South Town.
Ow! Ow!! What? That's not enough? You asked me about the origin of the KOF tournament, and that's it! South town. That's where it started!
You want better than that? Okay, but I'm warning you, I can be a little long-winded. Where do you want me to start?
(sigh)The beginning. Of course. The beginning...uh...well, before SNK came out with the Neo-Geo system, it made some stand-alone arcade games. None of 'em were particularly popular, but there were a few. Two of them were Athena and Ikari Warriors. In Athena, you played as Atena, the goddess of war, who begins the game by having her dress torn off and being left without any weapons and armor. The goddess of war. I don't know, maybe she had an Uzi stashed in the dress. The other game was Ikari Warriors, which I've never played myself, but I've been told that it's "the best game ever". Of course, this same guy also told me that final fantasy 8 was "the best game ever", and later that final fantasy 10 was "the best game ever", so I'm detecting a pattern.
Anyways, SNK eventually came out with the Neo-Geo machine, which became famous in the arcades for giving its users the choice to select the wrong game(usually anything other than metal slug) and curse at it. The Neo-Geo also claimed to be a 24-bit machine, with a 16-bit and an 8-bit processor, though this was about as true as calling three retarded kids a genius.
Regardless, the Neo-Geo's a versatile machine, and even today the King of Fighters and Metal Slug series are continued on the big red box. In case you're uninformed, by the way, Metal Slug is a game where the goal is to insert quarters faster than the huge number on the screen could count down to zero. Eventually you would reach a "boss level" during which you would run out of quarters and be forced to beg for more quarters from "the boss", usually a parental figure or supervisor.
In the Neo-Geo's early years, action gameplay became centered on games in which you would fight a human opponent at the same machine, and if you won, then you were granted the knowledge of knowing that little snot would never try and get ahead of you in line again. Getting to actually play the video games, however, you would soon learn that fighting games had become all the rage, due to the newer hardware being able to handle 8-directional simultaneous two player input, known also by its street name--button mashing.
The advent of fighting games brought the golden age of button mashing--you see, before fighting games, pushing the buttons and wiggling the stick got you eaten by ghosts or blown up by aliens. The scientists of the late 20th century had finally achieved mankind's ultimate goal--to create a game that could be won without skill. The first of these games was Street Fighter, a game by Capcom, a company now famous for making all of its characters like Ryu. SNK followed up on Capcom's heels with their own fighting games--Art of Fighting and the Fatal Fury series. What started was a bitter rivalry that Capcom, for the most part, ignored. Who needs a good story, cool characters, and fluid control when you have...uh...Ryu?
But you don't care about a company yet, do you? Well, dammit, the company's history is important when considering the games' storyline! Continuing...Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury were well-done if not frustrating games, and could have easily gone on to create a successful franchise. When King of Fighters came out, there was an "Art of Fighting" team. They had to find a way to tie them into the story, and that way was South Town. Apparently the producers of the game decided that cities in America should only be named after directions at the bottom of a compass rose. Also, South town has approximately 10,000 residents and 15,000 bars. Each citizen owned an average of 1.5 bars in South Town. A citizen's status in South Town can be determined by the number of bars they own. King, for example, owns 492.
One man, Geese Howard, managed to amass the largest collection of bars in South Town. He did this by hiring circus rejects and out-of-work British rockers as his bodyguards, who he was able to pay peanuts and save thousands of dollars in salary every year. But his story comes later. Like, a few paragraphs down. If it doesn't, you're reading it before I've finished. Why?
Just as wealth can bring about evil, so can poorness. Or something. See, one man, Takuma Sakazaki, didn't realize that bars were the only way to make money, instead choosing to open a martial arts dojo. Since the only martial arts anyone in South Town cared about was drunken style, the dojo very quickly went bankrupt. This drove Takuma insane, and he kidnapped his own daughter, Yuri, and forced his son Ryo and student Robert Garcia, who lived in 1952 but accidentally fell into ice and was thawed out 40 years later by Takuma, to fight through various...uh..bars in order to beat him up and take Yuri back. Since everyone was so drunk, a fight occured in each of these bars.
There were two more games made for the Art of Fighting series, but no one really gave a shit.
Anyways, back to Geese Howard. Years ago, Geese Howard and Jeff Bogard were students under Tung fue Rue, a character popular for becoming more sucky in each new game. By my estimates, when Jeff and Geese were training, Tung fue Rue had the strength of a thousand '97 Ioris. Anyways, he had a secret that he could only teach one of his students. He taught Jeff, because he thought "Geese" was a stupid name. Geese killed Jeff and stole his secret, which turned out to be that by creating variations on bars, such as "dance clubs", he could make even more money. He did this, and soon ruled South Town.
Like any town warlord, he did the smart thing, which was to rig a tournament with his bodyguards and make sure his dead rival's sons and their friend would enter the tournament. He forgot, however, to arm said bodyguards with skill or guns, and Terry, Jeff's older son, defeated Geese. Terry's last punch knocked Geese from a high window, ending his life. In the second game, the tournament is sponsored by Wolfgang Krauser, who was Geese's step-brother. When they were young, ,they would play-fight often, which usually resulted in Wolfgang knocking Geese out of a high window, ending his life. Geese eventually tired of this and ran crying to his step-father, who knocked him out of a high window, ending his life. Geese re-entered the tournament, but met Terry halfway, who knocked him out of a high window, ending his life. Terry fought and beat Wolfgang Krauser, and became the record-holder for tournaments fought without a real prize. A year or so later, Geese hosted another tournament, and once again Terry knocked him out of a high window, ending his life. Terry felt the weight of three Geese-deaths on his shoulders, and decided to adopt his son Rock. Terry trained rock to fight with his father's power and his techniques, until years later, like Terry, he could avenge his father's death by knocking his father's killer out of a high window, ending his life. He never did this. Rock had a lot of emotional issues.
