The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match Released Early on XBLA

Looking for a fighting game to sink your teeth into over the weekend? Well we've got some good news for you: KOF 2002 UM has been released early on XBLA! The game was originally slated to be released on November 3rd but it is now available for purchase to the tune of 800 MS points.

Now 'cause I'm such a nice guy I took a ton of hi-res screenshots for the game so you can get a better idea of what it looks like. You can view all these images in our image gallery below.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW ALL NEW KOF2002 UM SCREENSHOTS

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Date Set for King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match on Xbox Live Arcade

SNK Playmore has announced that King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match will be available on Xbox Live Arcade on November 3rd!  It will be priced at 800 Microsoft Points. Like their previous games, this one seems exclusive to Xbox 360.

If you want to learn more about the game, check out the full article for new screenshots, a video of the game in action that was released earlier in the year, and a bit of info on the game's features.

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Terry Bogard In Real Life

TheSwitcher put together a video of Terry Bogard in real life, dubbing over scenes of King of Fighters movie with sound clips from the KOF games.  Oddly enough, this somehow makes these scenes much more bareable to watch compared to the original. Check out the full video after the break!

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King of Fighters XIII Intro Trailer

An intro trailer for the King of Fighters XIII has surfaced. It's pretty short, but this game certainly is looking good.

King of Fighters Portable '94 - '98: Chapter of Orochi for PSP Media Extravaganza

King of Fighters fans have even more to be happy about.  The King of Fighters Portable '94 - '98: Chapter of Orochi (whew) is coming to the Sony PSP!  As the game's title suggests, it contains King of Fighters 94, 95, 96, 97, and 98.  It also features a gallery mode and multiplayer. Release date is June 24 in Japan.  We'll bring you more details as we get them.  Below is a trailer for the game as well as some screenshots!

Screenshots:

   

 

KING OF FIGHTERS XIII GAME DESIGN BLOG TRANSLATION

Taking a page out of Capcom's book, SNK Playmore have started a blog for the King of Fighter XIII to give players a look inside the development process of the game. This time around they speak with the director of game design for King of Fighters XIII, Yamamoto about the game play system they are designing for the new installment of the series. And though most of us have seen a lot of the game so far from location test videos and such, Yamamoto mentions there is still more to come. They mention that there is a new game play element that is an "attack that makes use of the unique characteristics of each character".

Big thanks to Varion over at NeoGAF for the translation!

Interviewer: Firstly, could you introduce yourself?

Yamamoto: I’m Yamamoto, the game design director for KOF13. I’m in charge of designing how the game will work. 

Interviewer: Can you give us an outline of the systems in KOF13? 

Yamamoto: Firstly, the new systems ‘Hyperdrive mode’, ‘EX Special Moves’/’EX Super Special Moves’ will be included. ‘Hyperdrive mode’ will be a positioned as a strengthening of ‘KOF-like speediness’, while the EX moves will be a strengthening of the tactical element. These will form the framework of KOF13. Furthermore, systems like throw break and Guard Cancel that weren’t in KOF12 will be revived from previous instalments. In addition there’s also another new system that will likely be KOF13’s biggest draw… but that’s a secret (laughs)

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The King of Fighters XIII Official Website Opens

The King of Fighters XIII official site opened today.  It is a very slick looking (and sounding) site and features the usual stuff like character sections with profiles (of 25 of the apparently 31 characters) and sprite art. 

According to Andraisang, the location test report (the location test which started last week in Japan) lists some interesting stats. The most heavily used characters from the tests were, expectedly, the newly added girls, with Yuri at top with 12%, followed by Mai with 11% and King with 9%. Kyo and Ryo follow with 5%.

Source: Andriasang

Wave of Official King of Fighters XIII Screenshots and Artwork

The first wave of official King of Fighters XIII screenshots and artwork has arrived.  There are 30 new screenshots for the game as well as official artwork for the game's characters. You can view them by visiting the King of Fighters XIII Art and Screenshot Gallery via the links below:

• Character Artwork
• King of Fighters XIII Screenshots for 26 March

Also of interest is a nice official shot of the character select screen.  As noted previously, there are some spots on the character select which are currently blank.

Any King of Fighters fans out there care to guess which characters have yet to be revealed, or have any characters they would love to see on this roster?

