Game Feature: King of Fighters '98

I haven't done a game feature post in quite a while, and the obvious one to do that I haven't yet is King of Fighters '98. For many, many years, the KOF was done on the same MVS hardware, and even when it briefly migrated to the Atomiswave hardware, it was still done with the same graphics. Only when we get to King of Fighters XII and XIII do we actually get improved graphics and only when when we move to KOF XIV and XV (out February) do we get fully 3-D graphics (although still with traditional 2-D play.) All of the Orochi Saga games can be "summed up" if you will in King of Fighters '98, and all of the NESTS saga games can be summed up with King of Fighters 2002. If you're not actually interested in playing the "story" of the games, you can get all of the action you want from the entire saga in the "summary" games; King of Fighters '98 has everything you can get in any Orochi Saga game, and then some. This is especially true for the "Ultimate Match" version, which added all of the (very few) characters who had appeared in an Orochi Saga game but hadn't yet appeared in '98, like the remaining bosses, Eiji Kisaragi, and a handful of others.

I have a handful of versions of this game, although to be fair, only the Ultimate Match is one that I'd ever feel compelled to come back to at this point. The first version I got was when I got my old Dreamcast, and it had the odd title of King of Fighters Dream Match 1999. I suppose SNK were a little self-conscious at feeling out of date with the title, which I suppose is a fair problem. For the PS2, I have the Ultimate Match version of the game, which also includes the original Neo Geo version of the game. And finally, I have the Neo Geo version of the game also on the Orochi Saga compilation for the PS2. There is one more final update, called Final Version, or something like that, which is what was available on Steam or now Good Old Games. It's relatively cheap, but it doesn't add anything new to Ultimate Match, just a few subtle tweaks to gameplay.

The whole point of '98 was to be a "Dream Match", i.e., there's no story to it, but it brings back all of the "greatest hits" of the Orochi Saga in one game, including teams that only made an appearance in the first game, like the USA Sports Team, or the Boss team of 96, or creating new teams out of "retired" master characters like Heidern or Saisyu Kusanagi and Takuma Sakazaki, etc. Although from a story perspective, Rugal was only the boss of the first two games, and was therefore just the taste of things to come, the developers also wisely realized that in most respects he was the most iconic King of Fighters boss, and brought him back as the boss of this game as well. Of course, for Ultimate Match, all of the bosses of the Orochi Saga made reappearances, even the mid-bosses like Riot of the Blood Leona, etc. Of course, the reality is that most of those bosses were kind of underwhelming anyway. Rugal was so good that they even brought him back for the next dream match in 2002, ignoring all of the NESTS saga bosses. In both cases, he was the supered out "Omega Rugal", complete with stripper shirt and everything.

A good case can be made that especially once 2002 got "remade" as Unlimited Match, a kind of upgrade very similar to the Ultimate Match upgrade to this game, that there was no longer any reason to play any King of Fighters game that had preceded it, unless you wanted to see the specific story cut scenes associated with one game, or something like that. I don't think that that's completely true; there are a number of things in particular that are unique to the Orochi Saga. Sometimes these are little things, like Terry Bogard's moveset, for instance, which is a bit different in the NESTS games, and other times its more in the vibe, presentation and "feel" of the game, and harder to put your finger on. 

While I can certainly see and actually probably agree with that perspective to some degree, I have a lot of nostalgic attachment to '98 over 2002 and in many ways still prefer it, especially in its Ultimate Match version. The game presents to you the two basic different "systems" that the prior King of Fighters games used; EX, which is similar to '94 and '95's manual charging of super movies, dashes, etc. and "Advanced" which was similar to '96 and '97s super stocks, rolls and other items. The Ultimate Match version also allows you to play an Ultimate Mode, where you can pick and choose elements from EX or Advanced, although honestly, I just prefer to use Advanced. Not surprisingly, it's the most like A-ism from Street Fighter Alpha 3, or the C-groove from the Capcom vs SNK games of the options presented, which is my favorite system.

You can play in teams, or you can play single player, which is more "Street Fighter" like in terms of how it plays. I usually prefer the latter, of course. The fact that there aren't any story endings means that team composition doesn't matter; the only endings are a bunch of joke animations from the characters during the credits.

The player select menus are, in my opinion, extraordinarily ugly, as are the character portraits. They are improved somewhat for the Ultimate Match, but the character portraits and end-match art/quotes are the same in every version. Shinkiro is the artist, who's normally quite a talented fella, but this is not his best work. That said, once you get playing, this matters very little. The Dreamcast version has the same menus as the Neo Geo or arcade, with the exception of course, of a very bare bones "text only" menu of console specific modes and options, which are all pretty basic. 

I've talked before about the shift to 3-D backgrounds that was happening right about at the turn of the millennium in these kinds of games, and it came for KOF'98 too. The Dreamcast version has the backgrounds redone in 3-D, although it's relatively low-res 3-D, and mostly just looks almost exactly the same as the 2-D backgrounds for most of them. (Oddly, the Osaka street scene outside of the SNK headquarters is an exception here; there are variants in the 2-D version that are not done in 3-D.) The Ultimate Match version gives us redone 3-D backgrounds, including more variants. In particular, it seems that the developers were very enamored this year of adding a bluish, washed out haze to make the backgrounds look like they take place early in the morning in the minutes right before the sun comes up but the light is still relatively strong. Almost every stage has a variant that looks like this. It also adds a bunch of new stages to the mix that hadn't yet ever been seen.

In fact, most of the stages are new to this game, even in the old Neo Geo version. A handful are from other games in the Orochi Saga series, like the '96 boss stage, or the Orochi boss stages, but most are not. In my personal opinion, this is a bit of a missed opportunity; the Ultimate Match didn't need new stages added when it could have brought forward the older stages from the games that had come before, redrawn if necessary. I think that there were some really beautiful stages that I miss not having in a game that I'm actually likely to still play anymore. The Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting team stages from '96 are in particular to be highlighted here. Sigh. In this game, stages are no longer associated with specific teams, except for the boss stages, and tend to come up randomly.

Curiously, the 3D stages, especially in the Dreamcast version, but even in the Ultimate Match version, are not necessarily better than the older 2D stages. Although in the case of most of them, it doesn't actually make much noticeable difference. The Japan Street set of stages are better in 2D. The Korea ones are noticeably different, but neither is better than the other, in my opinion. A few stages have slightly different lighting details between the 3D and 2D versions, which I think is very unusual. The characters themselves offer a smoothness indicator that can be modified, to give them a less pixelated appearance, so that they match the backgrounds a little better and don't look so old-school and clunky.

All in all, King of Fighters '98 is the best King of Fighters game, or at least it was when it came out, and remains so probably at least until 2002, although even then that's a question of opinion, not objectivity. In 1998 when it came out, it was side by side with Street Fighter Alpha 3, and that was probably the best game in the Street Fighter series up to that point. This was part of the genesis of the Capcom vs SNK series in the first place; with two of the best titles from the two most important series by each company out at the same time, it begged the question of what it would be like to have them really duking it out head to head. Although the Capcom vs SNK games are pretty good, I think that there's still definitely a kind of desire and demand to see this question answered more definitively still. And no, MUGEN doesn't really count.

But of the grade of games that precede the major graphical upgrades of the very late 00s and 10s years, King of Fighters '98 has to stand out as one of the best representatives, and one of the better games in the entire genre overall no matter how you slice it.