Back when the Neo Geo was an inaccessible luxury to most, King of Fighters 95 was receiving mixed reviews in the wake of Tekken and Virtua Fighter. In hindsight this was probably due to shortsighted writers unable to appreciate the game as anything other than a monument to the recent passing of 2D gaming. However I was still taken in by the almost universal indifference surrounding the series and passed up the opportunity to pick it up.

When I finally got around to playing my first King of Fighters game sometime around 2000, I was understandably annoyed. Annoyed that I’d allowed myself to be fooled in to thinking that 2D fighters hadn’t really advanced since the days of Street Fighter 2, and annoyed that I’d missed out on 5 years of some of the finest gaming the genre has to offer.

Luckily I’ve had plenty of time to catch up since then, so hopefully I can review King of Fighters 99 with at least a little credibility. I say a little, because I’m not going to pretend to be some kind of hardcore King of Fighters fan. I think we’ve established that already. I play them, I enjoy them, but you could probably kick the crap out of me.

Although the series has recently moved in to

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The character roster is pretty large, but maybe missing a few fan favourites

a brave new HD world (and looks absolutely great, by the way), the level of detail and character SNK managed to squeeze out of the aging Neo Geo board took me by surprise. To someone who was expecting the kind of graphical quality you’d find in arcades circa 1992, the atmospheric backgrounds, fluid animation and lovingly crafted sprites were something of a sucker punch. The backgrounds in particular still stand out as the best in the series even today, and highlights such as the stage set in an increasingly worsening rain storm put even the most recent fighting games to shame.

The gameplay was less of a culture shock, being closely related to the Street Fighter series as it is, yet I was still impressed by the finely tuned controls and depth and variety SNK had obviously honed over the years. Make no mistake - King of Fighters is a very technical fighting game and unless you’re willing to learn the game’s many nuances, prepared to get beaten. A lot.

To those unfamiliar with the format, King of Fighters uses a three-man team system which sees each fighter face each other in a knock-out system, meaning that you can potentially beat all three opponents on a team with only one of your characters. This isn’t

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Bao. Getting his ass handed to him by another midget. Hurrah!

a tag-team, so you have to think carefully and play strategically. Waste one of your characters by being too reckless and you’ve probably lost the game. Save your best character for last and you might just claw it back.

This model hasn’t changed significantly since the second game (including the frustratingly cheesy boss, who wouldn’t actually be that difficult if you didn’t have to beat him twice!), yet here King of Fighters 99 at least tried to bring something new to the table - the striker system. By pressing a certain button combination a fourth member of your team would jump in and attack your opponent for a brief period with a special move. This gave the opportunity for a couple of extra hits in a combo, or at least a distraction while you attacked from another angle. It’s very rarely game deciding stuff and often proves to be more of annoyance than a real threat, but by the same token it can also safely be ignored without too much detriment to the main game.

No, the striker system isn’t to blame for King of Fighters 99's imperfections. It’s the new characters and the characters they changed. Now this may seem a little unfair, because most of the characters they introduced are actually fairly decent.

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The final stage of the rainstorm...it looks a lot more impressive in action, OK?

K’, the new poster boy for the series, had an unusual move set and underdog storyline that made him compelling enough even if he wasn’t much fun to play. Bao, on the other hand, is just annoying in every respect and makes me feel depressed every time the random character select picks him. Off to unused striker land you go!

And the changes they made to Kyo (explained by the storyline) would be close to sacrilegious were he not playable in his original form. But it’s these changes, no matter how small, that give this game a much rougher edge than the perfectly tuned experience that was King of Fighters 98 (review coming...when I feel like it). It is worth remembering that 98 was a dream match and its sole aim was to provide a culmination of the four years previous, while 99 was at least trying to take the series in a slightly different direction.

It’s still a fine game in its own right, and one that was good enough to get me hooked on the series without any prior experience. I’d eventually discover that there were better King of Fighters games available for different reasons, but it’s King of Fighters 99 that will stay in my memory the longest.