KOF/SNKP News Around The Web.

Just an update of different things around the internet i've come across recently.

Firstly some bits and pieces i saw via SNK-CAPCOM.com:

Shinkiro Retrospective 1991-2011 on Urban Muse, a look at Shinkiro along with plenty of images of his work and a small Q&A/Interview section. Well worth checking out just for the images alone.

Also seen via SNK-CAPCOM.com, a short Neo Geo tribute movie called 'Neo-Geo Bigger, Badder Better'. Very well made movie, kind of an arty. I enjoyed it enough to make me set up my AES console again.



Via SPEKSNK.org, i came across the SNKPlaymore game blog. Which currently has details (in Japanese) of some of the changes they have made to KOF98:UM Final Edition.

Also check out Nilcam's review and comparisons (to the MVC3 pad) of the Neo Geo pad for the ps3 over on DreamCancel.com.

Last but not least, Gunsmith has updated Orochinagi.com with a few more vids from the KOFXIII Beginners Tournament, which was held at Ultimate Clash X. Check out the vids here.

Ultimate Clash X - 02UM Videos and Results

Gunsmith over on Orochinagi.com has just finished uploading the set of videos and results from the Ultimate Clash X event which was held in London on the 6th February.

I've only embedded the match where i played against Bata in the group stages, but you can check out the full results and videos over on Orochinagi.com.

Also check out the first of the videos of the KOFXIII beginners tournament here.

Wonder Festival 2011 - Mai Shiranui & Cham Cham Figures

I came across this post on Kotaku today regarding the Wonder Festival held in Japan recently, and noticed quite a few Mai Shiranui figures. They all look pretty well made, though i'm not 100% sure whether they will be mass market figures or are limited run models, as if you read the wikipedia article you will notice they mention some of the figures shown at the show are only made in limited quantities.

Though i'd imagine even if these are released, they may cost quite alot , if the prices for the latest Mai figures are anything to go by.

Check out the pics below:

In the same article i also came across this figure of Cham Cham, looks like it's articulated too which is always nice. This i assume would be more likely to be released as a mass market figure.

There were also a few pics of a Mai cosplayer, check them out on Kotaku Japan.

KOFXIII - First Impressions

Although you've probably read loads of first impressions of KOFXIII by now, i've only just managed to play it today at the Ultimate Clash X Event in London. (See the results for the KOFXIII beginners tournament and KOF02UM tournament here or here.)

First impressions of the game were pretty positive, i found the game very enjoyable and a huge step up from KOFXII.

There have been quite a few changes to some of the characters from XII, Clark who i used as part of my main team in XII i found incredibly difficult to use in this. Particularly since they changed his standing D to his forward+D from XII and his original standing D is only activated close up.
Although people had mentioned to me the command grabs were better in this game, i didn't think they were restored to previous KOF command grab properties. For example one game i played the opponent rolled out of my grab !! That's not to say the command grabs aren't better in this game, just not quite as good as i would have hoped.

Athena i felt was much improved, although not as strong as her 02/02UM version i felt i could play alot more like that version unlike the XII version, which i felt was a very weak Athena.

I was fairly dissapointed with Mai, i didn't feel that she was as good as her other versions. Particularly coming from playing 02UM where she has a large amount of special moves, she feels a little watered down in this.

Kyo seemed not that much different to play, they've changed some of the properties of his moves (qcf+B now has noticable recovery on it).

Kensou seemed alot more fun than his XII version.

Raiden who i practiced playing throughout most of the day is really as broken as you could imagine, i didn't manage to execute his full dropkick combo but the dropkicks by themselves usually did the job...

Takuma i quite liked, although i wasn't quite sure how to play him properly i thought he seemed pretty strong.

The colour schemes you can pick for characters in the game are really nice, i liked a good majority of them and felt SNKP must have put alot of thought into this.

I never quite got the gist of the BC combos or drive cancelling today but look forward to being able to spend some time learning it when the console version comes out.

Although Neomax specials look flashy in videos, they look even better when you see them happen in real life.
I didn't get to see many (particularly as people weren't quite sure of the commands for them), but the ones i did see i thought were pretty cool.

Hitboxes and cross ups i felt were a little strange, half the time where i didn't think i should have been crossed up i ended up in a cross up. There was one funny thing i saw during one of the matches where a player jumped over K' who did an uppercut into qcb+K and he did that special into the completely wrong way.

At the end of the day i thought the game was pretty decent and enjoyed playing it. Although i will stand by what i said to others today, i still think 02UM is a better game BUT i am really looking forward to the home console version now so that i can try out some more things.

I think SNKP did a good job on this game, it isn't quite perfection but i think once the console versions comes out it will only be a good thing for the KOF community.

The Art of SNK WORLD Vol.1 / SNK Illustrations - A Quick Look

A couple of weeks ago i went around to Jericho MPM's house to play some games, so he could show me a few things on older SNK titles, and he also kindly offered to show me some of his SNK artbook collection.

Of the ones i looked through i found The Art of SNK World Vol.1 and SNK Illustrations to be the most interesting, so will be showing a few photos i took of those two books.

Although there is not much to say about each book, as they are pretty much 90% images, i did take quite a few photos. 

First up is The Art of SNK World.

As you can see in the contents listing it covers artwork from SamSho 1/2, Fatal Fury 1/2/SP, Art of Fighting 1/2, and KOF94.

Each section of the book is seperated by a title page with a blurb of Engrish at the bottom, which of course SNK is pretty infamous for.

Secondly is the SNK Illustrations book, of the two books i really liked this one in particular. Not only does it cover a wide range of SNK games, it also covers SNK games from before the MVS/AES era.

Apologies for some of the sideway images, blogspot sometimes uploads them that way even after i turn them the right way around...

As you can see the KOF96 section has profiles for each of the teams of that particular game, as well as below where you can see a character relationship chart. For example Kensou loves Athena but there's no arrow pointing back to say she likes him in the same way...lol.

Some of the 4koma (4 panel comic strips) in this are pretty good, i've always liked the 4koma KOF stuff but never owned very much of it. :(

Found the above image pretty amusing...I believe it was artwork used for the instruction manual for one of the KOF games (most likely 95).

As mentioned there's a section dedicated to the older SNK games. (Ikari Warriors, Athena, etc...)

The Athena designs section i particularly liked, especially since i had never seen any of it before.

Interestingly G-Mantle appears in this book, had not known of this character before the recent Neo Geo Station promotions so was nice to see some more information/pictures of him. The above image some of you should recognise from the backgrounds of the Neo Geo Station releases.

There was also a page showing the illustration process, although not in great detail (this double spread was all that was shown) it was nice to see how they worked on the art at SNK.

So overall alot of images in each of the books, though as i mentioned of the two i really liked the SNK Illustrations book in particular due to the diversity of images. Hopefully will own it myself at some point.

Finally just to end this fairly long entry, there was one last thing that i found kind of interesting in one of the Neo Geo Freaks that Jericho owned.

In this particular issue of NGF it shows what looks like an early version of SNK vs Capcom, although as i understand this would have been the Capcom version which eventually ended up as Capcom vs SNK.

As you can see in these early screenshots the game included stages from existing Capcom fighters as well as one stage which i don't seem to recognise at all.

I'll try to do a write up on Neo Geo Freaks at some point, i don't own many issues (maybe about 6 or 7 of them) but they are pretty interesting and well recommended for SNK fans if you can find them.