Except, weirdly, at the moment they’re burying them way down at the bottom third of the roster. It’s like, KYO AND IORI ARE HERE!!! AND TERRY!!! AND CHANG AND CHOI!!!
And oh yeah, we have a new protagonist.
AND NAKORURU!!!
I guess this is their way of underlining, hey, this is actually a real King of Fighters chapter here – stick with us. Provided that this game is successful and they make a sequel, I expect the new hero team to suddenly get more focus.
Given the news about Britain, I was set to ask whether we still had any characters from that part of the world in the series, until I remembered wears-the-flag Billy Kane. Would he have voted for Brexit, though? He’s from London, right? Or am I just mis-extrapolating from “London March”?
On that note, we’ve never had a KOF character from Australia / Australasia / Oceania, right? Nor Africa? I suspect I’m missing someone relatively obvious.
Big Bear is from Australia… but is Raiden? I sadly can’t think of any African fighting game characters other than Elena and Zazie from Fighter’s History. Zazie would be a good pick for a FHD team if SNK ever felt like licensing out FHD again. Mizoguchi/Zazie/Ryoko for XIV DLC.
I am expecting a stream of KOF14 yaoi. The CG looks real nice!
Thats from a beefy 4gamer interview, for those who can read Japanese: http://www.4gamer.net/games/317/G031749/20160613002/
An MMCafe translation may be forthcoming but people discussing Google translated versions says it discusses why Neo_G joined SNK, why SNK decided to not use the Unreal Engine, and lots of other cool stuff. Oh, and Garo 2. Here’s the cast of that game, btw.
Is that Garou Yamazaki???
Which guy do you mean? The bottom row, second from the right? (All the new characters are at the bottom, with Kain still being the boss).
Third from the left, the girl with the orange pants, looks like a Hwa Jai based character. The pose for the guy in the black suit looks kind of familiar? Maybe? Without a clear connection like a pose it’s hard to say if someone is meant to be based on an old character. There’s a boxer guy in there but who knows if they were supposed to be based on Rick Strowd.
The guy underneath Griffon? He looks like Yamazaki to me. I remember reading Joe was supposed to have a protoge, that’s who I’d guess Muay Thai girl’d be.
Not sure any of those seven are Yamazaki, but I just realized none are Blue Mary, Duck King or Richard Meyer - the other FF characters we’ve seen in MOTW revisions (thanks to the “Memories of Stray Wolves” DVD). Curious.
Looks more like a capoeira girl than a muay thai girl to me.
There aren’t any KOF characters from Spain either. For obvious reasons it was never a very popular country to draw from for martial artist characters, but we’ve got a few pretty good spanish characters in fighting games recently, with Mila in DOA and Miguel in Tekken. It’s cool that the designers are finally getting rid of the “matador” stereotype
They could always bring back Laurence Blood, even if he is the matador stereotype.
This is very interesting to see, wonder if the middle character is some sort of ‘corporate’ Rock - iirc in his ending he accepts Kain proposal, whatever that was
The ‘Yamazaki’ certainly has a similar presence but it strikes me as african american, he could be Rob Python but he has no tattoo. Wonder how ‘final’ these were?
I’d rather have a new design, really.
Matadores are the laziest, most cliched archetype a foreigners can possibly think of wrt Spain. Let’s leave it in the 80’s.
To me he looks like Duke, from Max Impact.
Played this game today at CEO. Absolutely thrilling to play. I intend to spend the weekend playing it until my eyes bleed.
Figures they’d change the Raging Storm motion to make it easier when I finally learned to do it semi-consistently in 98UM, lol. But I welcome it nonetheless. Def wanna try Geese when the game proper comes out.
What did you think of the new characters? Do the ones you’ve tried feel good to play?
Still haven’t tried some of them but most seem damn fun and decent.
Mui Mui: Only tried her once, haven’t quite got a feel for her but she’s very popular, very fun and looks pretty easy to pick up and play. Rekkas have a Karin-style sway back you can do 2nd or 3rd in the chain, probably punishable by fast supers but probably safe from punishment without using meter. Has few anti-air normals right above her head but makes up for it by having good aerials, great air/ground mobility, and a stand C that extends and retracts like 10 fuckin’ feet from where she stands. Has the most awesome/hilarious j. CD in the game. Go headbutt!
Hein: Haven’t played him yet, looks decent. Shield super for anti-air, several good high kick normals to anti-air in front of his face. Looks like his combos are fairly easy, divekick helps mix up his air-to-air zoning/offense a bit. I don’t see him being explosively good but I’m sure he’ll be decent and mildly popular.
Kukri: Seems like the new Duo Lon. KOF 13 Duo Lon, not KOF2k3 Duo Lon, let’s not get too excited here, heh. Tricky, kind of evasive, probably in deep trouble if you can knock him down and stay on top of him, but seems like he’d be a good battery character to fight people before they get tons of bar to melt face with. His EX teleport on wakeup can lead to some cute shenanigans. I haven’t tried him yet, just been watching other people mess with him.
King of Dinosaurs: …sigh. I want to love him, but he really kinda sucks. His jump is shockingly floaty for a big heavy grappler and he can’t get by just marrying the floor because he moves too friggin’ slow. The armor on his crouch C is really good but it’s hard as hell to control the space where he can win 100% anti-airing with it. Stand C is less useful than I thought because it whiffs crouching; far higher-risk armor move to throw out than, say, a Maxima autoguard normal. Overall it takes genius-level neutral play to stay in his effective range; if you’re not married to being the King of Dinosaurs then Daimon is probably an easier version of the same kind of character (a tanky grappler who holds his space with nasty anti-air).
Nakoruru: See NerdJosh on CEO stream archives for proof of concept. IDK if she will make top tier but she’s a good candidate for week 1 monster. her crouch C can be special-cancelled surprisingly late in the active frames; you can anti-air with it at max height and still go into flight mode. Abusing c.C anti-air xx Annu Musube is surprisingly hard to punish (for now). Her bird comes out even if she gets kicked in the face while calling him, and her bird super is a really nice, fast whiff punish/combo ender. Her DP is probably OK too but you hardly need it since her c.C is so good. She is definitely a character to watch.
Shun’ei: Has a very weird far s.C (weird little elbow whiff move) but is otherwise a straightforward, pick-up-and-play kinda character. Many good kick normals, easy-ish combo routes. Not many air normals can be cancelled into air dash, though; I think only his j.A can be cancelled into them. But the extra air mobility is still nice to throw off characters with strong anti-air and/or air-to-air.
Of those sequels mentioned, World Heroes is the most exciting. I want to see more gloriously idiosyncratic stereotypes and bizarre takes on historical figures.
I like how Neo_G is focused on developing new games, and not necessarily fighting games, rather than just building off existing franchises.
The only complaint I must raise with sequel/crossover team talk is this:
How the hell could you possibly have a Team Data East without Karnov? He’s their mascot, for crying out loud! Plus, imagine how nuts he’d be in KOF XIV! FIRE FIRE BALLOOOOOOOON
Garou 2…as dusty as that well is, I wouldn’t mind seeing what it could offer. I was always kinda ambivalent on Garou, though, because I couldn’t do feint combos to save my life (no, not even Terry’s). Hopefully those would be made easier or removed for a sequel. For the children, you see.
I would be all about a new World Heroes. Bring back Rasputin and C.Kidd!
