King of Fighters 02UM [Europe] - FaceBook Fan Page

Was talking to Jericho MPM earlier and he suggested making a KOF02UM European fans page on facebook to promote and get more players active to play each other for the newly released port on XBLA.

You can either check it out here or if you scroll down the page you should see a toolbar in the sidebar. Of course all players around the world are welcome to join too.

Arcadia Magazine [DEC 2010] - Preview

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KOF02UM - Endless Mode - A Boring Saturday

Pretty much had no plans for today, since i couldn't play 02UM online and i was working my way through some of the offline achievements i thought i'd play a bit of Endless Mode so i could get the '65 wins in Endless Mode' achievement.

Once i got to 65 wins i thought i'd might as well see how long i could go on for, especially since it's so easy to win with Igniz versus CPU. After almost 2 hours of playing i got bored and hungry so thought i'd just end it after i got through the 3rd loop of characters.

In the end i got 195 wins before i stopped.

Might try to do it again when they get the online servers connected to the game to see if i'm able to get a high score. Next time i'll probably have to do it earlier in the day though, and pray that my Xbox doesn't overheat.

Would be interested to know whether anyone else is bored enough to get higher than this, since it's not difficult just very time consuming, i'm sure there must be someone crazy enough out there to do 999+ wins.

Edit: It was pointed out to me by Jericho MPM on Neoempire's forums that the highest score on KOF98UM for Endless Mode currently was over 5000 wins, crazy stuff. May have to pass on trying to get a high score if people can manage to play for that long lol... :(

King of Fighters 2002 UM hits XBLA early! A Quick Look.

I was informed by Gunsmith (Orochinagi admin) earlier on today that KOF02UM has been released early for XBLA. Although you cannot currently connect to XBL with this game, it is available now for purchase as well as being able to play a trial version.

Have only been able to play it a couple of hours, but thought i'd share my initial thoughts on it.

Firstly compared to NGBC there doesn't seem to be as much spit and polish as that game, which had all new backgrounds, extended screen size, as well as extras like a colour edit mode.
Not really a big deal since this is still a relatively new game in comparison, though it does make you wonder why it took them so long to port it (along with the delays).

From what i can remember, the backgrounds in this game look like the ones from the Arcade version rather than the ones from the original 02um on the ps2. I'm actually not sure whether the Tougeki Version for ps2 had these backgrounds also however. (My copy of the tougeki version is still sealed)

Omega Rugal's stage definitely looks alot better than it does in the original ps2 version.

It seems as though Gallery Mode has been removed from this version, though Endless and Challenge Modes are still in there for those who enjoy the one player experience. In place of Gallery mode though this does add online versus play, which as i mentioned is currently unavailable. Speculation is that XBLA titles which are released earlier than expected are not yet added to the online game servers.

This also does not have the original 2002 packaged into it like the ps2 version does.

As well as the online versus mode, there is also a leaderboards menu (see image below) where you can (not yet) view various rankings as well as some kind of True Skill Ranking. A quick google brings up this information about True Skill ranking.

I'm not sure whether this is actually the Tougeki version (though i would imagine it is) or the original 02um, i haven't actually spent enough time with the Tougeki version to know many of the differences aside from the really obvious glitches which were removed for that version.

It remains to be seen whether this is worth the upgrade from the ps2 version, as we still cannot test the online mode which i'd imagine most players would be looking forward to in this version.
Once i'm able to test out the online i'll post up some reports on that.

For players who may not own any version of 02UM i would recommend this game, i would consider this as one of the best games released by SNKP in the past few years and quite possibly one of the better KOF games overall. Also at a budget price of 800MS (as compared to the £20ish cost of the import ps2 version) it is quite a bargain.

Until they sort out the servers i'll be spending my time trying to get the offline achievements :D

KOFXIII - Heading to Consoles in Q1 2011 ?

Website Snk-Capcom.com reports that SNKPlaymore will be sponsoring the American event Oni-Con 2010, which will be held this weekend.

Within this article it also mentions that KOFXIII may currently be slated for a Q1 2011 console release. Whilst this is still a while off, it does however at least give SNKP the chance to work out any glitches or bugs (and hopefully sort out some balance issues), as well as possibly adding more characters.

For more details check out the original article here and details on Oni Con here.

KOFXIII - Mini Tourney, La Mythik

Hokuto-Youseff has posted up a few videos of the mini tournament they ran over the past weekend whilst the UK players were visting La Mythik. So far there's three videos featuring each one of the UK players versus the French players.

Tahar [FR] vs RORY [UK]


Gunsmith[UK] vs Salim [FR]


MichelS [UK] vs ??? [FR]


Check out the rest of the vids on VSFClub's Youtube Channel, all of the tournament vids start with KOFXIII First Contact/ title.

Enjoy!

UK visit to La Mythik, Paris

Gunsmith has been updating his blog over on Orochinagi regarding the UK visit to the arcade La Mythik in Paris, which took place this past weekend. Unfortunately was unable to make it myself due to my passport running out, and lack of spare funds to renew passport. :(

Read his write ups, with photos over on Orochinagi.

KOF XIII Weekend: Notes and Trip Photos
Kof XIII weekend 2nd report
KOF XIII Weekend – Gunsmith’s First Impressions

Videos also up on his Youtube channel, Karlsimposter.