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Tuesday, 29 December 2009

Neo Geo Battle Coliseum - Xbox 360 screenshots

Not much info but as far as i can understand the game has been adapted to a 16:9 screen ratio, sprites have been updated as well as having new 3D backgrounds.



Check out the site below for about 7 pages of screenshots.
http://xbox360.cngba.com/xbox360_xw/2009122086443.shtml

As far as i'm aware this game will be released on Xbox Live Arcade sometime in 2010, along with Metal Slug XX, King of Fighters Skystage, and King of Fighters '02 Unlimited Match.

Also a new 30cm Vanessa PVC figure will be released next year, it says on this promo image that it will be released in March, though the preorders on Playasia have it set for April.

Check out the preorder here.


One last thing, the KOF Skystage blog has been updated with new screens including screens of Rugal and check out the mini game they have on the site.

You can either view it here or directly to the game here.

Edit: I found from the main site how to add it to my blog, so the game is now on the side bar here too :D

Wednesday, 9 December 2009

King of Fighters [HK] A trip to Hong Kong

Was fortunate to have had the chance to visit Hong Kong recently, as i had to go out there to do some family things, so took the chance to have a quick visit of the arcade scene over there.

For those whom may not have ever been before, Hong Kong is pretty much KOF land. You'd be hard pressed to find an arcade without at least one KOF machine somewhere, specifically King of Fighters 2002 is really popular there.

Before i left i did a little research into arcades there via members on Orochinagi.com as well as asking some friends/family, and found out two days before i landed they were doing a one day location test for KOF Skystage the new shmup.
Though i wouldn't say i was that excited about the game it would have been nice to have tried it out before it got a general release.

Anyway as i didn't have much time over there i spent the free time i did have checking out GameZone in New City, MongKok. (This is the arcade featured in videos by Youtube user game3talk)

Firstly the button layout in HongKong for KOF machines are typically the 'Chinese layout', with ABC in a row and D beneath A, whilst this isn't a huge problem to get used to on 2002 i did find it pretty hard to get used to doing multiple inputs on XII.


Also the big KOF game currently in Hong Kong is King of Fighters Road to Revenge (Aka KOF02UM), actually i think aside from the Gundam VS Gundam game it is one of the most played arcade game in Hong Kong.
This actually shows too as the player level there is intense, even though i am not that good of a player myself i struggled against pretty much every player i came across and by this i mean i was pretty much getting one manned on KOF02um consistantly.

On KOFXII however every player i played against didn't stand a chance :) (Though to be honest this isn't much of an achievement considering hardly anyone plays the game... ).
Also if you ever stop by in Hong Kong and play on the single screen (most of the other machines are back to back types) KOFXII machine in the NewCity Gamezone, i managed to get first place high score and put my initials in as 'UK!' Hopefully the machine will be around for a long time as i want my score there forever, and just as i write this i realise i should've taken a photo of my score -_-


Anyway back to Road to Revenge, the actual game on arcade looks alot sharper than the console version (by this i mean the backgrounds, not the actual character sprites) and i couldn't really notice any significant changes compared to the console version (aside obviously the boss characters are removed). Though i may not have played it enough to actually find many differences.


As i mentioned previously the player level in Hong Kong is very high, i managed to learn one or two things from the little time i spent playing there, and you will probably be able to play against pretty much most characters BUT alot of players tend to use either one of the Kyos, K', Kasumi or Nameless. As i say though you will still be able to play against a nice range of characters aside from those.

So New City, Gamezone as i mentioned was the arcade i had the chance to spend the most time at. In this arcade there were at least 9 KOF machines in a row on back to back set ups (with a random virtua striker game stuck in between).
All of these machines housing either KOF:Revenge, KOF02, KOF98UM or XII, with another XII machine on it's own opposite.

I didn't manage to get many photos but these are the ones i did take:


(Random football game)

(This screen was broken lol...)

