Review : King of Fighters 2000/2001 for Playstation2

It is fitting in a perverse form of symmetry that the first game that I get of 2004 is a Playstation 2 port of a systematic yearly rehash of an old 2d-fighting game that was designed for a 13 year old SNK NeoGeo arcade system. That being said King of Fighters 2000/2001 for Playstation2 double pack is freaking blast for those of us gamers who are still relishing hand drawn 2d graphics and a slow evolution of the 2d fighting system made popular with Street Fighter 2. The gameplay, animation and character design is the tightest in the industry and gives late 90s Capcom games a run for their money.

This is a double pack of the two games for a single price of under forty bucks. That is quite a deal considering I would just end up ordering these games form an import game store. In fact I already have imported the Japanese Sega Dreamcast home port of KOF 2001 but since KOF 2000 is included and there was some graphical improvements to KOF 2001 it was well worth my time. I gave BBQ my Dreamcast copy of KOF 2001 and it was appropriate since he is even more fanatical about 2d fighting games than I.

The KOF games are an ever evolving roster of fighting game character from a plethora of SNK games and it has been updated ever since 1994. KOF delivers the finest 2d martial art action and animation capible on the aging SNK NeoGeo arcade hardware. It was announced today that the game houses that inherited the SNK legacy are moving away from the old hardware and the next batch of KOF, Metal Slug and Samurai Showdown games will be on the much more powerful Sammy Atmoiswave hardware. This is the same machine that powered the Guilty Gear X games so they will still be 2d but very very fluid, high-rez and tight.

The KOF 2000 is graphically a straight port of the arcade game but there are extra Strikers fighters and CD enhanced music. There is a handy on screen move list that can be called up when paused and playing this game with a rumble enabled arcade stick is just plain right. The animation and graphics are phenomenal considering the severe technical restrictions of the 13-year old NeoGeo arcade hardware.

KOF 2001 is a remixed version of the arcade game. The fight intro and fight ending character art have been redone and the background art has been cleaned up to take advance of the limitless color pallet of the PS2. The game looks much better than the arcade and Dreamcast version but it still can not hold a candle to the new 2d-games like Guilty Gear X2. The changes are subtle and the newish backgrounds are not as drastic as the 3d graphics in the two Dreamcast KOF games. The story is still tacky but at least it is in English.

Now there is a bit of mild censorship with the US version but I chalk it up to the fact that the publisher wanted to have a T-Rated game. The damage is that Mai's boobs do not bounce quite as much as they normally do during a fight and the blood is missing. It really is not that bad and I can get over it to enjoy two newish KOF games on my Playstation2.

I am bitter that the US PS2 release of SNK Vs Capcom SVC Chaos was pushed back to September and I will be gladly laying down the 2d law with these two games until then. I hope and pray that we see another double pack with KOF 2002 and KOF 2003 in the US on the Playstation2 and that the Atmoiswave powered KOF 2004 blows the lid of the genre.

I know that I am SNK/Playmore's bitch and I have no problems with that.