Old SNK Goods From Japan - Pt.7 - King of Fighters 96 Characters Book

So in this entry i'm going to have a quick look at the Geibun Mook King of Fighters 96 Characters Book, i can't remember whether my friend picked this up from a car boot sale or a used book store but i know it never cost the Y1280 printed on the front.

I'm not sure if anyone has ever seen these kinds of books before, but they are pretty much like an extensive instruction book. I own another one of these i bought from Hong Kong years ago for KOF99 as well, and i'm not particularly fond of them.

When you open it up there's immediately an advert for Samurai Shodown RPG, with a little box at the bottom left hand corner showing a special prize Nakoruru clock that you could win back then. (Limited to 2000)

The first part of the KOF content is the character relationships chart, which tend to pop up in quite a few SNKP books, and small bits about the game's story.

Next is a section with each of the team's stories and character profiles, i can't read a whole lot about the stories but i did notice that apparently King owns a bar in England. (Or at least i think it says that.)

I always did wonder why the female team was Team England, considering none of the characters in that team are English...Maybe this explains why.

The next sections take up pretty much the bulk of the entire book showing the animation frame for characters moves for every single character...

The two bosses of the game are also shown, but not in as much detail as the other characters.

Also the system is explained, regarding all the new things which have been added to KOF96 (like guard crush and counter) and how they work.

The next section shows some of the sketch book/original artwork for the game, interestingly i never actually noticed that Goenitz had snake eyes before.

I'm not quite sure where King's arms have gone in the below pic...lol.

The next few sections were a bit text intensive so i wasn't really sure what some of them about, i do know though the picture below was showing some of the differences in moves between 95 and 96.

Some great fan art is also featured, along with a couple of 4koma strips.

And finally the back page of the book shows a little merchandise.

Overall not an amazing book by any means, it's not particularly the kind of book i would actively go out and look specifically for, though maybe worth picking up if you see it for cheap.

The next one of these blog updates will be the last of this series of the old snk goods and i'm gonna go back and take a few photos of the Neo Geo DJ Station 99 CD.