Mini-Gaming #006 - King of Fighters '98 (NeoGeo)

Sigh, I suppose it’s time to get into the fighters…

Let’s get one thing out of the way: I have only had a passing interest in fighting games and am pretty terrible at them. They always came across to me as one-note and interchangeable. That’s not to say I’ve never had a good time with one though, as back in my main Dreamcast and NeoGeo Pocket Color era I gave the games in the Capcom vs SNK series a run for their money. But other series like Tekken, Virtua Fighter, even Street Fighter I let pass me by. But if I’m to do Mini-Gaming justice, the fighting games will have to be played, and the NeoGeo is gorged with them. I bounced around on which fighter to play first and settled on SNK’s flagship King of Fighters series, which is currently up to its 15th entry and 10 of which released on NeoGeo hardware. KOF provided much of the DNA that makes up the Capcom vs SNK games, and of the entries included on the mini console, ’98 is considered a fan favorite. 

By the mid-90s, 1v1 fighters dominated the dwindling arcade scene, and were the best bandage they could find against their mortal wound. SNK had released several fighting series by this time and found their hardware paired as well with fighters as gin and tonic. So it was inevitable that a crossover game be developed that brought all of their fragmented series together into one… wait for it… king of fighters. Predating Super Smash Bros by several years, King of Fighters quickly evolved into a juggernaut that overshadowed SNK’s arcade output in its later years, with the series’ annual entries often being one the company’s only releases. It became a hit in Japan and all across the western hemisphere, performing particularly well in Latin America due to socioeconomic factors. Although I’m happy for KOF’s success as a whole, its reputation as a money printer vaporized the NeoGeo’s game diversity. Especially for a platform as versatile and timeless as the NeoGeo, the fact that most of its library was stunted by this series is really disappointing. If you look at game release lists, there’s a clear divide before and after King of Fighters ’94—outside of the Metal Slugs and third-party puzzle games there’s not a lot for non-fighters to enjoy in the NeoGeo’s second half.

Similar to King of the Monsters a few weeks ago, I begrudgingly fired up ’98 as well as a few of the other ones over a few play sessions, expecting to be underwhelmed and frankly bored. But once again, through whatever combination of maturity, nostalgia and open-mindedness, I think I’ve found a new (old) series to be captivated by. Tough as nails for an old newcomer, but what a fun line of games this is!!

King of Fighters boasts an impressive amount of lore for an arcade series, though very little of it exists in-game. SNK really leveraged other media to tell its stories as for why all these cliques of characters came together. Music, anime, manga all came together decades ago in a way that would make the cinematic universes of today blush. Even more impressive is KOF’s consistent annual game output: even through SNK’s worst years a new game came out every year for a straight decade, from 1994 to 2003. Today, annual series like Call of Duty rely on rotating developer teams for this kind of schedule, but SNK did it all on their own.

King of Fighters games can be grouped together by their storylines. KOF ’95, ’96, and ’97 shared a story arc, which led to KOF ’98 being a celebratory ‘dream match’ entry. Story is cast aside and every character ever offered is available to play. This openness paired with tuned-up gameplay that comes from four years of experience made ’98 the king of kings. Personally, at least as of now, I know next to nothing about the lore, so a free-for-all game feels like a fine starting point.

Speaking of the gameplay, this might be where I got my biggest surprise. King of Fighters’ annual games are not roster updates with a samey feel. I wholly admit from the outside looking in, I was annoyed so many KOF games filled up the mini’s game list, ‘when you’ve played one you’ve played them all,’ right? But each game really is unique. Yes they’re the same at their core but specials are handled different, movesets are tweaked, new mechanics are added and removed, and presentations are robustly changed with each year. Playing through each KOF entry shows a progression that’s oddly intimate; you can really see how the developers thought, assessed, and moved through the series. You not just play through their design choices, you feel them. What may seem like an experimental addition one year may be removed, or expanded upon the next year. Given this was SNK’s main baby toward the end, being a part of a niche company’s niche output in a niche genre must have really felt special at the time. By 2003 they were making this game series, on ancient hardware that very few owned, for you.

Anyway yeah that’s great, but how did my fledgling game sessions go? Well first off, and this goes for every fighter I’m sure, I’m proudly playing on the easiest difficulties. These pose more than enough challenge for me, and I’ll never be competition ready. For a genre I’ll never be great at that’s totally fine. There’s literal dozens of characters to choose from, especially in this dream match game, each with their own full movesets to learn. Granted some do play similarly to others, and there really are only so many stick/button combinations to make. Again if this $250 home cartridge was understandably one of the only games you owned, you could easily get your money’s worth trying to master each character, up the difficulty scales, and eventually transition to the cabinet at your arcade/pizzeria and be ‘that guy.’ Cue the nerdy fame and glory. (‘I heard he even has that memory card and shows off the final boss…’ ‘I heard he actually has the home version, what is it like a thousand bucks…?’ ‘Jeez who would even buy that…’)

When I played the Capcom vs SNK games I found I stuck with the SNK characters more. So to finally play the games of their origin is exciting, and I’m sure I’m being total amateur hour here but my team mostly consisted of Iori, Kyo, and Mai, the characters from my past. King of Fighters matches always consist of 1vs1 matches of 3vs3 teams, which is a great way to see and play against the games’ huge rosters. It would be a shame to leave all the other characters on the table, so in future sessions and with other games I’ll try to diversify my teams. But it’s not so easy: KOF does not reward the button masher. To really get anywhere in the game, even on beginner difficulty, you gotta learn and commit the combos. Characters have basic moves as well as special moves, and super special/desperation moves on top of that. 

After getting nowhere just winging the controls, I pulled up movesets and spent an ordinate amount of time actually practicing the motions. They’re deceptively hard to pull off consistently, but this goes for any fighting game. I can think I’m doing the exact input it’s asking for, only for it to register every 10th time. It’s 100% a personal skill issue, and why fighters never clicked with me. But practice really does make perfect. Now I feel like I can get them to work every 5th time! By the end of this I might only get to every 3rd time, but I’m already at more than I expected of myself. And what a good call ordering that microswitched 8BitDo controller was!

King of Fighters ’98 may be the first KOF I cleared but I can’t wait to see which one becomes my favorite. If I have any complaint, I think the ring announcer comes off a little shrill, but that is nitpicking. It’ll be interesting to see how the other fighting series feel compared to this one. I dunno, the NeoGeo Mini may make a fighting fan out of me yet!