Now, we can finally move on to the King of Fighters series itself. Terry won KOF '91-93, that was the Fatal Fury series. '94 was a dream match, between all of SNK's favorite characters, so nothing that happened there counts for anything. All but two teams were made up of characters that SNK made before or their teammates. The two exceptions were the Japan team and the America team. Team Fatal Fury somehow ended up being sponsored by Italy, presumably because this one time a few years ago Andy fought on a boat in Italy. Or maybe France. Nevermind. The American team, for those of you who've never played an early KOF, was the biggest insult to the country from Japan since pearl harbor. Lucky, Brian, and Heavy D! Dammit, Heavy D! Dammit! His name starts with an exclamation point, so the sentance ends whenever I say Heavy D! And it makes me sound like I'm actually excited about the team. What a dirty trick.
You want me to describe each character in detail, i'm sure. Well, that's not gonna happen yet. I'm gonna go through the storyline of the games first! '94 is usually considered to not count as a dream match, but it introduced Rugal Bernstein, who killed the Bernstein bears, took their last name, and converted their treehouse into a massive ship. Rugal had some sort of pirate fetish, and so wore an eyepatch, dealt drugs and weapons on the seas, and kept a pet panther(panther was the closest thing to a parrot he could find alphabetically). Rugal was defeated, presumably by the Japan team, and started the long KOF tradition of pressing a button that makes the place blow up.
The next game, '95, replaced the american team with one led by Kyo's new old rival, Iori Yagami. The invitation notes were given by a man with a name that started with "R", but remarkably noone could guess that it was...this is a shocker...Rugal. Team Japan once again made their way, this time without sponsorship or a name other than the Hero Team, which was enough to get them to the last match. Surprised to see rugal again, Kyo defeated him. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Rugal made some stuff blow up and he and Iori disappeared, but it had about the same crappy ending as '94.
'96 was popular in that it was the first tournament that was sponsored worldwide, and was supposed to have actual prize money. Many of the teams had various high points of the tournament, including the Fatal Fury team. Near the semifinals, they fought another team led by Geese Howard. This promised to be an amazing fight, as Terry demanded that Geese pay the child support he owed Terry and Rock. Though Geese had once again regained his fortune by collecting his life insurance, he didn't want to pay. To avoid this, Geese threw himself out of a high window, ending his life. Also, the Japan team won again, and got to fight the sponsor, Chizuru. Rather than conserve all their energy for the fight with an evil power she was supposed to keep sealed, she figured it would be better if the winning team would beat the crap out of her and take the evil power on with the remaining members. In fact, Kyo had such a hard time taking on the boss, Goenitz, that he had to get help from Iori. After defeating Goenitz, Kyo does other stuff that no one care about, but Iori went through the blood riot and killed his teammates. Leona probably did something like that too, but who cares.
'97 was the end of the Orochi saga, 'cause that's when all the blithering Rugal and Gonads did in their death speeches finally made sense. Both Iori and Leona went into Blood Riot mode, but were subdued. For some reason, Yamazaki didn't, even though he's supposed to be Orochi too. The reason for this is likely that SNK didn't give a crap about their old characters. Anyways, Orochi took over the body of Chris, a member of the New Faces team, and had really tight pants. It was with these tight pants that Orochi attempted to take over the world. Kyo and Iori fought Orochi, and proved that together, their pants were stupider than Orochi's. Chizuru, who wore slacks, helped too.
In '99, a cartel....what do you mean, "What about '98?" '98 never happened. Every fourth year's a dream match. Nothing that counted then happened. What team won? I dunno. Maybe the sports guys. It doesn't matter, it didn't happen! In fact, ,storywise, Kyo disappeared.
1999 was when...was when...I'm sorry. It's just that I get so emotional. You see, in '99, SNK did the worst thing in the history of crimes, what likely put them out of business. They...They... I can't say it. Poor Athena. Anyways, they introduced NESTS, a cartel which dealt in stupid plans for world domination. In fact, it was discovered that not only Geese Howard's plan for world domination was bought from NESTS(Step 1:Fall from window to death. Step 2:Go to Step 1.), but also Rugal's and Goenitz's. They introduced a bunch of new characters, including a new hero team from Canada. Unfortunately, they didn't have enough members for a complete team, so they got Benimaru and Shingo, who Kyo willed to them before he disappeared. 99's plot made no sense, except that K' was supposed to be a clone of Krizalid, or the other way around, and no one in the world noticed the armies of Kyo Kusanagies wading randomly through towns. It ended with Krizalid getting hit on the head by a chunk of ceiling.
In 2000, we started noticing a trend of cheap-asseder bosses, coming from the new NESTS Cheap-ass Boss Lab, which was located on a big-ass satellite, which was produced in the NESTS Big-ass Satellite Lab, which was designed by the NESTS Useless-ass Lab Lab. SNK really didn't have a plot for this game. It was just a clarification on the poorly-translated and quickly-done '99. Seriously. They just threw some more bosses in there. Oh, well.
2K1 was another sad year for Athena, but also for the rest of KOF, since SNK had sold it to a company called Eolith. Eolith tried their damnedest to ruin the game, introducing cheap combo characters, ignoring the kick button, and ruining the music. They also laughed at gravity, proving that once a satellite's engine is disabled, it quickly stops orbiting and drops like a stone to the earth directly into another one of their labs. This was the end of the stupid NESTS cartel storyline.
Recently, Eolith sold the rights to 2K2 to Playmore, who dropped the striker system, comboed up the game, and dropped two of the most popular characters, King and Shingo. Hopefully, they'll bring them back before the heads of the company are killed by an angry mob. Also, they made almost every character extremely ugly or put them in a stupid pose. Luckily, though, Athena's cancer went into remission, they stopped the chemotherapy, and her hair finally grew back. This is supposed to be another dream match, so we don't know what to expect in the future. Next, let's take a look at each individual character.
