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Trailer Review: King of the Fighters XII

King of the Fighters fans are a lot like people who tell you they prefer The Rolling Stones over The Beatles. They seem insane to us normal, Street Fighter-loving folk, and their predilections make us deeply uncomfortable on a fundamental level.

I kid. Outside of the weapons-based affairs, like Samurai Showdown and Last Blade, I never cottoned to SNK’s two-dimensional fighters. I’m the first to admit that the King of the Fighters titles, and the series that birthed them, are all beautiful, well-made games, but the flow of their fighting has just never clicked for me. Call it Capcom brainwashing. I respect the hell out of the King of the Fighters series though. Fighting game staples like enormous character rosters, franchise crossovers, and team battles all have their roots in the series. I also have to give props to a series that was developed on hardware from 1990 for eleven entries over as many years. That’s awesome.

King of the Fighters XII is an event for the series. It abandons all of the character sprites of yesteryear, loses many fan favorite characters, and it is built from the ground up for HD play. What’s more, every single facet of the game, from the backgrounds to the character sprites, is hand drawn.

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

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Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.