NEW KING OF FIGHTERS XIII GAMEPLAY INFO & MOVE LISTS

CYBERFANATIX -- which if you guys don't know by now is a awesome SNK site, seriously these guys are true dedicated fans of KOF -- posted up some new info on the gameplay system for King Of Fighters XIII. You can also check out the move lists in our King of Fighters XIII Gallery for the characters that are announced so far.

KING OF FIGHTERS XIII MOVE LIST IMAGES

Many players will be happy to know that apparently the Critical Counter system will not be present in this installment of the series. Personally, this is great news in that I really tried to enjoy King Of Fighters XII but the Critical Counter system just killed it for me. Playing casually with friends we found over time that we were better off spamming the Counter moves for each character rather than learn any of the finer details of the game and quickly grew tired of the repetitive gameplay. In high level play this may not be the case -- I don't know, I'm not an expert with KOF games -- but for those of us just getting into the King of Fighters XII found it hard to dive deeper into any other elements of the game that may have been lurking under the surface of the game's custom combo system. That said, by removing the Critical Counter system I think KOF series is on the right track.

The KOF series better be on the right track, because I've also heard that the games producer mentioned that if KOFXIII does not succeed, it's over for the series entirely. If true, I find this to be a huge slap in the face to all SNK fans -- how can you release a sub par game and more or less threaten the fans if the next one does not pan out? If KOFXIII turns out to be less than what people are expecting and does bomb, this could be a blessing in disguise in that perhaps another company could pick up the character rights and do the game justice.

Anyhow, enough ranting about a series I'm an absolute scrub at. Here is the gameplay system info from CYBERFANATIX.

EX Mode - Characters can do new “EX” specials and supers by using up their power meter. EX versions of the moves can have various effects ranging from multiple hits, invincibility, hit detection after move hits, and in cases of some projectiles- faster speed, penetration. Most, but not all moves have an EX version.

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King of Fighters XIII Character Select and Screenshots

First up we have a screenshot of the game's character select.  There look to be five blank spots in this picture.  It looks likely that the game will have more characters, with a possibility of having around 30 characters in total. 

Below are screenshots from Japanese website Denki Online.  If you hit the soure link below, you will also find artwork for many of the characters in the game.  It shows some more of the game's new stages. This is a personal relief, as KOFXII was horribly devoid of stages.  I also like how they have somewhat borrowed the BlazBlue color select.  It gives the option to add more color schemes to the game and gives them more freedom to more color choices without being hamstrung by mapping one color choice to a button.

Now please get some good net code. GGPO is right there if you need it. Just a suggestion.

Thanks to Jaguar131 for the tips on the screenshots.

     

   

Source: Denki Online

King of Fighters XIII Gameplay Videos

Here are some videos taken directly from SNK Playmore's King of Fighters XIII Preview Event.  Actually, if you go to samalus' YouTube channel, you can watch a lot of the press event by viewing the videos in descending order.  Here are several short videos for your previewing pleasure. Only seeing one new stage so far though...

Thanks to FStrike from our comments for the tip!

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King of Fighters XIII: Mai, oh Mai!

Some information is coming out of the SNK Playmore King of Fighters XIII Preview event which is happening today at the Belle Salle Hall in Akihabara, Tokyo in Japan. 

The image of the event hall is courtesy of the King of Diary Japanese blog.  As you can see, Mai is a centerpiece of the decor (understatement).

Versuscity.net has also posted more information:

Yuri and King have been confirmed at the press conference and there will be 6 new characters and one new team in total for this iteration of the game. 

Sources: King of Diary, VersusCity

KOF SKY STAGE

So this is slightly off-topic, but I figured some of our readers may have an interest in this. SNK-Playmore has released an overhead shooter based on their King of Fighters series called KOF SKYSTAGE in Japan. In this game you control characters such as Iori, Kyo and Mai, flying through stages as you shoot down enemies using the characters signature attacks. Any of you who have played Ikaruga or Mars Matrix, it's pretty much the same deal.

Anyway, lets be real for a second: what is SNK thinking? I'm sure the game is entertaining, but obviously a game like this takes money and man-power to create and they could be using these same resources to improve their King of Fighters fighting game franchise. That said, perhaps these shooter games generate more revenue over the long run in Japan? Who knows really, but here is a trailer for the game itself, and be sure to check out their official site for more images from the game.