Part 2:Characters
The King of Fighters series has an interesting assortment of characters, each with their own abilities--okay, i'm lying. Most are either strong and slow, weak and fast, or average. I feel so horrible now. But I guess I'll describe them all anyways.
Kyo Kusanagi:He's the hero, because he's from Japan. At least, he used to be the hero. Now he tries to be all cool and mysterious, but it doesn't work, considering he's a complete dork. For god's sake, the guy puts numbers in front of his special moves to try and make them sound cool. A special move should be cool on its own merits. In addition, Kyo's still in high school at age 20. But that's not as bad as his friend who probably got kicked out...
Benimaru Nikkaido, or whatever:He's the guy that looks like he got his head stuck in a cotton candy machine, then urinated on. He likes wearing tight pants and shirts that expose his cleavage. He hates fans, probably because he doesn't have any. He uses electricity and cheap-assedness as his strong points. He pimped himself out in '99, then came crawling back to Kyo in 2000. More proud, however, is the third teammate...
Goro Daimon: This is the big guy without a shirt. It takes a cool guy to be able to walk around shirtless and still look good. Goro is not that cool. He's the character the boys at SNK have still yet to affix a story or plot to, so I can't really say much about him. I can, however, say something about the guy who wants to take his place when he retires...
Shingo Yabuki:This is Kyo's mandatory fanboy. Though for some reason in '97 he was so strong he could take on entire teams by himself, he insisted that Kyo train him in the art of useless moves that had fire coming off of them. Kyo kept rejecting Shingo, who eventually went to train under Kyo's dad....
Saisyu Kusanagi:He was only in like one tournament, and even then he always scratched himself. He's a master of some martial arts form that I can neither pronounce nor remember. He decided to team up one year with Heidern and some other guy, maybe Geese, who he probably would have thrown out a window, ending his life. Anyways, he killed Iori's dad, but for some reason has been ignored by...
Iori Yagami: He's the guy with the red unibang, and in some pictures, the huge jaw and gigantic shoulders. He's supposed to be sort of like a Japanese Marilyn Manson, but ended up becoming a fangirls' bishonen. He is, however the ultimate in coolness and dorkiness mixed up in one. He has a bitter rivalry which will only end upon death, eats only meat, and gets possessed, but claims to hate violence, accidentally ties his pant legs together, and lies about having a girlfriend. His mother died during childbirth, due to baby Iori's three-foot wide shoulders. Strange indeed, but not as strange as..
K':His name's pronounced "Kay-Prime". He's the sucker that got Kyo's genes transplanted into him. He's supposed to be Whip's brother or something. He's got dark skin and sunglasses that he throws or sets on fire because he thinks it's cool. His fighting style is said to be "violins", whatever that means. Oh, sorry, that's "violence". Such a mean guy. Fighting with...VIOLENCE! Anyways, to balance him out is his buddy...
Maxima:Belive it or not, this burly guy's Canadian. And a cyborg. A Canadian cyborg can cause computers to catastrophically crash. But that's beside the point. He also has a bunch of guns built-in. Seems he also had a niceness-gravity-well installed in him, 'cause he drained all the nice out of K'. But if you want to talk about nice guys, there's always...
Terry Bogard:He's the dude with a hat on and blue jeans. He says stuff in what's supposed to be english, but most of his attacks sound like "rising taco" or "rannaway!". He won the KOF tournaments before the whole "team" rule dragged him down. If the NESTS cartel'd made Terry clones instead of Kyo clones, there's never be a kid needing a partner for basketball again. Entering all of "Terry"'s trainees into the NBA would net the NESTS cartel a whole lot o' money. Terry's had two girlfriends in the movies, and both of them have died by falli--wait, that's...
Geese Howard:Owner of Howard Industries, Geese Howard falls out of a high window, ending his life. How he keeps coming back is a mystery. Maybe that's why his name's plural. So would one of Geese be a Goose Howard? Aah, forget I said anything. Anyways, Geese/Goose hired a bunch of bodyguards, the most annoying of whom was...
Billy Kane:A supposed-to-be British Rocker who wields a stick. If you take his stick away from him, he cries. His quasi-English screeches make most people's ears bleed. He sings his BGM, I belive. And he hates smoking. Just look at the back of his jacket. For some reason, Geese likes to see Billy fight in the tournament, and joining him is....
Ryuji Yamazaki:Another one of them Orochi-blooders, Yamazaki was ignored when the blood riot happened. Or no one could tell. He keeps his hand in his pocket most of the time and bites and does lots of other nasty attacks, my favorite of which is the one where he mops the floor with the opponent's head. Billy and Yamazaki are watched over by...
Blue Mary:Not-so-secret agent and girlfriend of Terry Bogard, Blue Mary demonstrates exactly how thick the bad guys are. She helped Terry beat up Geese #15 in Fatal Fury 3, and he still trusts her to fight on the team with his two best men. Most people can tell she's a secret agent by looking at her. Maybe it's the huge belt. Maybe it's the hair. Or maybe, just maybe, it's the marshall's star on her pants. You decide. But it's already decided that she's in love with...
Terry Bogard:So I already talked about him. So what? He kicks ass. And he's not as loud as his brother...
Andy Bogard:Younger Bogard brother, Andy thinks he's turning Japanese. He really thinks so. He studies Shiranui. And he learns martial arts too. The poor man is haunted my Mai, his fiancee, who is destined to marry him--once she beats him. She will someday, too. Anyways, while looking for martial arts to study, he came across the Muay Thai Kickboxing Champion...
Sagat:But he's in the wrong game. He did get a little pissed about another guy lying abuot the title, and that man was none other than...
Joe Higashi:He looks like Benimaru now, only more shameless. He didn't have that white-boy afro earlier, I swear. He's a Thai kickboxer, which is like boxing...with kicking. He's also an idiot, as are most fighting game characters that have an American first name and a Japanese last name. He's damn fast, too, probably why most girls are turned off by him, including...
