The King of Fighters 2000

"SNK (or Playmore) makes me a believer"

I have played all of the other King of Fighter series games, but unlike some of the other reviewer's here, I am NOT a die hard KoF fan. I am definitely a Street Fighter, born and raised. When I played the previous games in the series, they were fun in their own way, but nothing kept me coming back for more, and away from my SF games. I can now say, that has changed.

After spending a day with this game, I can say that I certainly love this series in every aspect of its being. The fighting system, the character design, the music, the levels, and the story are all very well done.

When you boot up the game, you are presented with your standard options seen in most Capcom/SNK games recently: Team arcade, one on one arcade, team versus, one on one versus, options, and gallery. It's nice that you are able to choose a lone character to brave through the game with instead of always using a team, as it can be useful to get concentrated practice with one character. The options are useful. You can change the difficulty, behavior of Desperation Move bars, and the quantity of Striker bombs (set to zero if you want to have an old school match). Although there isn't really anything exceptional, they ARE useful, and it's a good thing they didn't overlook them.

The Gallery mode allows you to unlock and view artwork related to the game, such as characters and logos. There is also a tile puzzle game where you must create the complete picture from scrambled tiles. While the puzzle game isn't really all that interesting, I don't see any reason to complain about an extra feature : ) The artwork for the characters in the gallery is exceptional, and you have options to zoom in and out for the pictures, move to the next or previous, and to move your view along the picture. It's very similar to the gallery mode in Soul Calibur.

The gameplay in this year's offering is more polished, and would certainly be more appealing to series newcomers than the previous versions of the game. I'm not sure how this would affect the die-hard KoFers, but it is generally easier to pull off high combos than it used to be. The controls and game mechanics are all very easy to understand and ease into, and don't make you feel overwhelmed as some other games might.

Characters are easily controllable, given a little practice, and it won't take long before you are off on your own creating new combos. One of the best parts of this game is the way the characters interact with their strikers. Picking the striker that best suits the gameplay style of your team's characters is important, and every strike ''bomb'' (usage) feels important, and you realize it shouldn't be wasted as a regular attack. The strikers set up your enemies for air juggles, and provide a means to link together attacks that otherwise wouldn't be combo able. This brings me to the next subject, the character roster.

The character roster certainly offers something for everyone. Most characters feel less redundant than the proverbial shoryuken, hadouken, sonic boom, flash kick ordeal you find in Street Fighter games. Characters are separated into teams of characters that share a similar goal or background. There are teams for other SNK games such as Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting, and there are teams that contain fighters with a common principal, such as the ''heroes'' team. The characters themselves are all full of animation and character, and none of them feels like a simple clone of another.

The actual drawing and animation for the characters is splendid, however it does suffer from a lower resolution than some newer 2D fighting games like Guilty Gear X. This is to be expected however, since King of Fighters 2000 was originally made for the Neo Geo arcade system. The backgrounds are great for the most part. In some levels you can see the water splash beneath your character's feet as you tramp through it. There are people bustling in the backgrounds of cities, and sandstorms in the desert level. Despite this, some of the levels are just showing their age, especially the ones ripped directly out of older games. One of my biggest complaints is the lack of your teammates sitting on the sidelines cheering you on that was in previous versions. I'm not sure why it was taken out in this versions.

The background music in this game is certainly well done. The music fits the mood of the level, and is much more than your typical techno beat or cheesy industrial track that all sound the same. The character voices are a bit muffled however. It would be nice if they were clearer. For the most part, the sound effects such as grunts, footsteps, and hits are all standard fare, and although they are done well, nothing really stands out to me compared to other games.

After all is said and done, the game IS worth buying. It has a good amount of replay value with the gallery mode and large character roster, and the gameplay will keep you coming back for more combo and strategy fine tuning. It's a fun game, and that's what counts : )

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/16/02, Updated 08/16/02