It's good to be the king

Today marks the release of the King of Fighters XII, as many hardcore fighting fans out there already know. I'm hesitant to go out and grab the thing today because it costs $60 and I'm not exactly thrilled to go drop that kind of cash on it. I know it's petty because I have loved and backed the SNK brand ever since I played Art of Fighting because there's just a lot in that little universe they've created to love. Later on as the King of Fighters series progressed, especially '96 and beyond, SNK was all about tight refinements that worked well for them.

By the way, if you were looking for this game to be on GameStop's website, for some reason I had to dig three menus in just to find it while double checking the price. It's quite obvious they are trying to hide this game because I see ads for BlazBlue and even Street Fighter IV, but I can't even find KoF on today's release list or on the upcoming release list. The ads are paid, I get it, but they aren't even trying to disguise themselves here.

Anyway, conspiracy theories aside, I think that this release just about kills the whole "dead of 2-D" idea. Let's face it, the greatest are still 2-D. BlazBlue, KoF, and Street Fighter reign supreme right now, and all I've received from the Tekken crowd were groans of misery. Sure, there's always going to be Virtua Fighter and Soul Calibur, but those games have found themselves standing above a sea of crap. Real furious substance is hard to find, but the 2-D guys are still releasing well received updates. Street Fighter IV is definitely 2-D, by the way. Say all you want about sprites and hand-drawn games, but if you can have a game self-animate the 2-D for you, then it's still 2-D. Watch the comparison videos if you have doubts, because it's true and you know it.

Now, while I trust that KoF XII is going to be good, I hope this is the beginning of some real identity for them, because after '02, SNK Playmore got into a severe crisis about figuring out what their next game was going to be like going into the future. I doubt this is the end of the experiments, but '03 overhauled the system, Maximum Impact got off to a horrible start and mediocre finish and somehow got awarded a year title for it ('06), then XI came out started the roman numeral idea but went backwards into the old sprite bank...

I'm just confused. KoF XII better be the start of some new ground for them, or they aren't going to have much of a foundation left. I'll get my rental in soon, I'm sure, so I'll be dumping mini-reviews on Twitter eventually.

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