(Lots of KOF machines :D )


And even though i think Street Fighter IV is a pile of shit game, i took some photos of the cabinets they had there. (Which were on some kind of multiple cabinet link up system)

(Some kinda budget cabinet...lol)

(Twice the price to play compared to a game of KOF:Revenge and not even half as good a game :( )



Also before i forget, a game of KOF (pretty much all of them) generally costs about HK$2 which is approximately 15p (or 24cents in US currency), so you can spend pretty much all day in the arcade in HK on very little money compared to playing arcades in the West.

One last thing before i finish up this huge post, eating and drinking in Hong Kong is very cheap also. You can eat something in somewhere like McDs, Cafe De Coral, Fairwood for about HK$30 (about £2) and they have menus in English in all of these places so it's fairly easy to figure out what you want to eat.
Cafe de Coral and Fairwood are considered fast food restaurants though they serve Chinese food, and you can eat pretty much standard stuff you find in Chinese restaurants in the UK such as Char Siu (BBQ pork) with rice.

I recommend visiting Hong Kong at least once if you're a KOF player, even if you aren't it is a nice place to visit for a quick shopping holiday. Just be prepared for the amount of people there, overcrowding there is insane, 12pm and it's pretty much as busy as Oxford Street on the weekend...

Anyways thanks for reading, as i say anything you feel i left out or you wanted to know about feel free to leave a comment.

Tuesday, 10 November 2009

Bullet Proof's Treasure Trove of Videos

Recently Bullet Proof who founded NeoEmpire has recently made his own youtube channel and has been uploading some of the things he has been working on.
He plans to create tutorials for every character in KOFXII as well as some older combo videos he has made in the past and not uploaded before.

Check out his youtube channel here and remember to subscribe to it!













Monday, 9 November 2009

King of Fighters [UK] Season 2 Ranking Battle 2 Results

This Saturday we had our second Ranking Battle of season 2, although it had to be put together at fairly short notice it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable ranking battles so far.

For possibly the first time since Super VS Battle we had the top three players all in attendance, with MichelS and Robocop2 both looking to take Tim119 off the top spot.
Though this is not to say it was all going to go their way, just because they are currently on top doesnt mean they should let their guards down towards the other players.

Kb121, one of the newer players to the RBs, almost caused an upset for MichelS by giving him an hard time during their match in the group stages.
Also ZeroNiiro gave Robocop2 a hard time during his group stage match too.

All the way down to the finals there were alot of close matches, and with the finals match each player wasn't going to give it up lightly.


Anyways here are the videos:






















Here are the results:

1st Place: MichelS

2nd Place: Tim119

3rd Place: Robocop2


4th Place: kb121


And the current leaderboard:

1. MichelS - 25
2. ZeroNiiro - 10
2. Tim119 - 10
3. SupahSupreme - 9
3. Kb121 - 9
4. Robocop2 - 8
5. ShinDragon - 7
6. DeeJay - 4
7. ShoDragon - 3
7. Cristina - 3
8. MyKom - 2
8. Kneero - 2

We'll continue the Ranking Battle season sometime in the new year, though i am also looking at possibly throwing together one more for the 5th Dec.

Friday, 30 October 2009

King of Fighters XII [UK] - Season 2 Ranking Battle 2


As i won't be in the country on the original intended date i've had to push forward the next RB a couple of weeks, it's a bit short notice but unfortunately unavoidable.

Tuesday, 27 October 2009

MCM Expo 25/10/09 - K' Cosplay

Decided to go to the MCM Expo just on the Sunday this time, didn't really expect much SNKP things to be there. Though i did see a few Samurai Shodown figures, and i'm sure there must have been plenty of KOF doujinshi there.

One thing that did catch my eye was this guy's K' cosplay:


I don't know if you can tell from just the photo, but i thought his costume was quite well made.
In particular the glove was pretty cool. Was pretty cool to see some SNKP related cosplay, usually it's just loads of Naruto or L (from Death Note).

