The King of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga

Wii, also PS2 and PSP
Five’s a crowd
The King of Fighters series was birthed on SNK’s legendary Neo Geo MVS hardware, born of its older sibling fighters Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting. As a highly proficient fighter it’s been in long running competition with Street Fighter, borrowing from and tweaking its rival’s moveset, and differentiating itself by adding tag team battles, removing medium strength buttons and adding more complexity to its special moves.
Spanning over a decade of updates, The King of Fighters has gone on to be an extremely popular fighter, perhaps, ironically, peaking in the Capcom vs SNK series. Most would argue that KoF ‘98 has that mantle, which serves to dominate this collection, punctuating the evolution of the fighter from curious runt to top player.
Those not familiar with the series will probably find more joy and accessibility within the new Street Fighter IV (or the Hi-Def KoF XII out this year), the rest of us with dim memories of smokey arcades and quickly disappearing silvers will know what to expect – classic tag-team 2D brawling with a unique art style, complex moves and ridiculously hard bosses.
The Orochi Saga is a collection that charts the back story of the early KoF games, ending in KoF ‘97, with ‘98 included as a bonus, non story-based slugfest.
‘94 introduced the world to KoF’s tag team battling, ‘95 introduced more characters and allowed for editable teams while ‘96 and ‘97 moved further away from Street Fighter with advanced play options and rolling dodges.
Admittedly, once you’ve tried each iteration for nostalgia’s sake, there’s no going back from KoF ‘98, which brings the series to a refined, balanced and feature rich high point, including all previous (and canonically dead) characters, and a whole ton of smackdown fun.
The code does a capable job of emulating the arcade classics, with smooth gameplay and responsive inputs added to with a challenge mode and various controller options. Ultimately, this needs to be played with an arcade stick but the Classic Controller will suit all but the most hard-core gamer fine, or perhaps the Mario Kart Wheel if you’re so inclined.
7/10