Kingly Guise

Yes, even the one who blotted himself out of existence two
games before. He's been blotted back in. Look, it's a
fighting game. It doesn't have to make sense.

After months of information being delivered on an agonizingly slow drip, the next King of Fighters game has finally revealed itself more fully, with both an extended trailer and a web site launching this morning. Here are some of the features we can expect from King of Fighters XV when it arrives in stores next February...

SHATTER STRIKE: This is a versatile counter that interrupts your opponent's attacks, either dropping them to the floor or launching them into the nearest wall, at the cost of one power gauge. Press down, down forward, forward, then hard punch and hard kick together, to perform the strike and put some much needed distance between you and an aggressive opponent.

MAX MODE: Pressing the two hard attack buttons together activates Max Mode, a staple of the King of Fighters series which gives your character an adrenaline boost and a temporary advantage in fights. One new wrinkle is that a watered down version of Max Mode can be used as a link in a combo chain... it still costs two power gauges, but it eliminates downtime for the move, making it safer to perform.

RUSH: Returning from KOF XIV is the Rush combo. Quickly tap light punch and your fighter performs an autocombo, ending with a super move if you've got the power gauge to spare. Personally, I'm not a fan... it's too easy to waste power gauges using the Rush combo, and takes the satisfaction out of performing super moves. Why bother with SNK's tricky pretzel motions when you can just hammer away at the X button?

EX SPECIAL MOVES AND SUPER SPECIAL MOVES: EX Special Moves are special moves, juiced up with added damage and other benefits. If you've played any fighting game since Darkstalkers, you're already familiar with them, but one plus is that they take only half of a power gauge to perform. You can also enhance Super Moves, but those take two power gauges. Climax Super Specials are drawn out signature attacks that gobble up most of your opponent's life, but they cost three power gauges. Better save these as a coup de grace for the end of the match.

ROLLBACK NETCODE: This is the biggie for competitive players. I don't fully understand how rollback works, but I understand that it predicts which moves you're about to make before you finish them. For instance, if you enter down, then down right on the controller, the CPU will fill in the blanks and have your character throw a fireball. If that's not what you meant to do, the computer "rolls back" its prediction and has your character perform the move you actually entered. 

It seems like it would be ripe for exploitation, giving the player an opportunity to leave both the computer and their opponent hopelessly confused, but I understand that it's remarkably accurate, and preferred to previous internet gaming technologies. The 2019 reboot of Samurai Shodown does not use rollback, and consequently has been abandoned by most online gamers despite offering everything else a Samurai Shodown fan could possibly want.

A TRIMMED DOWN CAST: Remember all those nutty newcomers from the previous game, like a scantly clad Terry Bogard fangirl, a butler who controls the forces of gravity, a Brazilian ninja, and a Chinese actress who swaps masks as she fights? I hope you weren't too attached, because they're not coming back for a rematch. SNK is going back to the basics with a streamlined cast of characters, some dating back to The King of Fighters' 1994 debut. (Before any Brian Battler fans ask, no, the Sports Team probably isn't coming back. Yes yes, there's still DLC left to be announced, but you'll save yourself a lot of heartache if you just let that dream die now.)

THE DJ STATION: Tearing a page from the Smash Bros. playbook, King of Fighters XV will not only let you listen to a massive assortment of songs from past games in the series, but assign them to specific stages. You could play the entire game just listening to remixes of Arashi no Saxophone, because heaven knows there have been plenty of them.

A WIDE SELECTION OF AVAILABLE FORMATS: But not wide enough, it would seem. KOF XV will be coming to the Playstation 5 and Microsoft's Xbox Series X/S, along with the Steam and Epic digital distribution services. However, you won't find it on the Xbox One (unless you use the upcoming XCloud service as a workaround) or the Nintendo Switch. You know, the Switch, that silly little hybrid system that only sold eighty four million units. The console that recently dominated software sales charts in Japan for the first time in over thirty years. Yeah, that Switch. I don't know who makes the porting decisions over at SNK, but they can't be based on merit or common sense.