Blog Posts from "Se7enthMoon's blog"

The King of Fighters Retrospective "Orochi: 94-98" (part 1/4)

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:14:04 -0500

Hey G1s, it's been a while since I've posted a blog (not that many people read mine anyway xD) But recently I've watched some of the retrospective videos on GameTrailers and I find them quite entertaining. Therefore I've decided to do my own retrospective on one of my favorites and one of the lesser popular series in the US, the King of Fighters series. This is definitely my favorite 2D fighter; yes, even more so than SF even though I grew up on SF2T and the zero/alpha series. My first KoF game was KoF 95 on the Gameboy. I think I was only about 10 years old at the time and honestly, I didn't enjoy the game very much. I haven't touched any KoF related title until I played Capcom vs SNK. Then I was like, oh yeah I remember some of those characters! So I went back and tried out the older games and I've followed the series from that point on. Anyway, enough about my own experies, here's a retrospective on the entire series. This first part will cover the original title of '94 up to the last game of its first story arc, '98. We all know about Capcom's Street Fighter II in 1991 that pretty much made fighting games what they are like today. However, another game company known as SNK, which stands for "shin nihon kikaku 新日本企画" started to develop their own fighting game, capitalizing on the popularity of the franchise that SF2 has brought to the arcade business. SNK has been making games for several years before making KoF though, they started a few popular franchises such as Ikari warriors and Psycho Soldier. In 1991, after the release of SF2, SNK released its first fighting game, Garou Densetsu (dubbed in English as Fatal Fury). After the success of Garou, SNK made other fighting games like the Art of Fighting, Samurai Spirits/Showdown, and World Heroes, as well as several sequels for these games. Because SNK's NeoGeo arcade system was so much more powerful than other arcade systems and they are able to swap game cartridges, these titles were extremely popular all over Asia. In 1994, SNK came out with a game that mashed storylines of most of its previous titles into one, and the result of that was The King of Fighter 94. Some of the characters were the Italy team, represented by Joe Higashi, Terry and Andy Bogard from Garou. The China team, represented by Athena, Kensou and Chin from Psycho Soldier. The Brazil team, represented by Heidern, Clark Steel and Ralf Jones of Ikari warriors. The Mexico team, represented by Robert Garcia, Ryo and Takuma Sakazaki from Art of Fighting. Other characters such as Kim Kaphwan, Shiranui Mai, etc from Garou, AoF were also included. Samurai Spirits characters are not inthis game due to timeline conflicts (KoF takes place in the modern world and SS takes place in ancient Japan). I was a bit surprised that World Heroes characters were not included.. But that might be because most of them use weapons and not that many KoF characters use weapons. Who knows. However, the King of Fighters 94 was not just a dream match of every SNK fighting game character, the game introduced its own storyline. The main character is Kusanagi Kyo and its up to him and his teammates Daimon and Benimaru to stop the evil Rugal Bernstein, who holds a tournament to fight and kill the strongest fighters in the world. Shallow and typical story? Yes, but the gameplay mechanics are much different than any other fighting game before it. Until this point, all fighting games are 1v1 based. However, the KoF series introduced a 3v3 system in which the player picks not one, but a team of 3 characters to fight. Although the only drawback to 94 is that you cannot swap character nor pick characters on different teams, so you must learn all three characters of the team you have chosen. This has been changed in future games. The system of 3v3, although tweaked many times, is an ongoing tradition of this franchise. Another difference is its super system. In SF2, characters will fill their super bar when they attack their opponents or use special moves. In KoF, characters are able to charge their supers by pressing hard punch and hard kick together. This makes the characters vulnerable to attacks but will charge the super bar quickly. Characters can also have unlimited supers during critical health, but having both a charged super bar and low health will allow a player to use a much more powerful version of the super. This has been given the name "standard mode" in KoF 97 and "S groove" in Capcom vs SNK. With the success of KoF 94, SNK immediately started working on the next installment, KoF 95. The game was a big improvement over the first one. The biggest change is that you are able to pick a team of 3 with any character on the roster. Additional characters from other Garou, AoF has been added such as Billy Kane and Kisaragi Eiji. The game also introduced its other original main character, Yagami Iori as the rival of Kyo, the protagonist. Storyline-wise, Rugal has been utilizing the Orochi powers and has become more powerful than Kyo (who defeated Rugal in 94). However Rugal wasn't fully able to use this power the powers were too overwhelming and killed him in the end. The King of Fighters 96, gameplay-wise, was pretty much the same as 95. There hasn't been much change in the game other than adding additonal characters into the mix. A new boss called Goenitz took Rugal's place, who eventually became a fan favorite. Nothing much can be said about this year, other than Athena's PSYCHOBAAAALL really bugged the crap out of me. Kof 97 however, was possibly the best title up to that day. Gameplay wise, SNK added a new super mechanic that allows players to stock up to 3 supers, or use 1 stock to gain a temporary stat boost. Using a super during this stat boost will result in a more powerful version of a super. This was called "Extra mode" in this game and Capcom vs SNK called it the "N groove". In the storyline, players are introduced to 3 new original characters called the orochi team; Chris, Shermie, and Yashiro. There are two versions of Iori, Leona, Chris, Shermie, and Yashiro in this game. They have their original forms and a form in which their orochi blood awakens. Iori and Leona have the same moves but moves much quicker (sometimes it's really hard to control because they move so damn quick) and the orochi team characters play very differently. They became opposites of the Hero team. For example, Chris utilize fire like Kyo, Yashiro becomes a grappler like Daimon and Shermie uses lightning like Benimaru. Anyway, Chris becomes Orochi and he got his ass kicked by the Heroes team. This concludes the Orochi storyline. Oh btw, Athena's psycho ball is STILL annoying as hell. The King of Fighters 98 is not exactly a game that is related to the main storyline, because it isn't. Kof 98 is a dream match for all previous games. It uses the same standard and extra game modes like in 97. Every character thus far is included, even the American team that was taken out since 95. To many, Kof 98 was the best KoF ever. If you're looking for storyline, you won't find it in 98, but this game is truely a dream come true for any fan who has followed the series for these 4 years. In the next part I will go over the NESTS storyline, going from KoF99-2002. New gameplay elements, a new main character that dethroned Kyo (oh noes!), and a bigger, badder dream match game. Part 2 is up: http://screwattack.com/node/16108

