I’ve been harping on the need for a company to take the Beat ‘Em Up genre by the hand and modernize it for quite some time now, so when the further details of King of Fighters Online landed in my inbox, I smiled knowing that there’s a game developer out there that has the same passion and vision for the genre as I. At least that’s what I hope.
Dragonfly/Triple Games’ King of Fighters Online takes SNK Playmore’s much-loved fighters and places them in the mean streets of what I could only hope is South Town to take on a slew of baddies, including the bastardly Rugal. Seemingly tapping my mind for what I would consider essential gameplay elements of a modern brawler, King of Fighters Online integrates three major fighting game elements: special moves, blocking, and tag team play. While the former is nothing new (after all, Streets of Rage II was stacked with supers back in the day), the middle has been too rarely utilized, and the latter is particularly interesting as you can swap players during battle – - hopefully mid-attack, so you can set up some big time combos in the PvP and PvE modes.
The PC-only game isn’t slated to be release until 2010, which is perhaps the best news, because, as is, the environments look quite lifeless, and the enemy designs look like something straight out of Ringling Bros. Still, I give props to the development team for the cell-shaded polygonal models that retain the look (and sounds!) of their sprite-based counterparts, and from the action seen in the clip, the snappy fighting pace.
Between this and the King of Fighters Skystage shooter coming to XBLA, I’m pretty geeked for what SNK Playmore has in store for us fans. And maybe, just maybe, this will inspire Capcom to give us a real Final Fight sequel.
Founder and Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey L. Wilson’s love of all things shiny/digital has lead to jobs penning gadget- and video game-related nerd-copy for E-Gear, Laptop, LifeStyler, Parenting, PC Magazine, Sync, Wise Bread, and WWE. Besides overseeing the editorial content at 2D-X.com, the Brooklyn College grad hosts New York City’s monthly Bits and Bytes video game media and public relations meetup. You can find him at a bar sampling foreign beers, or on Twitter doing twittery things.