Source: CYBERFANATIX

KING OF FIGHTERS 2002UM FOR XBLA OFFICIAL SITE NOW LIVE

SNK-Playmore's official site for King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match is now live! The site features details on the game, new screen shots and also a video with a short demonstration on how the game will look. Although they mention the graphics have been updated, if you check the video below, you'll see the game wont be blessed the same "HD Filter" treatment that their other upcoming XBLA title, NeoGeo Battle Coliseum is receiving. I assume they are referencing cut scenes and character art rather than the sprites themselves, but there may be aesthetic changes to certain moves and animations -- we'll just have to wait and see!

Another thing worth noting which I found a little odd, is that the site does not mention anything about online play. After searching around, I haven't found any confirmation of online play modes for KOF2002UM at all. In contrast, if you check out thier  "List of Titles"  section and click on NeoGeo Battle Coliseum, Garou: Mark of the Wolves or KOF'98, there is a full section mentioning online play for each game. With this being an XBLA title, and their previous fighting games having online play, I'll just assume online modes are coming and they simply forgot to mention this on the the site itself.

That said, by watching the video below you will see a quick shot of the menu screen and it does have a tab for "Xbox Live". This could be for a number of things such as online rankings or even online player matches but we'll just have to wait for an official word from SNK-Playmore. Of course, if anyone has a link with confirmation of online play, please post up in the comments.

Here are some of the main features of this upcoming title:

• 66 Playable Characters - the most in any SNK title to date.
• Updated graphics, music and backgrounds.
• Changes to game play, including balance tweaks & new moves.
• Spring 2010 Release Date

    

    

Source: CYBERFANATIX 

Update on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 4:13AM by haunts

A quick n' dirty Google translation of a recent Famitsu article seems to mention that the game will indeed have an Online Play mode. The article also contains more screenshots and art from the the game itself.

King of Fighters XIII Info Coming Soon

Versus City has reported that the next issue of Arcadia magazine will have a huge feature on the King of Fighters series to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Neo-Geo.  In the magazine they also mention King of Fighters 13.  They state that the official preview will be on March 25th, at Belle Salle Hall in Akihabara, Japan, starting at 1pm.  The game is reported to run on Taito Type X2 arcade hardware.

Source: Versus City and Dengeki 

King of Fighters XII "Ikari Team" Combo Tutorial

Bulletproof over at Neo Empire has put together another outstanding tutorial video for King of Fighters XII.  This video will demonstrate KOFXII combos with the Ikari team: Ralf, Leona and Clark. You will find combos for beginners and as well as for experts.

Source: Neo Empire

King of Fighters XII first impressions

King of Fighters XII should be widely available in your local Gamestop despite the official July 28th launch date. Is it worth running out and grabbing a copy right this minute? You might want to wait. Read on...

I have been playing the X-Box 360 release of KoFXII since last night and in many ways the game is fantastic. The new sprites are beautiful, especially when in motion. Offline versus matches are really fun. I am still exploring the new additions to the classic gameplay, but so far it's been very rewarding. With the good comes a little bit of bad though. Most of my online matches have been nearly unplayable. What I mean by that is severe input lag--even on the character select screen. I would say that on average there is a ~15 frame lag on during my online matches. To contrast with other fighting games I play online I'm almost always able to find 4 or 5 bar matches in SFIV and in BlazBlue it's rare that I ever encounter any perceptible lag. In regards to the problems people have been experiencing the KoFXII facebook page issued this statement:

"King of Fighters XII: We understand that there have been some concerns raised about performance during online play. A patch for the both platforms is being worked on which should help with those gamers experiencing issues.

While I don't have an exact date for the Xbox 360 version, the PS3 patch should be available by the street date July 28, 2009."

The game doesn't feature much of a story except for a generic newscast type cut scenes that play between the five matches that make up arcade mode. Aside from that all that is left is versus and practice. The focus in KoFXII is obviously the offline and online versus modes and the latter isn't much use right now. Hopefully a patch will come out and I can give this game the review it deserves, but until then it's offline only for me, and unless I have a friend over, there's just not that much to do.

THE GRIND: SOCAL EDITION (SF4 TRAINING & SBO QUALS)

"Hey, you're Haunts right? Welcome to SoCal... Man, I've never been so nervous for a tournament as I am today.." says Mike Ross as I am checking out all the equipment for the SBO Quals live stream.