Mai Shiranui:Um..Definately one of the more popular female SNK characters, she has a tiny outfit and an inexhaustable supply of fans. She's also very cruel to poor Andy, who she taunts with fake babies often. Obviously, she wants to fight on the same team with him. When she's rejected, as she usually is, she goes to...
King:I guess that SNK figured if a gay man was a queen, a gay woman would be...King. She's a crossdresser who's had her clothes knocked off multiple times. She's the queen of comboes and a bar bouncer/owner/co-owner. She sometimes wears a hat that she throws like Michael Jackson. She also apparently has a thing for....
Ryo Sakazaki:The hero of the Art of Fighting series, he's a lot like Ryu from Street Fighter. Has a bunch of moves like his, only crappier. In his old games, he had a special bar that drained as he used special moves and was taunted. Not like that's a rarity. He's got a silly-looking stance and his fireballs stop after like two feet. In Capcom games, only joke characters have that weakness. He was trained by his father...
Takuma Sakazaki:I don't quite understand this guy. He kidnaps his own daughter and makes his students come after him to get her back. Then he disguises himself with an oyaji(father, ogre) mask and assumes noone will figure him out, but Yuri tells them anyways. Then he makes up with them and joins their KOF team. Maybe it's some kind of publicity stunt; their dojo is ALWAYS broke. Maybe because they only have one non-family student...
Robert Garcia:The greaser. He's the son of a millionaire, and he won't help out his dojo. What a jerk. Actually, his dad goes broke every year too, but it's likely tax evasion. His family's group joint-hosted the millionaire fighting 2000 tournament with Ken's group, but for some reason Robert wasn't there. However, the tournament was graced by his girlfriend...
Morrigan Aensland:No, wait. That's not right..or at least Robert doesn't want someone to know. Someone named...
Yuri Sakazaki:How cute. She's got an adorable voice with an adorable speech impediment, and adorable moves that are cheesy as hell. And she attacks with her butt. That's right. Her ass is a formidable weapon. As is her cuteness. But even Yuri's cuteness pales in comparison to...
Athena Asamiya:From her pre-fight introduction all the way to her victory celebration, Athena radiates cuteness. Anyone who disagrees will be shot on sight. Try as I might, I can't say anything bad about her, even though she uses herself as a human shield when she's a striker. And the hair thing isn't funny; it's sad. Don't even talk about it. In fact, don't play any of the games 99-2k1. Anyways, Athena's the goddess of defensive war, and is admired by every male on the planet, especially...
Sie Kensou:He's every fanboy's dream. He holds fanboy tournaments with Shingo and wins. That's because he not only gets to fight alongside his idol, he also gets to use the same power. He's also made many attempts to gain her attention, most of which have failed. Maybe if it weren't for that damn kid..
Bao:He's a communist, is what he is. Just look at that hat. And he stole Kensou's Psycho power. I'd personally have killed the kid for that, but instead he got to enter in the tournament. And it's all on account of...
Chin Gensai:He balances out all of the freshness and attractiveness of the Psycho Soldiers Team. He has standard drunk-guy moves, including firebreathing. Every drunk guy can do the firebreathing trick. The reason being that they're too drunk to care about the possibility of immolating their mouth and throat. Anyways, I think he's the oldest KOF regular, followed by...
Choi Bunge:He's the guy that looks like he hangs out in the "pre-teen" chat rooms. He's apparently married, though, or at least engaged, so sorry, ladies. He bears more than a passing resemblance to Samurai Shodown's Gen-an, and it's likely he was based off the little green freak, who also hated his wife and has freaky hand-things. His partner in crime is..
Chang Koehan:He's the fat-ass with the ball and chain, and is supposed to be the most physically strong character in the KOF series. It eludes me why he still carries the ball around when he could easily break the chain, but since he's the only regular with a weapon, most people forget it and don't question him. He and Choi were captured and reprogrammed by...
Kim Kap Hwan:From Fatal Fury 2/Special, which were the EXACT same thing, Kim is the justice freak of the KOF world. He uses Tae Kwon Do, which means he has practically no punches, just kicks. He's passing down his skills as a justice freak to...
May Lee:She already knew enough Tae Kwon Do to win the KOF tournament, she just needed to learn justice-ey-ness from Kim. She took to it pretty well, and is now a near-exact copy of Amelia from The Slayers. She has gigantic shoes which lend her kicks more power, and wears a tight shirt which...uh....is tight and has a little picture on it. I think she wears goggles or something, too. She was bribed by Kim to replace...
Jhun Hoon:He's supposed to be a friend of Kim's, but the way they argue and fight all the time, they're obviously lovers. Wait, NO. That's not right. Kim's got a wife, and two sons, one of whom is named after Jhun. That helped my argument out none. Oh, well. He was a damn good character, but he's conspicuously absent from KOF 2k2, along with...
Lin:This guy was SNK's last attempt to inject mysterious-coolness into the KOF series, but, as usual, no one gave a shit about him. The man's green. Between all the "jollly green giant" jokes and the fact that he sucked, no one cared enough about him to care when he wasn't announced in 2k2's lineup. He's supposed to have some sort of connection to K', but playmore farted around and they never fleshed out his personality either. They only had slightly more success with...
Whip:She's supposed to be K''s sister, or K''s original's sister, or someone pretending to be his sister. I personally believe her, because no one would try and fool someone like that when their skin tone is so dramatically different. She's got some sort of whip fetish, and has named her whip "wood doe" or something. I tell the truth. Anyways, for a year, she was on the same team as..
Leona:Heidern's adopted daughter, Leona plays the part of a good soldier and listens to her orders, carrying them out with perfect precision. She's also got Orochi blood like Iori, but her teammates managed to get her under control when she went into blood riot mode. While Iori acts like a zombie, she acts like a wild animal, and it's rumored that she killed her parents, or something. She's a sharp contrast to...
