Neo Geo Pocket Color - King of Fighters R2

Format
Neo Geo Pocket Color
Publisher
SNK
Developer
SNK
Country of origin
Japan
Release date
1999
Genre
1 on 1 Fighter

King of Fighters R2

By Bradders
24th May 04

By: SNK Players: 1-2 Supports: Link Cable Backup: Yes

Any gamer worth their salt knows what King of Fighters means. Intense 2D fighting at it's best. The first fighter to introduce now famous "team battle", the King of Fighters series has always been synonymous with the very best in graphics, animation and gameplay. Now, rather ambitiously, we have King of Fighters on the Neo Geo Pocket, and it's ACE!

There have been a few changes from the arcade version, firstly the character roster isn't quite so extensive, although the initial selection of 14 is impressive for a handheld game, and there are even some NGP exclusive characters. Of course the graphics don't rival the arcade versions, but they are still superb. Taking the almost obligatory Super Deformed approach, all 14 fighters are solid, large, detailed and excellently animated. The backgrounds are all new, and look great. The sound and music are okay, but not something I would choose to listen to if you know what I mean.

All the characters sport their arcade counterparts moves and combos, so all that time spent in the arcades will not have gone to waste, your favourite moves and strategies will work here too! There is also the fact that the NGP only has 2 buttons whereas KoF in the arcades has four. Well this is handled by the length of the button press determining the strength of the hit, so it's all simple, present and correct. But how does it play? Superb!

KoF R2 has gameplay that rivals any of it's bigger cousins, there are tons of combos to learn, lots of secret characters and on the harder difficulties, the CPU puts up a good fight. If you aren't up to scratch you can always train in the sparring mode, and once your confident, take those skills into the "make" mode. "Make" mode lets you take a chosen fighter and pit your skills against various CPU opponents, when you win you are given new skills to collect, once collected you can arm you character with two skills that you have collected. These skills can change the attributes of your character as drastically as having a new move or just allowing you to enter some text with which to tease your opponent with at the start or the end of the match. There are well over one hundred skills to get and that is going to take you a long time. You can even upload you character into King of Fighters Dream Match '99 on the Dreamcast (not yet released in the U.K), or challenge a friend using the Link Cable.

King of Fighters R-2 is a superb fighter, and proves that fighting games can work really well on a portable system, there is so much for the player to do that even some console games are put to shame by it's depth. The graphics are brilliant, well defined and colourful and all the nuances that the arcade characters had remain intact here, a real achievement. SNK have proven once again that nobody does it like them, this game is a real masterpiece and a good enough reason to go buy a Neo Geo Pocket as soon as possible.

Those are the facts.

5/5

-- Bradders 24th May 04

Neo Geo Pocket Color King of Fighters R2 Images