Developer: Rutubo Games Publisher: SNK Release: 03/28/96 Genre: Fighting
At its core the King of Fighters is a simple concept. A three vs. three style tournament is something that has been done before even on the NES. However taking advantage of a shared universe to create an all-star cast of your best characters is something most had only dreamed of. Capcom sort of did this with Street Fighter and Final Fight. But SNK did it first with the King of Fighters ’94 which would inspire many other titles like Smash Bros. Where the first game was a solid introduction to the premise King of Fighters ’95 is where it feels “complete”. For the 32-bit platforms the Saturn version is the best of the lot and almost perfect.
The King of Fighters ’95 is the start of the Orochi saga. Rugal Berenstein, organizer of the original tournament apparently survived the destruction of his ship the Black Noah. He sends out invitations for a new tournament with almost everyone returning including a few new faces. Both the Saturn and PlayStation received ports of King of Fighters ’95. But Sony Computer Entertainment of America would be the one to secure the exclusive rights to this and Samurai Shodown III in the US, leaving American Saturn owners in the dark. While valiant in terms of feeding their market it also means they did rob us of the superior conversion. SNK did a bang up job with this one and it is great.
At its release the King of Fighters ’94 had one of the largest fighting game rosters with 24 characters. Pulling from some of their most popular series (Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Psycho Soldier, and Ikari Warriors) the cast was large and varied. Everyone returns with the exception of the sucky Sports Squad. Taking their place is the rivals team composed of Billy Kane, Eiji Kisaragi from Art of Fighting 2, and one of the coolest fighting game characters of all time, Iori Yagami. The Kyo and Iori rivalry is the stuff of legend and it begins here.
With such a large roster all of the bases are covered in terms of fighting styles. All of the returning characters such as Terry Bogard, Joe Higashi, and the Art of Fighting crew play identically to their respective series. Meanwhile the newer combatants fall into familiar niches. The King of Fighters has many subtle elements that distinguish it from Street Fighter such as the evasive dodging and manually charging your super meter outside of receiving damage and guard cancels. SNK relax the rigid team structure with the addition of team edit allowing you to create your own squad. This was the most glaring omission from the first game and the most requested feature. The freedom to mix and match to create custom teams allows gamers to settle on a group composition to their liking without tolerating one or two characters they have no affinity for.
The general mechanics are largely the same and the only new addition is desperation moves that become available when you have 25% health or less or when the power gauge is full. If you can execute the ridiculous button combination to pull them off and it connects you will likely win the match. That is because the damage ratio is out of control in this game. A simple three-hit combo can slice off 60% of your opponent’s life! With a full power meter it gets even worse. This makes matches lightning fast and sometimes unfair. But I suppose the three character system balances it out.
For its Saturn debut SNK bundled the game with a ROM cartridge containing all of the character animation. This means every frame is present and that load times are fast at a second or two between rounds. This is a literal god send next to the 10-20 seconds of the PlayStation and Neo Geo CD versions. The later Neo Geo games were still too much for the Sega and Sony platforms so this was a novel approach. The only area the game suffers is the lower quality of its sound effects. But that is a minor quibble in my opinion. The arranged soundtrack from the Neo Geo CD release with its smooth jazz is sadly missing which sucks as it is one of my fighting game soundtracks of all time and fantastic. If this game had that and a practice mode it would be nearly perfect.
In Closing
For its time King of Fighters ’95 was the best port money could buy outside of the Neo Geo original. Even with arcade perfect conversions on modern platforms it still holds its own. It looks great, plays like a dream, and makes for a great addition to any Saturn library. It is a damn shame this one missed the US, again Japan and Europe got the goods we did not.