Ralf:I was pretty sure the Ikari Warriors were supposed to be based out of America, but their names are more German. Why am I talking? The real US military has generals like "Rumsfeld" and "Schwarzkoph". Anyways, Ralf is the gung-ho member of the Ikari warriors, and has been on the team each year it's entered in the tournament. The only one with a pristene record like his is..
Clark:The other permanent member of the Ikari Warriors team, and some sort of Terry Bogard clone, from what I can tell. He's like one of 5 characters that wear a hat, and has an extreme dislike of slugs. Sometimes I think that while making up the characters, SNK picked up an english dictionary and picked out words at random. He's also unquestioning about his orders, which usually come from...
Heidern:He wears an eyepatch, appears to be missing most of his hair, leads an underground para-miliraty group, and is rumored to be a cyborg. Oh, sorry, that's "Antoine" from "Upright Citizens Brigade". The resemblance certainly is shocking, though, isn't it? He's actually pretty badass, but he's more often than not used as a "filler" character, to fill the fourth slot on the Ikari Warriors team if they can't find anyone else. His organization's got some sorta turf war going on with NESTS, who was first represented by..
Krizalid:He's supposed to be the original from which K' was cloned, but it turns out to be the other way around. I personally think I'd know if I was a clone. In fact, I know I'm not a clone, as my name is Wraith'. He was attacked by some insulated ceiling tiles at the end of KOF 99, and itched to death because he wasn't wearing his winter trenchcoat. Next year, he was replaced by...
Kula Diamond:She, like so many other characters, suffers from the disease of being connected to K'. As usual, no one cares. She has a thing for candy, and I suspect trains as well. She can breathe ice, which leads me to belive that she is either A.One of NESTS's weird-ass experiments or B.The Ice Queen of Cheese. She also has some ex-godmother, who many people suspect she also has a thing for, or something, named...
Candy:She's some sort of NESTS robot. She's two or three years old, and weighs 180 KG. She's made of metal, you fool, what do you expect? I think she was destroyed, which is why she's now an ex-godmother. Makes you wonder who Kula's parents are, ne? No, you don't care, and it's all because of that K' bastard. Well, I doubt she has much rank in NESTS, which is probably why she has to take orders from just about everyone else, including..
Dianna:The reason for the failure of NESTS should be pretty obvious when you look at some of their officers. Diana's one of them. She's got some sort of anti-gravity haircut, which NESTS spent approximately 2.3 billion dollars developing. She also seems to hire others who have similar taste in fashion. Her best student seems to be...
Angel:The poor man's Mai Shiranui, she's actually not considered as attractive because she'd be easier for any man to pick up. Why? She's a drunkard, that's why! She seems like the type that exploits the men she goes out with, which are any men that have money. I mean, look at that outfit! It's a disgrace to all that is...Hey, you guys aren't listening! Stop looking at her! In fact, take a look at...
K'9999:No, I don't know how to say his name. It's okay, we have our own name for him. Who does he look like? Think! Hint:That metal arm turns huge and fleshy, he has a thing for "his(Kaneda's) precious bike", and IS TETSUO from Akira. That's such a blatant ripoff. The weird part is, get this guys, girls think he's attractive. Makes you want to undergo mutilative surgery, eh? He was determined to be more useful than...
Foxy:Foxy is the team's senior member, and one I place in a special class of characters I call "the cheap-asses". This is because she uses a sword. It looks like one of those fencing swords, only made of rubber. Noone's sure where foxy went, maybe she's sulking after the death of....
Ling:The leader of NESTS, operating out of a satellite, and some sort of incarnation of the trapped Orochi, or something. I really don't care. He was a cheap-ass. He pioneered the art of using moves that you have to block or die no matter where you are, and even then it does like half of your life in damage. I sure hope Playmore killed him off for good, and the same goes for...
Zero:Another cheap-ass boss, the second-in command of the NESTS cartel. Or maybe he's the leader, and Ling's the second-in-command. It doesn't matter, they're both dead. He wore the same outfit, with a coat with blades on the edge that he swung around and managed to kill his opponents but not himself. Both him and Ling were dead by the time the Zero Cannon fell from space, something that was arranged in part by...
Seth:He's supposed to be some sort of secret agent, but it seems obvious. He wears suspenders and a TIE, which he apparently values almost as much as his wife. He appeared on the case for the PS KOF '99 game, confusing the hell out of many players. The reason for this was that the case had the same insert for the DC version of KOF 2000. He has a partner, too....
Vanessa:She's got nothing but punches, and moves around like a little bitch. She's supposed to be a super-sexy secret agent, but since she dresses just like Seth and joined a different team, that pretty much blew their cover. Hey, that's not the imagery I wanted. Besides, she's taken. Taken by....
Ramon:Oh, boy, another guy with an eyepatch! How many of you see a guy with one eye walking down the street? It's not very likely. In KOF, however, there's like a 5% chance that a character's a cyclops. He's also a professional wrestler. They don't say who his mentor was, maybe it was Big Bear. Just a guess. The team he's on is interested in the great power of...
Orochi:This is the evil power from 1800 years ago that appeared and lost in 1997. Since then, however, he seems to keep trying to come back, unsuccessfully every time. You'd think he'd learn to give up by now, but noooo.. He's already lost a bunch of agents. The first one he lost was...
Vice:Maybe you haven't noticed, but I stopped putting down last names. Maybe I don't remember, but it's more likely that I don't give a crap. If I cared, I would have talked about them earlier. Anyways, Vice is the short-haired freaky lady that was on Iori's team with...
Mature:She was also on Iori's team, until he RIPPED THEM IN HALF! MUAHAHAHAHA!! Sorry, they both freak me out, and I relish their deaths. Mature not as much, but still to such a degree that I stop caring. After her boss was beaten, Orochi decided to use a little boy from Sweden named..
