based fighting games on the market.
When The King of Fighters debuted in 1994 it was groundbreaking for players to choose a squad of characters instead of just one. Which means on Septemexactly one year after KOF '98 - SNK released The King of Fighters '99 on the Neo Geo and in doing so tried to upend the entire series.Ī lot can change in five years, especially in the world of video games. The show must go on and it must be ready in the next 12 months. But for KOF, an annual franchise at the time, that was not an option.
For some video game franchises, achieving that level of greatness means years of iterative special tweaked editions and possible spinoff series before eventually making a proper sequel (I say as I glance at Street Fighter II). As previously established here on Retronauts dot com, The King of Fighters '98 is my favorite video game of all time, a culmination of universe-building across multiple independent creations that resulted in a massive collection of interconnected characters who hang out together and also punch each other's lights out.
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