Hopefully next time there'll be some Mai Shiranui, or B.Jenet or Angel cosplays ;)

King of Fighters [UK] Season 2 Ranking Battle 1 Results

So another season Ranking Battle season for KOFXII begins, with a slightly dissapointing turnout. Many regulars not attending, the MCM Expo clashing on the same day, and some players unable to make it.

Though on the bright side we had a few newcomers DeeJay, SupahSupreme and KB121 joining in on the action, and even though they are fairly new to the Ranking Battles they didn't give up without putting up a good fight.

In the end though MichelS stormed through the Ranking Battles without losing a single game throughout.

Anyway enough with the talk, here are the results:


1st Place. MichelS (Right) with NeoEmpire's chairman BulletProof

2nd Place. SupahSupreme

3rd Place. ShinDragon

4th Place. ZeroNiiro

And the videos:



















And finally the current RB scores:

1. MichelS - 13
2. SupahSupreme - 9
3. ShinDragon - 7
4. ZeroNiiro - 6
5. Kb121 - 4
6. ShoDragon - 3
7. DeeJay - 2
7. MyKom - 2

The date for the next RB is to be confirmed, i won't be in the country for the date i had originally planned the next one for so i will post up details in the Ranking Battles forum over on NeoEmpire as soon as possible.

Thursday, 22 October 2009

Neo Geo Online Collection Complete Box


SNKP have recently announced the rerelease of it's Neo Geo Online Collection for Playstation 2 in two box sets, both priced at Y9980 each.

The first volume featuring both Fatal Fury Archives, Garou: MoTW, Art of Fighting Anthology, Samurai Spirits Anthology and Sunsoft Collection. (19 titles total)

The second volume featuring King of Fighters Orochi Collection, King of Fighters Nests Collection, King of Fighters 98 UM, World Heroes Anthology, Fu'un Super Combo, and Last Blade 1&2. (15 titles total)

From what i can make out from what it says on the official website, apparently each box set also comes with mini marquees of each game. For those who don't know what these are, they are kind of like small game instruction cards which were supplied with MVS kits for placing in MVS cabinets.

Playasia have both Volume 1 and Volume 2 up for preorder at approximately £79 each set, with the release date set for the 23rd December.

Feel free to buy me both as a Christmas present. ;)

Sunday, 18 October 2009

King of Fighters 2002UM - Mini Session

This week one of France's KOF players Steeve has been visiting London, so i invited him and a couple of other players over for a small 02UM session.

For those who may not know, Steeve came second on KOF98UM at the Rebirth event here in London last year. (See vid of his finals match here)

Anyway here are a couple of vids, check out the rest of them at my youtube channel.



Wednesday, 14 October 2009

King of Fighters XIII, may possibly come out next year??

Came across this French video interview with Masaaki Kukino at Tokyo Game Show 2009, where he speaks of a top secret game which will be released next year.

Check out the interview here (The interview is in English):
http://www.jeuxactu.com/article-40155-exclu-tgs-2009-kukino-evoque-kof-xiii-.html

Hopefully we'll see KOFXIII sometime in 2010!

Monday, 5 October 2009

Soul Calibur Broken Destiny - Character Creation.

Had some free time today, so decided to buy the digital download of SC:BD for the PSP Go! (Since Royal Mail has decided to somehow not deliver my UMD version for 3weeks...)

But anyway, i'm not much of a Soul Calibur player so i've mostly been messing around with character creation mode and ended up trying to create Maxima from KOF. (I actually wanted to make other characters but Maxima seemed pretty easy to make.)



I know it's not 100% accurate, but it was about as close as i could manage to make him.

Decided to give him Cervantes' move set as he has some kinda gun move, though ironically i have no idea how to do his gun move. May well try to make a couple of other characters.

Let me know what you think.

Thursday, 1 October 2009

King of Fighters - Live Action Movie

So it's been announced for quite some time now but a new video of the live action KOF film has surfaced on Youtube today.

(Edit:02/10/09)
Sorry seems like the video was removed by the user... so here's a playlist of vids from the MovieSet youtube channel instead...