Chris:Chris is the youngest member of the "new faces" team. The name of the team is confusing at first, but once you learn their secret, it becomes easy to understand. You see, Orochi made the team's members by sending little face-aliens(aliens that were just faces, you fool!) to find a trio of musicians to latch onto and take over, hence the "new faces". Chris's graft was successful, not so with his other two members, the first being..
Yashiro:The face grafted onto Yashiro's body was a bit too small, and ended up looking weird. I personally think he's some kind of child molester. I mean, I doubt Chris can play any instrument or sing or anything, he just keeps him around for the same reason a Catholic priest keeps an altar boy around. To keep the illusion that he's not raping poor Chris up, he keeps a woman around him. Well, I think it's a woman. I mean, her name's..
Shermie:Shermie is the human sheepdog, who we THINK might have eyes. She has an amazing ability, though:she can kick with both legs. And land on her feet. For those of you who haven't seen it, think of a person lifting both their legs to kick while the rest of their body stays stationary. If you're confused, you've got the right image. Her and Yashiro were killed when Orochi showed himself, and didn't really come back until...next year! Ugh, dream matches don't make any sense. Anyways, they're not coming back in the real game, in part due to...
Chizuru:Chizuru was important to the Orochi saga, because the whole thing started because she fucked up somewhere. I mean, her people were supposed to keep the seal to Orochi locked up, and she comes out and says "Oh, dear, somehow Orochi managed to escape, by no fault of my own!" She doesn't say how Orochi escaped, but we all can assume it was because Orochi put on a fake beard or a pair of glasses and tricked her. She joined the female team for awhile, but was eventually tossed aside, just like...
Hinako:She's the flight-attendant sumo wrestler. Given her outfit, the first part sounds believable, but the sad part is that the second part is all I can verify. She's the latest wrestler-type character, and she was recently thrown out with the trash, just like...
Xiangfei:Another drunkard character, except this one's a girl! With hair rings like Devil Hunter Yohko, too. She's always out of money and is apparently a waitress at a Chinese restaurant. Yes, she's a stereotype, but so is everyone else in the damn game. Or they're just plain weird. She seems to have learned her profession from her father, and what a coincidence! So did...
Kasumi:Ooh, she so ugly. Oh yeah, she's a ugly girl. Not only did that statement trigger the spell-checker about a dozen times, it also makes little sense. If you don't understand, there was a movie called "ugly girl" made with Iori and Kasumi. Anyways, she's the daughter of the first guy you fought in Art of Fighting. Uh..she should be the last person, but I forgot about a few, the first of which are...
Kyo clones:This is what K' and K'9999 are supposed to be. The only difference is that EVERY OTHER clone looks just like the real Kyo Kusanagi. There are many theories as to why this is, but since it's K' we're talking about, no one cares. The Kyo clones were a useless multi-billion dollar effort funded by the NESTS cartel, which is in no way associated with..
Rugal Bernstein:Arr. He's a wannabe pirate, matey. Except that he mistranslated the word parrot to panther instead. He's a boss, which translates to cheap-assedness. Cheap-assedness, by the way, is a word that spell checker hates. He's hosted all but 1 of the tournaments 94-97. That's three, by the way. The other tournament was hosted by...
Goenitz:Gonads-err, Goenitz, hosted one of those tournaments, '95 I think, and tried to absorb the Orochi power. He failed, and pushed a button that blew up his ship. I personally think Gonads-Goenitz, dammit! Spell checker, you know. I think he's really Rugal in a false mustache or something. I forget what he looked like, but he was big and dumb. What a coincidence! So was...
Brian:One of the members of the American all-stars team, Brian was a stereotype of a standard American football player. Sadly, the stereytype fits him quite well. He does tackle and charging moves, and talks with worse English than most non-English characters. A bit like Terry, actually. He shared a team with...
Mr. T:No, wait. Wrong black man with a mohawk that pities foos. His real team-mate was...
Heavy D!:The man whose name I won't say for fear of prematurely ending the sentence. You see, Heavy D! Dammit. That joke got old long ago. He's supposed to be a professional boxer, and is one of few black guys in the King of Fighters series. The other member of their motley crew was...
Lucky:The lanky black guy with a basketball, he's obviously supposed to be a basketball player. He's, like, ten feet tall, and apparently does insane damage with an air-filled basketball, many more of which appear out of nowhere. That's gotta be cheating. Their whole team had no special moves, though, so I guess it's okay. Even though they all sucked. Like I said, he's one of a few black guys, the last one being...
Mr. Big:Um...at least I think he's black. He's a pimp, though, so that's gotta count for something. He uses hookers and billy-clubs to fight. Okay, I was kidding about the hookers. They only come out at the end of a fight. He's a guy from the original Art of Fighting, and they decided to put him in one KOF game, which sounds just like the life story of...
Wolfgang Krauser:He's likely the first man to push Geese Howard out of a high window, ending his life. He one-up-man-ated Geese throughout his whole life, which made Geese hate him and come to fight him again and lose like the skirt-wearing girl of a man he is. He's from Fatal Fury 2 and Fatal Fury Special, which I am considering the same game, mainly because they're the same. Someone else who was dumped from the KOF lineup just as quickly was...
Eiji:Yeah, he's got a last name, but it's Kisaragi or something, and I don't remember. He's apparently the descendant of a character from the Last Blade series. Last Blade and Last Blade 2 were great games, but SNK made a fatal mistake... That's right, they let K' market the game. Oh, well.
There, that's it. I swear! Now, untie me!
Ow! Ow!! What? That's not enough? You asked me about the origin of the KOF tournament, and that's it! South town. That's where it started!
You want better than that? Okay, but I'm warning you, I can be a little long-winded. Where do you want me to start?