The King of Fighters Retrospective "NESTS: 99-02" (part 2/4)

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:43:30 -0500

Yo G1s! Can’t believe it’s been almost a month since I’ve written the first part of my King of Fighters retrospective. I was planning on writing it sooner but I’ve been really busy with school. =T Anyway here is part two. In this segment I will cover the next “saga” of the King of Fighters series, from 1999 to 2002. A few personal friends of mine who read my previous blog told me that it wasn’t nearly as detailed as it should be. I take constructive criticisms well and I wrote this one as detailed as I can Enjoy. Oh btw if you haven’t read the first part, you can do so by clicking here: http://screwattack.com/node/14669 I covered the beginning of the KoF franchise from 94-98. --- In 1999, SNK has been facing some financial troubles. They lost a lot of money after releasing three consoles that did not sell at all; the Neo-Geo CD, Neo-Geo 64, and the Neo-Geo pocket. These three systems put the company in a grave financial situation. The only source of income for SNK is their arcade titles, mostly with KoF 98 and Metal Slug. Many of their franchises such as KoF and Metal Slug were ported to their rival consoles such as SNES, Playstation, Genesis, and Saturn. Unfortunately, the company becomes more focused towards staying in business than making good games. The next few titles, at least in my opinion, are some of the worst KoF games ever made. The King of Fighters 98 (technically it was 97) concluded the Orochi saga and 99 started a new storyline, later to be called as the “NESTS Chronicles.” Kusanagi Kyo and his rival Yagami Iori has been knocked off the main characters throne and is now replaced by a new guy, K’ (pronounced K-dash). He was a fighter who got captured by an organization called NESTS and they implanted him with Kyo’s DNA in order to make the ultimate fighter. But instead he betrayed NESTS and seeks revenge against them for using him and wiping his memories. Kyo and Iori are still in the game, but not as a part of the main cast and don’t belong to any teams. A huge change to the gameplay was the striker system. Each team now consists of 4 characters instead of 3, and the 4th character becomes the striker, where you can call upon in the middle of a match to rush in and perform a special move. While it is interesting and has a lot of potential, the striker system sucks. The only use for it is to force an opponent to block at times when you’re in a pinch. Anyone can see the attack coming from a mile away. The “extra” and “advanced” super meters were taken out and players are given a single type, much closer to the advanced type. This super bar mechanism would stay with the KoF series until 2003. The boss of this game is Krizalid, another Kyo clone by NESTS. Now that I look back on this game after 10 years in retrospect, it’s really not THAT bad. Don’t get me wrong this game is crap compared to the good KoF games, but I think people bash it way too much and I’m guilty of that myself. They tried something new during an economic crisis and weren’t all that successful at it. I think one major reason why 99 bombed was because 98 was so damn good. It easily overshadowed 99, 2000, and even 2001.
Onto Y2K… The year that spawned a worse game than 99, if that was even possible. 2000 was essentially the exact same game as 99 with a few minor changes. The striker system is back, except now you can use it anytime and is refillable with taunts (but depleting a super stock). In other words, the striker system went from totally useless to totally cheap. Certain strikers such as Nakoruru (holy **** they put Nakoruru in a KoF game!!!) can refill a player’s health when called. Do I need to say any more? All I can say is this… SNK is in a financial crisis so they basically took their previous game, put a little makeup on it, and it turned out horrible. Unfortunately, it was the last KoF game produced by the original SNK team, it really sucks that they had to end it in such terrible fashion. The only 2 things this game accomplished were developing the NESTS storyline and introducing a new fan favorite character, Kula Diamond as a bonus character. Other than that, I can’t really put any more criticisms on this game because like I said, it is pretty much the exact same game as 99. POWER KNUCKLE TO THE FACE!! This, G1s, is the reason why Kasumi never made it to 2001 :P By 2001, SNK has declared bankruptcy. The company was sold to a Japanese Pan*****o company called Azure, who used the SNK characters in