"Yeah, it should be pretty crazy..." I say casually, not knowing that this will be one of the most intense tournaments of my Street Fighter career.

THE GRIND

Rewind three weeks, I approach MAGUS1234 , NorCal's best C. Viper player, asking him to go to SoCal with me for a week and three days to level up in Street Fighter, possibly check out E3 and gather content for iPlayWinner. Just a few days prior to that we discussed competing in SBO Quals to try to win a free ticket to Japan anyway, so after thinking it over for a week or so, he finally contacts me and says "Yeah man, lets do this, it will be a grind but sometimes you just have to do it."

What is The Grind you ask? Well, like in any RPG game there is always the need to grind it out, have a ton of battles in high level areas to gain EXP points and level up. Whether people realise it or not, this is required in Street Fighter as well if you expect to be a decent player. Except unlike video games, when and where you level up, and the reasoning behind it isn't as simple as rising two digit numbers. Really, you are the main character and all these battles take place at actual locations like Keystone, Denjin Arcade, Arcade Infinity, EVO and all the other random dungeons you may encounter along the way.

This was more or less our thought process for going to SoCal: MAGUS1234 and I felt we needed to seek out other styles to take our game to the next level.

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KING OF FIGHTERS XII FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I finally had a chance to play King of Fighters XII last night and practice up for the big KOF Tournament next weekend in LA so I thought it would be a good idea to post up my initial impressions of the game. Bear with me in that this was the first time I had played a KOF game since like KOF '98..or maybe that one time I played 2002 in the arcade and got stomped by some 14 yr old kid, but anyway, yeah it's been a long time. Also, outside of SNK's website and a few threads on SRK, information on the actual game play system is fairly sparse so I didn't have much of a reference while playing.

Visually, as most of you know the game looks great. Everything from the backgrounds to the characters to the special effects have a ton of detail and it definitely gave me the sense that I was playing GAROU or SF3: 3s due to the fluid animation and speed. The visuals in KOFXII were quite refreshing since I've been playing Street Fighter 4 and BlazBlue so much over the past couple months. BlazBlue and Street Fighter 4 look great of course, but many of the animations in King of Fighters XII are much more fluid than anything else on the market right now.

The game obviously plays differently than CAPCOM and ARC System Works games and it took me a minute to get used to the controls, button layout and combo system. I found doing combos for certain characters (Kyo, Kim, Ryo) was far easier than combos with some other characters (Leona, Elizabeth, Iori) due to their more straight forward move sets. In previous games Iori has always been one of the characters on my team but they changed him so much that I really had no idea where to start with him. Kyo on the other hand, (another character I like to play in KOF series) was far easier to pick up and grasp since his move set is largely the same as previous games. Overall the majority of the cast was fairly easy to pick up and play, especially the grappler characters like Goro.

Probably the most satisfying aspect of King of Fighters XII is the Critical Counter system which is far easier to pick up than I had originally thought. It is essentially a custom combo system that activates when you land a standing Strong Attack (C) on counter hit and have an active Critical Counter meter (which depletes over time - nice touch to keep things somewhat balanced). Once you land the Strong Attack, you will see a large flash and a pause that indicates that its time to well, serve up a massive beat down to your opponent! You can easily link together any attacks you want and finish off with a super. There are a ton of serious combos you can do, linking multiple special moves and what not, but even if you are new to the game you wont have any problem creating your own sick looking combos.

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KING OF FIGHTERS XII TOURNAMENT SLOT GIVE AWAY!

Want to play King of Fighters XII before its available in stores? Here's your chance!

iPlayWinner.com is offering two slots for the invite only 128 man King of Fighters XII tournament being held in Los Angeles, California hosted by Ignition Entertainment and SCEA on May 30th! If chosen, you will go up against the other competitors to win KOF merchandise and even an import only King of Fighters XII arcade cabinet!

Entering is very simple - post up in the comments section your full name, email, state that you live in and what makes you the KING (or Queen!) OF FIGHTERS! We're leaving it pretty wide open so you can submit stories of your most epic win in KOF, a video of your best KOF match - whatever! Just make it interesting!

We are also accepting submissions via email so if you're not comfortable posting your full name online you can email your entries to admin@iplaywinner.com. The deadline for entry is May 21st, 9pm PST and keep in mind you must cover all travelling costs to this event so make sure you have all of that squared away before entering! Good luck!