(sigh)The beginning. Of course. The beginning...uh...well, before SNK came out with the Neo-Geo system, it made some stand-alone arcade games. None of 'em were particularly popular, but there were a few. Two of them were Athena and Ikari Warriors. In Athena, you played as Atena, the goddess of war, who begins the game by having her dress torn off and being left without any weapons and armor. The goddess of war. I don't know, maybe she had an Uzi stashed in the dress. The other game was Ikari Warriors, which I've never played myself, but I've been told that it's "the best game ever". Of course, this same guy also told me that final fantasy 8 was "the best game ever", and later that final fantasy 10 was "the best game ever", so I'm detecting a pattern.
Anyways, SNK eventually came out with the Neo-Geo machine, which became famous in the arcades for giving its users the choice to select the wrong game(usually anything other than metal slug) and curse at it. The Neo-Geo also claimed to be a 24-bit machine, with a 16-bit and an 8-bit processor, though this was about as true as calling three retarded kids a genius.
Regardless, the Neo-Geo's a versatile machine, and even today the King of Fighters and Metal Slug series are continued on the big red box. In case you're uninformed, by the way, Metal Slug is a game where the goal is to insert quarters faster than the huge number on the screen could count down to zero. Eventually you would reach a "boss level" during which you would run out of quarters and be forced to beg for more quarters from "the boss", usually a parental figure or supervisor.
In the Neo-Geo's early years, action gameplay became centered on games in which you would fight a human opponent at the same machine, and if you won, then you were granted the knowledge of knowing that little snot would never try and get ahead of you in line again. Getting to actually play the video games, however, you would soon learn that fighting games had become all the rage, due to the newer hardware being able to handle 8-directional simultaneous two player input, known also by its street name--button mashing.
The advent of fighting games brought the golden age of button mashing--you see, before fighting games, pushing the buttons and wiggling the stick got you eaten by ghosts or blown up by aliens. The scientists of the late 20th century had finally achieved mankind's ultimate goal--to create a game that could be won without skill. The first of these games was Street Fighter, a game by Capcom, a company now famous for making all of its characters like Ryu. SNK followed up on Capcom's heels with their own fighting games--Art of Fighting and the Fatal Fury series. What started was a bitter rivalry that Capcom, for the most part, ignored. Who needs a good story, cool characters, and fluid control when you have...uh...Ryu?
But you don't care about a company yet, do you? Well, dammit, the company's history is important when considering the games' storyline! Continuing...Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury were well-done if not frustrating games, and could have easily gone on to create a successful franchise. When King of Fighters came out, there was an "Art of Fighting" team. They had to find a way to tie them into the story, and that way was South Town. Apparently the producers of the game decided that cities in America should only be named after directions at the bottom of a compass rose. Also, South town has approximately 10,000 residents and 15,000 bars. Each citizen owned an average of 1.5 bars in South Town. A citizen's status in South Town can be determined by the number of bars they own. King, for example, owns 492.
One man, Geese Howard, managed to amass the largest collection of bars in South Town. He did this by hiring circus rejects and out-of-work British rockers as his bodyguards, who he was able to pay peanuts and save thousands of dollars in salary every year. But his story comes later. Like, a few paragraphs down. If it doesn't, you're reading it before I've finished. Why?
Just as wealth can bring about evil, so can poorness. Or something. See, one man, Takuma Sakazaki, didn't realize that bars were the only way to make money, instead choosing to open a martial arts dojo. Since the only martial arts anyone in South Town cared about was drunken style, the dojo very quickly went bankrupt. This drove Takuma insane, and he kidnapped his own daughter, Yuri, and forced his son Ryo and student Robert Garcia, who lived in 1952 but accidentally fell into ice and was thawed out 40 years later by Takuma, to fight through various...uh..bars in order to beat him up and take Yuri back. Since everyone was so drunk, a fight occured in each of these bars.
There were two more games made for the Art of Fighting series, but no one really gave a shit.
Anyways, back to Geese Howard. Years ago, Geese Howard and Jeff Bogard were students under Tung fue Rue, a character popular for becoming more sucky in each new game. By my estimates, when Jeff and Geese were training, Tung fue Rue had the strength of a thousand '97 Ioris. Anyways, he had a secret that he could only teach one of his students. He taught Jeff, because he thought "Geese" was a stupid name. Geese killed Jeff and stole his secret, which turned out to be that by creating variations on bars, such as "dance clubs", he could make even more money. He did this, and soon ruled South Town.
Like any town warlord, he did the smart thing, which was to rig a tournament with his bodyguards and make sure his dead rival's sons and their friend would enter the tournament. He forgot, however, to arm said bodyguards with skill or guns, and Terry, Jeff's older son, defeated Geese. Terry's last punch knocked Geese from a high window, ending his life. In the second game, the tournament is sponsored by Wolfgang Krauser, who was Geese's step-brother. When they were young, ,they would play-fight often, which usually resulted in Wolfgang knocking Geese out of a high window, ending his life. Geese eventually tired of this and ran crying to his step-father, who knocked him out of a high window, ending his life. Geese re-entered the tournament, but met Terry halfway, who knocked him out of a high window, ending his life. Terry fought and beat Wolfgang Krauser, and became the record-holder for tournaments fought without a real prize. A year or so later, Geese hosted another tournament, and once again Terry knocked him out of a high window, ending his life. Terry felt the weight of three Geese-deaths on his shoulders, and decided to adopt his son Rock. Terry trained rock to fight with his father's power and his techniques, until years later, like Terry, he could avenge his father's death by knocking his father's killer out of a high window, ending his life. He never did this. Rock had a lot of emotional issues.