their Pa*****o machines. They also used the characters in an effort to make some money out of Capcom by letting Capcom make Capcom vs SNK1 and 2, but I’ll save those games for part 4 in the retrospective. Anyway, onto The King of Fighters 2001… This game was not developed by SNK as they no longer exist when the game got released. This game was produced by a Korean company called Eolith and developed by a small company formed by former SNK employees called Breezzasoft. It was later on ported to Dreamcast and PS2 by the newly established SNK Playmore. This was… alright. It still wasn’t as good as 98 was but it was a hundred times better than 99 and 2000. My major complaint about this game is that somehow throws do absolutely crap damage unless you’re a special grappler like Clark or Daimon. Regular throws are just not even worth using. The super system works like this: you have 1 bar to charge your supers, the length of the bar depending on the # of strikers you have which I’ll get into later on. Each super takes 1 stock and by default (4 characters, no strikers) you can stock only 1 super at a time. The striker system is back but now it’s like a mix between 99 and 2000 in a sense that it’s not cheap and it’s not completely useless, but more closer to being on the useless side I believe. You are allowed to pick 4 characters but you don’t have to have a striker. However, this gives you a very long super bar you have to charge and only 2 stocks. By limiting your playable characters and increasing your strikers, you get more stocks and a shorter super bar. For example, you can have 3 playable characters (most people pick this option) and 1 striker, you will have a shorter bar and 2 stocks, which allows you to perform a more powerful super that takes 2 stocks at a time. Notice in the screenshot below that the Ikari team has all 4 members and one long super bar while the Korean team has Choi as a striker but a shorter bar (and can stock up to 2). This system is much more balanced, but unless you like to spam supers like no other, generally most people stick to either 4 characters or 3+1 striker. There are a few spinoffs in this game that I must mention. First, in response to the rivalry with Capcom’s Street Fighter series, the character Yuri has been given 2 supers: Shin Shoryuuken and Shungokusatsu (raging demon) as her lv2 Super. The character May Lee has been added to the Korean team, she is a spinoff of a popular Japanese super hero Kamen Rider (Masked Rider) as you can see in this pose: Also, Angel, a new character in the NESTS team is actually a spinoff of The Rock. Don’t believe me? Take a look: King of Fighters 2001 concluded the NESTS storyline as Igniz, the mastermind behind the NESTS organization was defeated by Kyo and Iori, surprisingly, since K’ is still the main character. The King of Fighters 2002 was much like 98 because it is a dream match. There is no storyline, it’s just a huge royal rumble of every KoF character from all of the previous games (except for the USA team, no one cares about them). This, in my opinion is the GREATEST KOF GAME TO THIS DATE /fanboyism. The game is made by a Eolith and a newly established SNK Playmore, who purchased Brezzasoft and rehired their old development team. They also sued the crap out of Azure for copyright infringement (Hell yeah! **** those pan*****o bastards using the SNK characters!) KoF 2002 was the starting of the rebirth of a company and their most prized franchise. Kof 2002 get rid of the striker system (finally!) of 99-2001. The series returned to its roots of the 3v3 system since 94. The super system is pretty much identical to the advanced mode in 98 (or if you prefer, the N-groove of CvS2). I can’t say anything about the storyline because there isn’t any. And My words won’t do the gameplay any justice, so take my word for it and pick up a copy for PS2 right now because it is THAT DAMN GOOD. Fortunately, SNK Playmore is re-releasing this game on the PS2 next month called KoF 2002 ultimate match just like what they did with 98 a while back. The new version will include a few characters who were not fortunate enough to make it to the original 02 like Heidern and Kasumi. And no, they’re not adding the USA team back and we don’t care. In the next blog I’ll talk about a new story arc in the KoF franchise. A new main character who’s an antagonist (!!!) New gameplay elements, graphics upgrades, and the series dropped the yearly titles. Oh my! Stay tuned This is G1 Se7enthMoon’s second part of the King of Fighters retrospective. Hope you guys enjoyed that. Peace

