Haha!
Well, at least in the case of SNK it’s pretty much in the text. Or high up in the metatext, or the surrounding text. This is part of how they intend the games to be read.
I think that Iori should have a cat in the way that Duck King has a duck.
You know. That would be a good future team: King, Duck King, King of Dinosaurs.
Well, given that Ash apparently retconned his entire arc out of canon existence (for whatever little that counts for in a fighting game), presumably the KOF storyline from here just continues like 2k3, XI, and XIII never happened. Liz, Duo Lon, Oswald and Shen are out & presumably don’t know anything about each other, because they have no story tie to Ash to bring them back. Iori effectively never had his flames stolen. Presumably the same goes for Chizuru’s mirror powers (can she come back now? please? Pretty please SNK?). So I guess the general story direction is like if the NESTS arc had just ended.
As for re-introducing characters who are out of the main plot like Elizabeth/Duo Lon/Shen, or bringing back characters who literally died like the New Face Team, no, I don’t think they should be forced back into the main plot, I’m not that vain. I think bringing back ghost Vice & Mature was more than a little goofy too, but I like their playstyles (especially Vice), so I wasn’t really offended by it. But damned if I wouldn’t do certain unconscionable acts to see them as DLC characters, unintegrated in the story. Just selectable for no other reason than I want to do Elizabeth DP juggles and Orochi Yashiro command grab resets once more in a new and exciting game system. Though obviously I would welcome absurd little pre-match interactions like “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” and the like in versus/arcade mode.
But whoever they pick for 14 DLC, whether existing characters or brand-new ones, I think I’ll be pleased. The game’s cast in its current state looks quite fun & robust. Hope to see even more neat stuff from the new chars they haven’t fully revealed yet, of which many remain.
Looking back, Ash/Duo/Shen was a really cool and bizarre team.
Yeah, they were. Both aesthetically and mechanically, they really filled out over time. Duo’s long-limbed revamp in 12 was kinda awkward, but by 13 they’d filled out his moveset to make a really cool character like his 2k3/XI self (even if he was way too good in 2k3).
Loved the weird odd-bedfellows thing they had going, too. Shady freckled albino with Cate Archer hair meets vampire-looking dead-serious Chinese assassin meets Shanghai illiterate who fights like an animal and will never button his shirt. Though the Kim team would still make for the best sitcom. (Jhun is Kramer, I guess?)
I always thought latter NESTS K’ team had some pretty good bizarre going on.
Grumpy leather fire guy, his large cyborg friend, poison handed assassin with poor complexion and a military dominatrix.
Yeah, K’, Kula, K9999 and crew feel so modern even now. It’s pretty interesting to think about how KOF has a roster that keeps updating across 2 decades.
Generations and generations of tastes changing with the times…
I still think that K’ is the best original character that KoF has produced. With the best music.
(Most of my runners-up are also from the NESTS era.)
I want to know more about what went into the decision for a complete change of tone during the NESTS era
so serious
so sci-fi
rearranging the pieces into something not quite familiar
it’s still cool, though, to this day
I never liked Maxima, or Seth, or anybody else like them. If you look slow and your special moves are just a punch I ain’t got time for you.
i had a friend who would always pick maxima because he looks like he could be an x-man
I think it was no mystery back then that Maxima was big Wolverine, iirc his alternate palette in 99 was a dead ringer for a Xmen uniform.
I love Maxima just for Bunker Buster. Turning himself into a human cannonball offsets any other deficiencies to me.
Honestly I think most characters I don’t like are characters I couldn’t figure out the special moves for, like Maxima and Seth.
Seth is rad.
In KOF kayfabe, did Rugal teach Mature and Vice how to use the skull, or the other way around?
That’s unclear, but Rugal does take everyone else’s moves. I think an early plan that they abandoned was for him to use all of the player characters’ moves against them. Instead he just uses a bunch of familiar things from Geese et al.
I think the implication is either that Vice and Mature taught Rugal the skull thing (the implication being that the Hakkeshu had him by the balls, Vice and Mature his direct handlers), and maybe they threw him a condescending bone by letting him learn an Orochi trick or two.
Or maybe Rugal, being the unoriginal jerk that he is, learned it from watching them do it. (To who? Did he just, like, drop homeless people in a pit with Vice, or do Vice & Mature have like an Orochi Yoga video or something that he watched and took notes on?)
I strongly suspect #1, though maybe there’s an argument for #2. The fact that Goenitz didn’t kill Rugal outright (besides the fact that the no-more-eye encounter with Goenitz was a retcon in '96) suggests that Rugal was a tough enough opponent that the Hakkeshu didn’t want to pick any unnecessary fights with him. (Judging by how bullshit he was in KOF 95, probably a good call on their part. As both a boss and a playable character, 95 Omega Rugal was a beast.)
Rugal going full Shang Tsung with the move stealing would have been really cool, but I totally understand why they backed away from that. The asset creation alone for that many appropriated moves would be nuts, but when you factor in the memory-management wizardry they would have had to do to implement those moves, assuming they even had space enough in RAM, that’s just not a realistic task. Especially for the launch of a new IP where half their work is just laying a solid foundation.
Although I wonder if SNK might want to go back to that move-stealing well now that they’re working in 3D and asset creation, at least, is a much faster/cheaper process. I would kinda like to see that.
Adel has the skull as well, which I always considered an oversight, but then again nothing is really set in stone, maybe he learned it from his father, maybe he’s a genius copycat ( if it is a somewhat un-copyable move and had to be taught).
New build on the 28th featuring a lot of characters who have had no prior gameplay footage.
Good, good.
I also like how every team seems like it’s goimg to have its own stage again. Latest trailer: Yagami team (complete with crescent moon); previous trailer, Ikari and Another World teams.
Right now we’re only missing Art of Fighting, Women Fighters, and Villains stages. And the bosses.