(Edit again: Found another user has uploaded it)


Also via the twitter feed, i managed to find out that there is also a Facebook fan page and managed to find a few pics of the movie.

(Mature, Rugal, Vice)

(Vice)

(Mature)

(Kyo???)

(^_^)

I'm not sure what to make of the movie yet, i'm still a bit baffled by the whole thing, though Gordan Chan has worked on some decent films in the past (Check out his page on imdb) so it may still turn out to be pretty good. (Just maybe not the kind of KOF movie we might have wanted)

Wednesday, 30 September 2009

KOFXII - Arrange BGM DLC


Currently up on the Japanese PSN is the 'Hard Rock' DLC pack for KOFXII, you can download the samples of each stage's remix on the KOFXII site here.

The next batch of remixes will be a 'Dance' pack on the 5th October.

Each DLC pack costs Y500, which is around about £3.50.

No details currently whether these are coming to the US or UK PSN, or even the dates of when any will be coming to the 360.
I don't have any Japanese PSN credit to check, but if it's the same as most other games you generally can't use Japanese DLC on any other region game.

Bit of a shame the first DLC details are just background music :(

Wednesday, 23 September 2009

Loads more Super VS Battle videos

Just found a load more of the videos from Super Vs Battle, bare in mind one or two of these vids might be the same matches but filmed by different people.

First up is the set uploaded by SaikyoRB.









And another batch of videos from Jae, also including an interview with Robocop2 who placed 2nd at SvB.















See more of the previous videos here and here.

Monday, 21 September 2009

King of Fighters Character Encyclopedia

Was fortunate enough to have my friend help me pick up the King of Fighters Character Encyclopedia from Japan for me recently, and thought i would write up my impressions of it for those who might be interested in it.

The encyclopedia opens with an introduction each of the KOF games. With brief explanations of the story, original release dates, and pictures of each game's opening intro for each of the main games as well as some information about the spinoff games (such as the UM games, NeoWave, the Maximum Impact series, and also 94:Rebout.).

It also has a page explaining in brief all three Sagas/Chapters of the KOF story, though i'm not sure myself as to why 94-95 aren't included as the 'Rugal Saga'.

The next part of the encylopedia, which also takes up the bulk of the book, is pretty much just a profile section for each of the characters in the series.
Since i am not fluent in Japanese, i cannot read it all, though it doesn't really seem very detailed.
From what i can tell it has some basic information about each character, a bit about their back story, and their relations to other characters in the series.
It seems a shame they didn't bulk this area up with more information, though if like me you can't understand much Japanese i guess this shouldn't matter too much.

Before i move onto the next section of
the book, there are two things which i did find fairly interesting about the profile section. The first is from what i could tell, the artwork for each character's profile was chosen from the last game in which they were in.
What is odd about this, is that Mai Shiranui is shown in her new artwork as shown on the KOF Anniversary site. Whether this was a design choice, or whether Mai was planned to be in KOFXII but scrapped at the last minute i'm not sure.
The second thing is that all images of K9999 have been blacked out, i remember hearing regarding this that SNKP did not like his character design and there were some concerns with possible copyright infringement. (Which is also why he was replaced in 2002UM with Nameless.)

(K9999 R.I.P 2001- 2009)

Moving on, the next part is a whole section dedicated to the character designs throughout the years. Athena probably being the most interesting here since she changes costume every year, and the least interesting probably being one of the characters like Ryo...
Also i noted here that the game with probably, in my opinion, the worst character art is probably 2002.

The encyclopedia also documents the country in which characters in the series come from, with Japan having the most character entries.
Probably the most amusing thing here was the fact they had Nameless listed as coming from Mars (火星), i haven't read much on the character's backstory but it seems pretty silly. (Not sure if you can see the image to the right very well?)
There are also alot of other random facts in this section, such as a tallest character chart and heaviest character chart (Any guesses as to who this might be...?).

There are also some more obscure facts such as 'Which character has the longest name?', 'Which bloodtype do most characters have?' and the one we all really want to know about 'Who has the biggest bust size?'