Cultural Gap 2: Sex and Violence

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:33:42 -0400

To relieve some of the tensions of my 1st entry of the cultural gap series http://screwattack.com/node/11517 , I thought about a pretty funny topic to talk about that was mentioned on hard news a while back. Today’s I’d like to point out our views on 2 taboos of videogames in the east (mainly Japan) and in the west (mostly America). (I’d talk about Europe too, but I don’t know anything about the gaming culture there to make any valid points so I’ll leave that out for the G1s to comment and discuss) First I would like to talk about us western gamers. We love violence. Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto are probably some of our most cherished franchises that aren’t as popular in Japan. However, there is one thing that we don’t tolerate here and that is sex in videogames, a very popular genre in Japan. I don't understand why our violent titles don't do well over there while their own share of violence like Ninja Gaiden do really well. As for Japan goes, I’m sure some people have heard of a genre of games there called “Eroge (エロゲ)." It’s short for erotic games. While most are generic dating sims with voice-overed sex scenes in between, there are a few, mostly developed by a company called “illusion” which made games like Sexy Beach, Artificial Girl and Rapelay which are pretty much sex/rape simulation games. Those kinds of games will never be released in the U.S. It’s not like Japan doesn’t have its share of violent games: Ninja Gaiden, Biohazard/Resident Evil series, as well as many others. I’m not saying hey, let’s bring eroge’s here to the US! No, in fact, that would be terrible. It’ll just be more reasons for our politicians to ***** and whine about games. But I think it’s funny because if you look at it from a real-life perspective… Having sex is only a way of reproduction; it’s not a crime. But I’m pretty sure you’ll be pretty screwed if you’re caught ripping someone’s spine out or decapitating people like you do in Mortal Kombat. In other words, I think that violence is much worse than sex. But it is the cultural barriers that tell our society it is the other way around. ...Actually I take that back, it would be funny as hell to see what Jack Thompson wants to say about any of illusion's titles if they were brought overseas xD (wow I just noticed that I spelled cultural wrong on the title of my first blog... how embarassing)

