The King of Fighters '96

"No more boring road trips!"

Fighting games are most definatley a rareity for portable consoles. When it comes to great fighting games for the GameBoy, there are only a couple that comes to my mind. The King of Fighters 96 is one of them. The series started on the Sony PlayStation. It's translation to the GameBoy was nothing short of perfect. It has made great improvements from King of Fighers 95. Those changes includes better controlls, sound and graphics. In fact, King of Fighters 96 rate as one of my favorite Game Boy games of all time.

The gameplay is unlike any other fighting games you've seen on any consoles. Although there are minor differences in the different King of Fighters, they all carry the same general structure. First off, the players select three fighters. This is very similar to Marvel vs Capcom 2, however, players do not get to tag. After the selection process has been completed, the player selects the order in which the fighters will appear. When one fighter falls in battle, the next one comes to replace it with a new round. The winner of the round gets a very small amount of life back. The fighter resumes until all three fighters of one team has fallen. This game is playable against the AI (artificial intelligence), or against another player through the use of a link cable. The computer controlled opponent is available on three difficulties. Each one obviously getting harder than the previous one. Also, as you progress through the game, the opponents you will face will be much smarter, and tougher. This makes for a gentle learning curve, and a very mild scaling difficulty. The first couple of battles are quite easy, but the last few are extremely hard (assuming you set the difficulty to what is right for you). The controlls in here are quite hard to use, but they're not as hard as some other Game Boy fighters. There are two degrees of punches and kicks. You just hold a directional button (I am not 100% sure of which one, but I think it's back) and press the proper button (A or B) to get the harder degree of attack. The other controlls are exactly same as most other fighting games.

The graphics in here, although nice, have some flaws. First of all, the fighters are not in porportional with the backgrounds. The fighters are wee little. Sometimes it is quite hard to see what your opponent is doing. And no matter how small they are, they are still able to jump amazingly high. Not very good for such a small character doing a regular jump. The audio is average. All of the fighting sounds sound quite weird though. All the grunts and smacks sound like a pancake frying in a frying pan.

The fun factor is significantly high! That is mainly because this game is for a portable console. You could take this game on road trips, or if you're a child and very impatient, take this game when you have to go to a fancy resteraunt so you'll stay out of trouble because it is so fun. The replay value in this game is average. After completing the game, you may want to try it again with another combination of fighters, or you may not. It mainly depends if the player is a fighting game fan.

Overall, this is a great game, despite some minor flaws. This game is best for going on long trips where some form of gaming entertainment is required. Or just when you're bored to hell. I would definatley pick up this game, it's worth the money (it's a rather old game, so I'm sure the game is quite cheap).

FINAL RANKINGS:
Gameplay:8
Challenge:9
Controlls:7
Graphics:7
Audio:6
Fun Factor:8
Replay Value:7
Overall:7

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/07/00, Updated 08/07/00