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Review : King of Fighters 99 for PSOne, DC and GBA
I need to review a game but to be honest I can't just review one game I have to cover all three home ports of the Neo Geo masterpiece The King of Fighters 99.
KOF 99 (What all the cool kids call it) was the last major NeoGeo fighting game to get a wide spread release in the US. Fatal Fury: Mark of Wolves and Last Blade 2 were among the last titles on the Dreamcast and I will always be grateful to Agetec for doing that.
KOF99 had a total of 32 playable characters and a "striker system" that had a fourth fighter jump in to do a special move or two like Marvel VS Capcom. The animation was flawless and wonderfully done. The masters at SNK milked the 12 year old NeoGeo hardware for all that it was worth and they had a true gem in 2d fighting perfection. This isn't the first 2d Fighter out there and it does not have the most RAM or 32 bit color pallet but damn it I love to play this game and it has tons of great characters, with polished animation, music and most importantly game play. The art style was more grown up and realistic than previous cartoony 2d fighting games on the NeoGeo. To put it in other words KOF99 is the Anti Waku Waku 7. Until I get my copy of KOF 2001 this is one of the best 2d fighters i have ever played and I will say that it is the finest game ever made by the late great SNK.
King of Fighters 99 PS One
The Playstation One port of KOF 99 is actually my favorite version of a the game. Agetec has this in their bargain game section and you can pick it up for ten bucks new all over the US. But just because there is a low price tag doesn't mean that it isn't quality. It is a close to near perfect port of the Arcade game but with extra features. It has dual shock rumble support and plays very well on the PS controller. There is some load time but if you play it on the PS2 with PSOne disk access speed turned to fast the load time goes away and it becomes damn close to the arcade. Most of the detail in the background and animations are there and this is a testament to the abilities of the programmers that they were able to cram it all into the two megs of ram in the PSOne. Is also has a save feature so you don't have to start from scratch every time, a voice gallery, unlockable endings and a huge gallery of concept, production and fan art. SNK used the space on the CD to make a "Special Edition of KOF 99" if you will. If you see this game do not stop to pick it up. It is one of the best 2d games ever and it can be yours for the price of two fast food meals.
The King of Fighters Evolution for Dreamcast
The Dreamcast version called King of Fighters Evolution is graphicly superior to the PSOne version but it is not without it's own flaws. It was also released in the US by Agetec and it featured the more ram and faster disk access time of the Dreamcast. The backgrounds are a blend of the regular 2d backgrounds but they were integrated into an eye candy 3d matte painting. This actually makes the 2d charectors look slightly crappy even though they are a 100% accurate port of the arcade game. I guess it is just that if they didn't mess with the backgrounds the sprites would look great. It is sort of like if the art style from Capcom VS SNK2 were applied to KOF99. This version had none of the extra stuff that the PSOne port had but it did have some extra Strikers. SNK took some of the people that were going to be introduced in KOF2000 and added then them as extra Strikers. Also what sucks about this version is that it doen't have VGA monitor support so I have to run it on the Dreamcast attached to my TV and not my Dreamcast attached to my PC monitor. Yes I have a back up Dreamcast in case one breaks in the future. The Dreamcast version is worth it if you happen to find a good deal on it but it is not that much better than the PSOne game.
King of Fighters EX: NeoBlood for Gameboy Advance
And that finally brings us to the final version of the game. King of Fighters EX Neo Blood for Gameboy Advance. I picked this game up new for fifteen bucks and I was pleasantly surprised. It did not have all the people in King of Fighters 99 and some are only selectable as strikers, The animation is missing some frames from the idle poses and the background animations were taken out for static backgrounds but these are probably due to the almost pathetic amount of ram in the Gameboy Advance. There is a new girl on the Kyo team, an Asian teenage girl named Moe.
Sure it is not exactly perfect but it reminded me of the Snes version of Samurai Showdown and Fatal Fury. The color pallet is not exactly suited to the GBA screen due to it's darker colors but it is still playable and a hell of a lot of fun to play. The AI is weak and the game is super easy to beat even on the hardest level but it is still a damn fine fighting game for GBA. There is a sequel out in Japan that is a new game rather than a rehash of a NeoGeo game. I know it sounds like I am complaining about it but I really like playing it and it is all the great game play of KOF99 but in a portable bit size chunk.
There are three games that have yet to be released in the US, KOF2000, KOF01 and KOF02. It is weird to have SNK out of business but the NeoGeo legacy in good hands of Playmore. I am counting down the days until my copy of KOF2001 DC shows up
In summery King of Fighters 99 kicks ass all who read this should play it.
Jake at February 24, 2003 
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Comments
ai essta muito bo mais poderia botar o the king of fighters 2002 e 2003
Posted by: fabricio at March 26, 2006 2:25 PM
