#Kof 97 gameplay series
However, it was one particular entry in the series that really took China by storm The King of Fighters ’97.* Other fighting games are still successful (SFIV is still pretty big in China), but KoF still outshines them all. 1 ’94 was well-received in China upon release, and with each annual installment improving upon the last, KoF got more and more popular. Many players believed the 3 v 3 format to be more exciting than the typical one-on-one combat present in every other fighter at the time. One of the biggest reasons why KoF was able to overtake SF in China was the new team-based gameplay. Deciding to utilize characters from their various properties (Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier) along with creating new characters, SNK published The King of Fighters ‘94 in August of 1994. Games like Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting saw some success but not quite on par with what Capcom had.ġ994 was when that would all change. While Capcom had Street Fighter II, SNK had some smaller titles going for it with some success. For a while Capcom actually had SNK beat in terms of reigning supreme in the Chinese fighting game market. As everyone knows, Street Fighter II took the world by storm when it hit arcades in 1991. A lot of KoF’s popularity in China (and similar countries) can be boiled down to accessibility.Īs for the game itself, China’s love for KoF can be traced all the way back to the earliest days of competitive 1 v 1 fighting games. It didn’t take long for KoF bootlegs to swarm arcades, providing even cheaper alternatives for arcade owners (at the cost of SNK’s profits). The hardware also aged very quickly making it easy to reverse engineer when compared to companies that updated boards more frequently. It saved up a lot of floor space by essentially holding up to six different games in one place while at the same time made ordering new games a breeze since managers wouldn’t need to order entire new cabinets for one game or go through the hassle of swapping out boards. Street Fighter II: Championship Edition retailed for roughly 1300 USD) This made it very attractive to arcade owners. (For a rough comparison, a NEO GEO cab cost around 650 USD upon its introduction while carts were priced between 100 and 300 USD. In addition to coming in a variety of sizes to fit an arcade’s needs, it also had the capability to store up to six different cartridges in it.
But what really made it special though was how flexible the system itself was. The NEO GEO MVS was released in 1990 and at the time it was more powerful than any home console as well as being a formidable arcade machine it its own right. The hardware that KoF was on really contributed to its popularity. If you play fighting games then you have probably heard something along the lines of “Mexicans/Brazilians/Chinese love KoF.” There is actually merit as to why less wealthy nations are known for playing KoF as opposed to other fighting games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat (although these games were still very popular, the KoF proved to be huge among poorer nations).
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