A Quick Look At All About Street Fighter III : New Generation The Fighting Bible and The Characters.

I had a bit of free time today, so decided to make another video featuring the All About books. 

This time the video is about the Street Fighter III: New Generation books, although I'm not quite a fan of the SF3 series I do quite like these books and the artwork from the game.

The narration is a bit off in places as I found a problem using a video recorded with the iPad in that the sound doesn't convert at all when using Movie Maker. So I had to re-record the narration with Movie Maker. 

The image quality is a lot better than my previous video though, so at least next time I'll be a bit more prepared since I know that I'll have to record the narration separately next time.

I think for my next video I'll be doing both SF Zero books at the same time.

A Quick Look At All About Garou Densetsu Special [Book]

This is something that I bought quite a while ago, and just haven't really had the time to talk about in the past. So have decided to make a video just going through the book, and trying to explain as much of it as possible. (My Japanese reading ability is still pretty weak.)

I really like these series of books, in the past I already made a video of the All about SNK book, and I'll probably make a couple of more videos about the other books I have in the series at some point or other. 

For some reason I thought I had the World Heroes one, and was actually planning to do a video on that today, but it seems I haven't bought that one yet. (Or maybe I have it in the UK...)

The King of Fighters Fighting Evolution 10th - Art Book - A Quick Look

I've been meaning to write about this for quite some time now, although quite an old book (5 years or so i believe) it's not very easy to get ahold of SNKP related books in the UK so i tried to win this when i saw it up for auction.

It ended up costing me about £18 or so including delivery, not that expensive i think, but in my opinion it was worth every penny.

First thing i noticed when i received and something eBay photos would probably not prepare you for is how thick this book is. At slightly over 250 pages, it is not much thinner than the side of a cigarette packet.

Filled to the brim with artworks spanning from KOF94 up until 03, the book covers all of the KOF artists over the years though of course most prominently feature is Shinkiro who was the one of the main artists for SNK up until their bankruptcy.

All artists are featured (that i can tell), even Wing Yan and King Tung, who are the artists for the Hong Kong KOF man hua/comic.

Although when i was a bit younger i never really tended to appreciate Shinkiro's drawing style, after looking through this book i got a real feeling of how much love he puts into his work and appreciated it alot more.

The above image of Chang is probably one of my favorite Shinkiro pieces, although he is designed to be a comical character anyway the realistic look of him smiling really does make me laugh.

Like the newer Character Encyclopedia i previously wrote about, this one also features some character profiles and character images through out the years. Although maybe not as well presented as the Character Encyclopedia it probably does rival it in term of information.
(Though i can't read Japanese so i'm not really able to say for sure.)

Also above you can check out the character's 'relation' chart. I do remember spotting something that was left out, though it may very well just have been something that's happened in the story since '03, but can't remember exactly what it was right at this moment.

Not much unlike the lay out Neo Geo Freaks Magazine used to use (or at least it reminds me of it) they have a rundown of each KOF game up until 03.
(At some point i probably should learn some more Japanese so i can actually read this stuff...)

Geese Howard and Athena Asamiya also have a whole page dedicated to them, in the case of Geese i believe it is a brief history of his character and the Athena page being dedicated to her costume changes over the years.

One thing i actually didn't expect was that this book not only features KOF but also some of the other major (or not so major) SNK fighting game titles. Last Blade, Buriki One, Samurai Shodown all have small sections dedicated to them. Not in a great deal, but it was nice that they were included too.

And of course you couldn't really have a SNK book about King of Fighters without the two games it was spun off from. The Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury series are also covered in this book in alot more detail than the other games i just mentioned, with artwork from the games throughout the years.

In the closing sections of the book it also features special illustrations from SNK, the one i found most interesting was the comic book panels drawn by Shinkiro. I'm not sure whether a comic book was ever made, if it was artwork created for instruction manuals, or an unused concept.

I'll have to have a flick through a few of the AES manuals for the games i own to have a check later tonight.

So in closing, as i mentioned i felt this book was worth buying though given that it is quite old now i wouldn't be able to recommend where to buy it other than eBay, but if you manage to find it around £18/20 or so i would recommend getting ahold of it to all fans.

Next write up i will be looking at the All About SNK Fighting Games 91-00, hopefully i'll try to do that as soon as i can. Thanks for reading!

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...)