The final section of the encyclopedia closes with an artwork section, including concept art, character designs and some pretty interesting characters who never made it into the game. There are some really obscure character designs here too, one of them being a character who is dressed like a giraffe and practices 'Giraffe Martial Arts'.

Artworks:

(Early design of the main Character, Sho Kirishima who was later redesigned as Kyo Kusanagi)

Early design of the Rival Team in KOF95 (Iori's team)

(some of the strange character designs i mentioned earlier...)

(KOFXII designs, Kensou with short hair...)

So in closing my thoughts on whether this encyclopedia is worth a buy ? I think if you're a hardcore KOF fan you'd enjoy this book, it is fairly expensive outside of Japan though.
The artwork section alone makes it worth the purchase in my opinion.

Playasia has it here for £29.94, and that's of course without shipping/customs fees, i think the actual retail price in Japan is around about Y28,00.

Also the KOFXII BradyGames guide is now available on Amazon.co.uk for those of you who still haven't bought it, only £8.39, which is the cheapest i've seen it going for.

See my previous review of the US and JPN guides here.

Friday, 18 September 2009

King of Fighters XII - Ranking Battles Season 2

So to keep the ball rolling, we announce the second season of the King of Fighters XII.
This time however the season will split into two halves, starting in October and November and will resume for the second half in the new year (dates TBC).

As usual it will be held in Casino on the arcade version, £3 entry fee.
Who will be the King of Fighters ?


Location:
Casino, Goodge Street

Entry Fee:
£3

Dates:
>>Saturday 24th October<<
Saturday 21st November


Times:
7pm Sign up
7:30pm Start

Format:
Round Robin (Group Stages)
Single Elimination (Quarters/Semis/Third Place)
Best out of 3 (Finals)

Don't forget to join the King Of Fighters [UK] Facebook group and to follow the Twitter feed for up to the date news.

Thursday, 17 September 2009

More bits and piece from Super VS Battle


Gunsmith (Admin of Orochinagi) has uploaded another of his videos from Super VS Battle, which includes interviews on day 2 of a few of the KOFXII players. Also a part of the Money Match between Sendo and Kneero, which was the result of a dispute in the Money Match Thread over on NeoEmpire.

Also NeoEmpire user PrivateRyan has uploaded one match between Sendo and RORY from the group stages of the KOFXII tournament at SvB.
Check out his Youtube channel here.



Will update again when more vids surface.

Also on a side note there will be a big event in France in 2010 of which KOF2002UM will be one of the main games, in addition to this there will also be side events for KOFXII, KOFXI, and KOF98UM as well as a whole lot of other games.
For more details check out the thread over on Neoempire.

Tuesday, 15 September 2009

Super Vs Battle

So after a long weekend Super VS Battle has ended, the three day event held here in the UK was host to tournaments on many games.
Included in the line up was of course was KOFXII for the first time in a UK major tournament.

I turned up fairly late on the first day due to work, but check out Gunsmith's video via Orochinagi for his report on day1.

The second day of the event was for the initial group stages and elimination rounds of KOFXII, 32 players total fighting for the top 8 spots for the next day's finals.
Sadly it doesn't seem like there were many European players this time around, the bulk of the entries for XII seemed to be UK players.
I'm not sure whether this was due to not being able to make it or whether they are not playing it.


The top 8 spots after the first day of KOFXII are as follows:
KING OF FIGHTERS XII:
1: TIM119
2: Shin Rickyo
3: MichelS
4: Prodigal Son
5: Kaworu
6: DobiqWolf
7: Robocop2
8: Kusogaki

The next day the top 8 players were paired up to play against each other best out of three.
Unfortunately due to time constraints the Quarter finals were not played on stage, and i was pretty dissapointed about this.

In the end the results were:
1. Tim119
2. Robocop2
3. MichelS
4. Kaworu

Well done to the winners and particularly Kaworu who started playing later than the rest of us here in London. I'm sure tournament vids will surface soon enough, i didn't get the chance to do any filming myself though.

