""I'd like to know...what's all the fuss about you?" - Terry Bogard"

Welcome to another year of King of Fighters mayhem! With the total destruction of Southtown, it seems like there wouldn’t be another tournament for a while. Well, that is until another own known sponsor stepped in and built a freakin’ island for the fighters! With the official absence of SNK, Eolith picked up the rights to make this awesome game. How will they fair compared to past competitions? Let’s find out! Without further a due, welcome to the King of Fighter ’01!

Well, well, well, it appears that NEST finally begins to show their true face by entering their own destructive team to compete in this year’s tournament. In addition to the chilled out Kula and longhaired Foxy introduced last year, we have the totally insane (maybe more than Iori!) K9999 and the very beautiful women fighter, Angel!

Other notable changes to the teams are the triumphant reunion of the Japan team (Kyo, Benimaru, and Goro) with the addition of the lovable Shingo! Believe it or not, Iori has also teamed up with some people! Too bad they happen to be the new people (Vanessa, Seth, and Ramon). How long will it take for Iori to kill or at least injure them like his last teammates? The Art of Fighters team went back to normal with Ryo, Yuri, Tokuma, and Robert. This gives King some time to team up with the Female Fighters along with Mai, Hinako, and returning fighter, Xiang Fei. Whip is going to help out K’ and Maxima along with Lin (who happens to tag along to win). With one soldier missing the Ikira Warrior’s Commander, Heidern, decides to take her place and compete after 3 long years. Finally, Jhun from the Korean team broke his arm after getting ran over, so the really hyper May Lee took his place. Now the stage is set!

Once again, the power gauge has changed again. It now depends on how many strikers you have on the bench. With 1 fighter and 3 strikers, the gauge is really small and is able to hold up to four power stocks. Now if all four people are fighting, there is going to be only one long power bar with the capability to hold just one power stock! Now with every striker attack you use, one power stock is taken away. Not bad if you now how to manage them properly.

Now we get to the first complaint of the game. Ever since ’99, people seem to hate the striker system, as it is “newbie friendly.” Well if you’re one of those people, well your going to hate it. Some people to turtle (run, hit, run, block, repeat) will piss a lot of people off with all the striker possibilities. Now if you’re a combo vet, there are a lot of possibilities to KO your opponent with one long combo. I don’t mind really, but it does seem really fun on offence.

Second offence: Graphics! The background look like something that SNK would produce back in ’97! They both have a massive crowd cheering in the background. They both have low amount of detail to the crowd even if they are right behind the fighters (Example: lack of detail on face). However, this is the year 2001 and this kind of animation is no longer tolerable! On a lighter note, the spirits and the character quote screen looks great.

Third offence: Sound! With the leave of absence of long time arcade gaming industry, SNK, the music of KOF ’01 is totally bland. With lame synthesized beats that are noticeably repeating throughout the fight, I’ve ended up bringing my own personal CD player to get into the zone while playing this game. The music does not fit in the whole fighting scheme, as well as any scheme, as it fails to induce the player into any mood. The only time it does fit into the game is the action packed sequence of selecting your fighters. Try again next time, Eolith!

Forth offence: Stupid bosses! The bosses are totally whacked! Zero pulled a Regal and came back to raise some Hell on the fighters along side his infinite power bar and messed up strikers. It took me a long freaking time to beat this dude on my closet machine. After that, we got the boss of NEST itself, Igniz. This dude looks cool but plays really dirty. With three special attacks, you’re dead. With one SDM 90% of your life is gone! You got to have some skill (or no an infinite) to beat this punk. Igniz is the second most annoying KOF boss next to Geonitz.

Pros:
- Japan team is back in action!
- Iori’s new follow-up SDM
- Power bar is nice

Cons:
- Graphics, sound, and bosses sucks!
- Iori’s new team
- SNK went bankrupt!

Hey Eolith, don’t cry. We understand that this is your first time taking over a great game series. It’s not like you destroyed Christmas. It’s just that you messed it up a lot. I hope you can fix this mess up next year. So what will happen after the NEST saga? Can eolith think of something creative next year? Will that game suck as well? We’ll see. This has been the King of Fighters tournament of 2001!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/22/03