82| The King of Fighters 2002

Released: October 10th, 2002

Definitive Version: PC; Also on: Arcade, Neo Geo, PSN for PS3, XBLA for Xbox 360, PS2, Xbox, DC

The King of Fighters series is arguably the gold standard in fighting games. Developed and published by legendary arcade manufacturer SNK, the series was, for the longest time, a yearly release of all of SNKs most infamous fighting game characters duking it out with one another. Part of the reason why this worked so well was because SNK released a lot of fighting games. So many in fact that I've been looking online for a comprehensive list and I still can't find one that lists all, or even most, of the fighting games they've published. To explain to the layman, SNK was to fighting games as Squaresoft was to RPGs. It was more or less all that they worked on besides a few outliers such as Metal Slug. SNK was THE fighting game company.

The series being designed by the man who created Street Fighter, the original Street Fighter, they are traditional 2D fighting games that rely on a four button layout that give the player a few moves choose from, but still manages to offer numerous options. While things vary entry to entry, on average players will have the ability to perform grabs, rolls, counters, special attacks, ex specials, desperation moves, super attacks, parries, cancels, hops, hyper hops, etc.It's really surprising just how much the developers managed to cram into a four button layout. This isn't surprising however, as just like King of Fighters incorporates characters from SNKs various fighting game series, it also incorporates various aspects of their fighting systems. The result is an extremely versatile and well rounded fighting system.

There is a reason why this write-up seems to be less about The King of Fighters 2002 and more about The King of Fighters in general. The reality is that it is difficult to pick just which games in the series that I enjoyed the most. One of the reasons is because the best games in the series are of similar quality to one another. XIII is the most modern version and has jaw dropping gorgeous graphics. XI feels the most unique as it is a cross between The King of Fighters and Street Fighter. 2002 "feels" the best out of all of them. 98 is...well 98. Unfortunately, another reason to why it is so hard to choose is because I just haven't spent as much time with this series as I have with other fighting games. While I can appreciate the series and definitely see the quality of the games, they just aren't that very fun to play compared to other mainstays in the genre. The characters feel too stiff and the game plays a too slow for my taste. There was also an awkward period in the 2000s when the series felt like it was in limbo as the production values were just very low. Possibly it is due to me growing up with A.D.D like fighting games such as Guilty Gear, but while I have tried to get into the series multiple times it just isn't for me.

That said, if I had to choose one game in the series, it would be 2002. Yes, I realize it falls into the "awkward period" I just described, but to me this game was the best "feeling" King of Fighters game and was the most fun to play. It clearly isn't a bad choice as the game is still regularly played today and even got an update called "Unlimited Match" for the Playstation 2 and Xbox Live Arcade in 2009, and for the PC last year. There are still couple dozen people playing online on the PC version everyday, and that doesn't take into account the other versions of the game.The fact that the game had had fourteen years of staying power is nothing to overlook, and speaks volumes of its quality.