In the end it was an enjoyable event, and am looking forward to the next one!

Edit: First of the vids has surfaced, via Gunsmith's youtube channel, the Final between Tim119 and Robocop2.


Another vid recorded by Neoempire user Mesh:

Tuesday, 1 September 2009

PS3 Patch Version 1.02 now available!!

For those of you who own the ps3 version of KOFXII, some good news.

From the Official KOFXII Facebook Group
:
Great news, KOF XII fans! You can now download software update version 1.02 for the PlayStation 3--online play massively overhauled!

And from the forums confirming changes:
Specification changes for data interchange processing during online battles
Changes to the antenna icon during online battles
Operations with chat restrictions
Movement based on special combinations of characters(Raiden glitch)


As far as i could tell the Joe infinite also seems to have been removed, though i honestly didn't spend a long time trying it, i couldn't get it to work anymore.

No word on the Xbox360 patch yet.

Monday, 31 August 2009

Dramatic Battle Manchester Winner - Kaworu!

The Dramatic Battle in Manchester was held on the 30th August at Gamerbase, and again there was a Golden Ticket up for grabs on KOFXII.

Here are the results:

King of Fighters XII

1st: Kaworu (Kensou/Ash/Iori)
2nd: OllieMilne (Andy/Joe/Terry)
3rd: Shinji (Raiden/Ralf/Andy)
3rd: Sprint (Athena/Joe/...)

Congratulations to Kaworu for winning!!
Look forward to playing the Manchester KOFXII players at SvB. :)

Edit (07/09/09): Vids are now up on SaikoRB's youtube channel:




Check out his youtube channel here

Monday, 24 August 2009

Dramatic Battle Midlands Winner - Sendo

WINNER! Sendo!!

(Left: Veggy, Middle: Sendo, Right: Azido)

The Dramatic Battle for the Midlands took place at Global Gaming in Birmingham hosted by Electronic Dojo , where the competitors fought it out for the second KOFXII Golden Ticket to Super VS Battle in September.

The results for the KOFXII Dramatic Battle are as follows:
King of Fighter XII
1. Sendo (Kyo, Joe, Iori)
2. Azido (Kyo, Leona, Raiden)
3. Veggy (Ash, Terry, Ralf)

Congratulations to Sendo for winning!
For those of you who may not know, Sendo is one of the King of Fighters 2002 players here in the UK and plays a mean Yuri in that particular KOF.

And also for those of you still looking to win a Golden Ticket to SvB, there is still the Dramatic Battle in Manchester this coming Sunday (30th Aug).

Check out the sign up thread here.

Friday, 21 August 2009

King of Fighters XII - UK Release delayed...??

Just checked my email box and found this email inside from Game.co.uk regarding the UK release date for King of Fighters XII...

(Click image to see larger version)

Don't really understand the need for them to push back the release date another month, seems a bit silly, though for those of you who use eBay or international online stores you could always just buy the US version...

This could just be a mistake on Game's part, we shall see though.

Thursday, 20 August 2009

King of Fighters XII - Game Guides [BradyGames and Hobby Japan Mook]


So as we all know by now, King of Fighters XII has been released in both the US and Japan.
With the release of the game we also got two language versions of the guide, one being published by BradyGames and the other by Hobby Japan.

I decided to get both, as i had read alot of positive things about the American guide and the Japanese guide looked too good to pass up on.
Having received them both over the past week i just wanted to post up my initial impressions of each guide.

First up, as i did receive it first and therefore had more time to browse through, is the Japanese version by Hobby Japan.

Hobby Japan Mook - The King of Fighters XII Official Guide:

Unfortunately, as you might expect from buying a Japanese version of a guide, if your Japanese isn't pretty decent you may or may not get much out of this one.
The layout and design of this as expected of Mooks is exceptionally good, everything is laid out clearly and is well presented.
The guide opens with explanations of the game modes and explaining the various bits and pieces about the game. It then goes on to game's system, such as critical counter, sousai (aka: deadlock/clash), and even has a diagram showing the different angles of jumps.