Cultrual Gap 1: Eastern vs. Western Online Gamers

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:07:38 -0400

My first blog post on ScrewAttack yay! I'm hoping to create a series of blogs talking about the cultrual differences between gamers in the east and west. Being an Asian-American gamer there are several instances I find interesting and some that really bothers me such as the topic I want to talk about today: Online behavior We live in a time when the internet can literally do everything, ranging from searching up info, watching videos and music, downloading pr0n, and one thing that we all love, being able to play games with anyone around the globe. For me, I play DOTA competitively, I'm also a fairly hardcore Final Fantasy XI player and I also enjoy various games over xbox live. However, as I broaden my horizens to playing with gamers overseas, I began to notice a big difference in our attitudes online. Generally speaking, I would say that more than 90% of Western gamers are extremely rude and obnoxious online while Japanese gamers tend to be much more polite and respectful. This might offend some of you.. You might read this and think to yourself.. "Hey I'm always respectful to other players" but of course there are always going to be exceptions to this. I've been playing online games ever since Starcraft, and then moved onto diablo2, counter-strike, and what I play today. Over these many years, I have grown accustomed to what online gamers here usually behave like. Usually when an underskilled player makes a mistake, people would be angry and insult him, calling him n00b and other stuff. To a typical gamer in the western region, this is common practice, you can hardly join any online game without hearing the word noob or any other kind of insult at least once. I played a few Halo3 games earlier today and almost every game I've joined had a fairly new player in it. And every one of those games another teammate will start throwing out F bombs and what not at the guy. The funny thing is the people who're making the insults are just as bad. But like I said, this is so common in the online gaming community here and why am I bringing this crap up? Well, a few years back when a local arcade near my house first got a King of Fighters 2003 machine I was stoked to play it, and even though I played KoF 2002 to death I was unfamiliar with the new system and at the arcades, there was a Japanese player kicking everybody's *****. Even though he probably only knew 2 words in English he was damn good in the game. I thought I'd give it a try with my best characters (Leona, Mai and Iori btw) I got obliterated. While other people at the arcades are like "wow this guy is so noob, he got pwned" the Japanese player slightly lowered his head and said "Thank you for the match." I was quite shocked that that happened. When DoA ultimate came out on xbox1 the first thing I did was sign up for xbox live and took it online (I was pretty decent). Of course, nothing really changes in the American community (I can't say much about the Europeans because I don't understand their language). But when I joined a Japanese game the players are usually much more respectful, every match ends up with an "otsukaresamade****a" from both sides, win or lose. One may ask, why would you even care about what somebody says on the internet? But I must say that because we are human beings, we should all treat each other with respect. I really think that USA is the greatest country in the world, but not every aspect of our culture is perfect, but at least in the gaming world, the Japanese culture is superior to ours and there is nothing wrong with learning from them. So the next time you sign on xbox live and a noob is in your team in CoD4 and you really have the urge to talk ****, just think about this for a minute.. Will talking **** to this kid make the game more or less fun for me? We're forgetting what games are truly about - fun! So why ruin someone else's as well as your own fun experience at playing the game? If you can look beyond that, I guarantee that playing online will be much more fun than calling everyone n00b.