The King of Fighters '95

The Good
As Capcom was cranking out its umpteenth version of Street Fighter II, SNK was changing things up, juggling multiple series. In 1994, they introduced King Of Fighters '94, which pitted not only characters from fighting games, but games dating back to Ikari Warriors, against each other. The three-character teams offered a lot of variety, as you weren't stuck playing the same guy until you lost the entire match. King of Fighters '95 was a great update, especially since it introduced Team Edit, letting you pick your own team by hand, rather than choosing a team of three characters of SNK's choosing.

The sights and sounds of the arcade are here in full-effect. There may be some missing frames of animation, but nothing that's going to break the game. Some people seem to think that the control's off, but I never had any trouble with it. If anything, the problem probably lies in its adherence to SNK's more rigid control setup. While Capcom allowed for slop, SNK did not. When in a match, I enjoyed the gameplay. While waiting for a match, I was digging through my stack of games or thinking of something else I'd rather be doing.

The Bad
This was one of two games I purchased with my Playstation, as it was $20 and I liked King of Fighters. Besides Dungeons & Dragons: Iron & Blood, this game has gotten the least amount of play of my early collection, and ranks rather low in my entire collection. Why? The load times.

If you've ever rented a game that was so scratched and dirty that it took ten times as long to load, you know the Hell that is KOF95's load times. Even when you go into single mode, choosing one fighter and playing against single fighters, load times are far too long. Granted, this is a very early PS title, but it's what kills the game. It's a shame, because it probably would have sold better if not for that snag.

The Bottom Line
If you absolutely have to have a King of Fighters game for PS, this is not the one to get. I haven't played the entire series, but I can easily say that King of Fighters '97 and King of Fighters '99 are the ones to own. Not only do they play well, but the load times are a mere fraction of those in '95. While the core of '95 is great, the load times will frustrate you almost as much as trying to defeat Rugal. Yes, they're that bad.

The Good
This Kof introduces the "team edit" mode, which finally makes it able to enjoy the series unique (at it's time) team fighting concept. There aren't many changes in the rooster (it has exactly the same number of teams) but the few that were made are good, and include (as it's only appearance in KOF) the ninja dude from AOF, Iori for the first time, and even Billy Kane. And thankfully, the USA team is not present.

The Bad
Well, first of all I want to tackle what I feel are problems of the game itself and then the port.

KoF '95 is an extremely cheap game, period. Right from the start you know it's not gonna be a joyride since this is merely Kof '94 with new (not more) characters and different backgrounds. Sure, you've got the new "storyline" but let's get serious here folks, the game itself has had no changes and it shows, primarily on it's dated look (most fighters have the same face!) and game mechanics. Now, before we get into the issue of game mechanics I have to introduce to you to SNK.

Deciding to make 2D fighters as it's main titles, SNK knew invariably that it was dooming itself to live under the shadow of Capcom, and that all games that it made would always be regarded as cheap clones of Street Fighter, Final Fight, etc. Not nesesarily because they were better, but because they were first. For that reason they have been constantly adding to their games stupid "brand new" features in an effort to make them stand out, these include the stupid and ankward pseudo 3D foreground/background system of the Fatal Furys, the pseudo rpg aproach of the Art of Fightings, and of course...the interface of the King of Fighters. The interface includes a series of "features" that work when you press a series of buttons at the same time for all characters, these include: dodging, charging up power, a knock-down heavy attack, and taunting. Now let's tackle each one in turn. Dodging sounds like a swell idea, but you'll soon find out why no other game has ever adopted it. It renders all projectile and long-range attacks useless! gone is the "throw a fireball and attack overhead or wait till your enemy jumps it" every strategic thought is replaced by a "let's hope I hit him first and chain something from that point on" and while that mentality can help you on games like Tekken, it does nothing for you here, and this brings me to the next feature: What is the mindset behind the game? Power management pure and simple. Charging up your power bar eventually brings you to a "Max" state which lasts about 7-10 seconds and which makes you move faster, hit harder and allows you to make "super moves" (which by the way, are nothing "super"...more on that later) thus the novice player will soon find out that it doesn't pay to develop a strategy based on specific moves and styles. All you really have to do is power up, and hit your enemy in any way you can, since the game balancing rewards a succesful "powered-up" knock-down hit over a series of combos. The game depends on this so much, that the taunt feature actually serves as a way of lowering your foe's power bar, so as you can see, most of the fighting in the game consists of merely managing your power bar (which can be realistic, depending on who you talk to, but certainly not fun). Add to that mentality the "dodge" feature and you get a very technically oriented game, which is challenging yes, but not fun. Also you have to remember that the game uses the "desperation" system, in which your super moves only dish out some REAL damage when you are about to die, meaning: you are supposed to know every single move and nuance by heart since everything literally forces you to an "all or nothing" since you can't afford to fail.

All that stuff will remain for quite a while a mainstay of the Kof's and it's why I don't enjoy them too much.

To add more flavor to the dish you have Rugal. Now, SNK has brought over itself a reputation for making cheap ultra-powerful bosses that are simply no fun to fight against, and Rugal is one of the reasons this has happened. We are still nowhere near Orochi or shivers Goenitz, but its still tremendously annoying and takes all the fun out of solo play.

Regarding the conversion itself, I have to point two other things that would remain forever in the psx Kof games: control and load times. The control seems tremendously unforgiving to me, perhaps you really need to play the game with an arcade stick to apreciate it, but quite frankly, using the gamepads will bring you a step closer to suicide. However, you'll have plenty of time to cool down and think about what you are doing during the loading times, which can take up to 5 minutes between fights. Great, huh?

The Bottom Line
I won't repeat myself on other Kof ports reviewed so let me state here that the Kof's were not made for the psx. The system just doesn't handle them efficiently, so you need an extra-special Kof to justify the expense and investment you make. This one ain't grand at all so trust me, stay clear of this baby.