Next is of course the various character guides, which seem to be in fair bit of depth, not being able to read Japanese fluently i can't say for sure how well things are explained. But it is presented with pictures of what you basically want to know anyway.

So as you can see to the right it basically shows which button to press to select the character colour, the basic attacks, damage details, etc. It also goes into various combos, advanced tactics, and this is pretty much where you realise you need to learn Japanese...
With basic Japanese and Kanji skills i think you'll still be able work out the combos, as it does show you pictures but all the advanced stuff is pretty difficult to read.

You then get to the Database section of the guide, which lists various frame data for characters and also the win quotes for each individual character as well as the voice data.
As i'm not really an expert in either Japanese nor frame data i can't actually tell you how good this is, so check out the (rather blurry) photo to the left.
From what i can actually read it lists the damage, how to guard and i assume the rest is recovery frames for each individual character.

Finally the end of the guide shows conceptual art for XII including the initial pixel art for each character, unused character sprites and concepts for new characters, mid/final boss characters and alternate costumes for characters.
There's some interesting stuff here, and it's also what originally made me want to buy this guide.

Out of them all i was most interested in this character to the left here, who looks like some kinda of fusion between Kyo Kusanagi and Shen Woo.
There's are quite a few characters however which looks a bit out of place and it's probably a good thing they never made the cut.
There are some other more interesting bits like how they had planned to possibly give Elizabeth her own team of characters, not sure how this would tie into the story but i'm sure we'll all find out in XIII.

I think that's pretty much everything i can say right now about the Japanese guide, so let's move onto the BradyGames one.

BradyGames Official Strategy Guide - The King of Fighters XII.

Ok, so the first thing i picked up about this guide is that presentation wise, it's not really as good as the Japanese version. It does seem to me they wasted a bit of space with large unnecessary images which could have used to show pictures of the combos like the Japanese guide.
Even the paper doesn't feel as nice, but that's just me being picky.

Having said that though, the actual content is what matters and it is indeed very good.

I think that both newbies and existing players of KOF will find this guide incredibly useful, and i highly recommend getting this guide if you're serious about playing KOFXII competitively.

It firstly gives an explanation of the terminology used for this game, basic game system information and also a brief history of the KOF series.
Also things such as team structure, super damage, and pretty much everything you will need to get started is explained here. As i've already mentioned i think for anyone completely fresh to the series will find the information here very useful.

Then like the Japanese guide it has dedicated sections for each character. There's a basic introduction to the character, you're shown all individual moves (along with their properties/damage), and then the attack strategy section.
In this particular section you're taught which moves you would probably want to use to poke or use to move into the opponent at different depths. (Seperated of course by long, middle, short.)
There is then a combo useage section which explains in some detail about the combos, and how to use them most effectively.
Each character section ends with advanced tactics and a combo appendix.

Having played KOFXII in the arcade for a few months before the console release, i still learnt quite alot from this part of the guide, it even shows and explains some of the stuff you may not figure out immediately by yourself. Such as the cancel frames for Shen Woo's specials, and Kim's instant hishoukyaku.

The final part of the guide explains the various different trophies/gamer achievements and tips on how to get them.

Unlike the Japanese guide though it isn't loaded with frame data or extras like the conceptual art, i'm not sure why but it's a shame that it is missing from this guide. Although i don't tend to use frame data it would've been nice if it had been included too.

Overall out of the two guides, i would probably be more inclined to recommend the American guide more if you cannot read Japanese.
Though if you can read Japanese then the Hobby Japan version may be better, but if you have the cash to spare just get both.

You can pick them both up on Playasia here and here, with the American guide being the cheaper of the two.
But also to note, the American guide does in fact have a UK price on the back so it may well end up being released over here via Amazon or other online stores, just for those of you who might not want to import.

Any questions about either guide, leave a comment and i'll get back to you about it.

(Also i realise the photo quality isn't great, but as i don't have a dedicated digicam at the moment phone quality images will have to do for now unfortunately...)