Arcade-game
developer SNK officially went out of business in 2001, but that hasn't
seemed to slow down what is apparently a new generation of games for the
company's NeoGeo arcade hardware. One of the last projects the company
was working on was The King of Fighters 2001, the latest edition in
SNK's annual fighting game series, along with a new developer, Eolith.
And while certain aspects of KOF 2001 may seem very different from
previous games, spend some time with it and you'll eventually realize
that it's one of the deepest, most technical 2D fighting games ever
made.
It's no secret that SNK's NeoGeo hardware is old. Over 10 years
old. That's why its games still use low-resolution, hand-drawn sprites
for its characters, rather than switching to a 3D engine or at least
using high-frame-rate, high-resolution graphics. The age of the NeoGeo
hardware seems painfully obvious when you look at KOF 2001′s shoddy
background stages, which look generic at best and ugly and pixelated at
worst. But over the years, SNK's artists have perfected a bunch of
visual tricks to help add detail to their characters and give them lots
of personality. And KOF 2001′s characters have lots of personality--as
much as you'd expect from SNK, a company with a history of making some
of the most distinctive and memorable 2D fighting game characters ever.
You'll see it in your character's win poses and taunts and in other
extra animations. It's true (and unfortunate) that KOF 2001 reuses a lot
of old character animation from previous games, so that some
characters--especially the newest ones--look better than others. But
most characters have at least some new animations, win poses, and
special attacks--more than enough to make each one more interesting than
they were in the previous game, KOF 2000.
Fortunately, if you
play KOF 2001, you'll probably ignore the game's awful background stages and
mediocre music, because you'll be too busy fighting it out to notice anything
else. KOF 2001 has a roster of 40 different playable characters, but they're
all remarkably well balanced; you can pit just about any of them against any
other and have a fair fight. And every character has enough special attacks and
strategies to be interesting--unlike in KOF 2000 and KOF '99, which simply
dumbed down a lot of characters to favor the new striker system.
Strikers--extra characters that you call in from offscreen to do a single
attack or two--are still in KOF 2001, but they're much more balanced than in
previous games and are actually completely optional in 2001. Basically, the
game gives you four character slots, and you can choose as many playable
characters as you want--four playable characters with no strikers, two playable
characters and two strikers, and so on. If you don't pick any strikers, you
characters will do less damage and won't be able to perform their most powerful
super attacks; if you pick one or more strikers, you'll be able to do more
damage and access super attacks, but you'll have fewer playable characters on
your team. It's a system that resembles Capcom vs. SNK 2's ratio system, but
it's much more balanced.
But that isn't all.
KOF 2001 also has super cancel attacks, which let you quickly cancel a special
attack and turn it into a super attack, as in Street Fighter EX and Street
Fighter III. 2001 also has "wire attacks," which bounce your opponent
off the corner of the screen and let you quickly hit your opponent with a
follow-up attack, like the wall juggles in Guilty Gear X. You'll find plenty of
skills to master in KOF 2001 without getting into the specifics of each of your
favorite characters, though you'll definitely want to do that too, especially
with some of the new characters in the game. For instance, the newcomer Mei Lee
is a martial artist with two completely distinct fighting stances that you can
switch between in an instant, while another newcomer, Angel, is a completely
original and completely bizarre character with a huge set of special attacks
that are keyed off of a single kick. And if you're playing the game at your
arcade, you should actually be able to play some decent practice rounds in a
single-player game, since the computer opponents generally aren't too tough, at
least until you get to the end. The final battle with KOF 2001's boss character
is probably the most insanely difficult and frustrating fight in the entire
series. But if you're lucky enough to play KOF 2001 at an arcade with some
actual competition, you'll find that the game holds up extremely well in
head-to-head play.
Most King of
Fighters diehards will tell you that '98 was the best game in the series
because of its excellent character balance and its huge character roster (38
characters, plus 12 "alternate" versions of some characters) of very
deep, interesting characters. KOF 2001 doesn't have the sort of flat-out
character-against-character matchups that '98 did, because of its strikers and
its varying team sizes, but it's still a great game in its own right. Its different
options, striker and wire attacks, and sizeable character roster will let you
play KOF 2001 for a good long time before you tire of it--and they also help
make KOF 2001 one of the deepest 2D fighting games ever.
22:30
Junaid