Now, we can finally move on to the King of Fighters series itself. Terry won KOF '91-93, that was the Fatal Fury series. '94 was a dream match, between all of SNK's favorite characters, so nothing that happened there counts for anything. All but two teams were made up of characters that SNK made before or their teammates. The two exceptions were the Japan team and the America team. Team Fatal Fury somehow ended up being sponsored by Italy, presumably because this one time a few years ago Andy fought on a boat in Italy. Or maybe France. Nevermind. The American team, for those of you who've never played an early KOF, was the biggest insult to the country from Japan since pearl harbor. Lucky, Brian, and Heavy D! Dammit, Heavy D! Dammit! His name starts with an exclamation point, so the sentance ends whenever I say Heavy D! And it makes me sound like I'm actually excited about the team. What a dirty trick.
You want me to describe each character in detail, i'm sure. Well, that's not gonna happen yet. I'm gonna go through the storyline of the games first! '94 is usually considered to not count as a dream match, but it introduced Rugal Bernstein, who killed the Bernstein bears, took their last name, and converted their treehouse into a massive ship. Rugal had some sort of pirate fetish, and so wore an eyepatch, dealt drugs and weapons on the seas, and kept a pet panther(panther was the closest thing to a parrot he could find alphabetically). Rugal was defeated, presumably by the Japan team, and started the long KOF tradition of pressing a button that makes the place blow up.
The next game, '95, replaced the american team with one led by Kyo's new old rival, Iori Yagami. The invitation notes were given by a man with a name that started with "R", but remarkably noone could guess that it was...this is a shocker...Rugal. Team Japan once again made their way, this time without sponsorship or a name other than the Hero Team, which was enough to get them to the last match. Surprised to see rugal again, Kyo defeated him. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Rugal made some stuff blow up and he and Iori disappeared, but it had about the same crappy ending as '94.
'96 was popular in that it was the first tournament that was sponsored worldwide, and was supposed to have actual prize money. Many of the teams had various high points of the tournament, including the Fatal Fury team. Near the semifinals, they fought another team led by Geese Howard. This promised to be an amazing fight, as Terry demanded that Geese pay the child support he owed Terry and Rock. Though Geese had once again regained his fortune by collecting his life insurance, he didn't want to pay. To avoid this, Geese threw himself out of a high window, ending his life. Also, the Japan team won again, and got to fight the sponsor, Chizuru. Rather than conserve all their energy for the fight with an evil power she was supposed to keep sealed, she figured it would be better if the winning team would beat the crap out of her and take the evil power on with the remaining members. In fact, Kyo had such a hard time taking on the boss, Goenitz, that he had to get help from Iori. After defeating Goenitz, Kyo does other stuff that no one care about, but Iori went through the blood riot and killed his teammates. Leona probably did something like that too, but who cares.
'97 was the end of the Orochi saga, 'cause that's when all the blithering Rugal and Gonads did in their death speeches finally made sense. Both Iori and Leona went into Blood Riot mode, but were subdued. For some reason, Yamazaki didn't, even though he's supposed to be Orochi too. The reason for this is likely that SNK didn't give a crap about their old characters. Anyways, Orochi took over the body of Chris, a member of the New Faces team, and had really tight pants. It was with these tight pants that Orochi attempted to take over the world. Kyo and Iori fought Orochi, and proved that together, their pants were stupider than Orochi's. Chizuru, who wore slacks, helped too.
In '99, a cartel....what do you mean, "What about '98?" '98 never happened. Every fourth year's a dream match. Nothing that counted then happened. What team won? I dunno. Maybe the sports guys. It doesn't matter, it didn't happen! In fact, ,storywise, Kyo disappeared.
1999 was when...was when...I'm sorry. It's just that I get so emotional. You see, in '99, SNK did the worst thing in the history of crimes, what likely put them out of business. They...They... I can't say it. Poor Athena. Anyways, they introduced NESTS, a cartel which dealt in stupid plans for world domination. In fact, it was discovered that not only Geese Howard's plan for world domination was bought from NESTS(Step 1:Fall from window to death. Step 2:Go to Step 1.), but also Rugal's and Goenitz's. They introduced a bunch of new characters, including a new hero team from Canada. Unfortunately, they didn't have enough members for a complete team, so they got Benimaru and Shingo, who Kyo willed to them before he disappeared. 99's plot made no sense, except that K' was supposed to be a clone of Krizalid, or the other way around, and no one in the world noticed the armies of Kyo Kusanagies wading randomly through towns. It ended with Krizalid getting hit on the head by a chunk of ceiling.
In 2000, we started noticing a trend of cheap-asseder bosses, coming from the new NESTS Cheap-ass Boss Lab, which was located on a big-ass satellite, which was produced in the NESTS Big-ass Satellite Lab, which was designed by the NESTS Useless-ass Lab Lab. SNK really didn't have a plot for this game. It was just a clarification on the poorly-translated and quickly-done '99. Seriously. They just threw some more bosses in there. Oh, well.
2K1 was another sad year for Athena, but also for the rest of KOF, since SNK had sold it to a company called Eolith. Eolith tried their damnedest to ruin the game, introducing cheap combo characters, ignoring the kick button, and ruining the music. They also laughed at gravity, proving that once a satellite's engine is disabled, it quickly stops orbiting and drops like a stone to the earth directly into another one of their labs. This was the end of the stupid NESTS cartel storyline.
Recently, Eolith sold the rights to 2K2 to Playmore, who dropped the striker system, comboed up the game, and dropped two of the most popular characters, King and Shingo. Hopefully, they'll bring them back before the heads of the company are killed by an angry mob. Also, they made almost every character extremely ugly or put them in a stupid pose. Luckily, though, Athena's cancer went into remission, they stopped the chemotherapy, and her hair finally grew back. This is supposed to be another dream match, so we don't know what to expect in the future. Next, let's take a look at each individual character.
Part 2:Characters
The King of Fighters series has an interesting assortment of characters, each with their own abilities--okay, i'm lying. Most are either strong and slow, weak and fast, or average. I feel so horrible now. But I guess I'll describe them all anyways.
Kyo Kusanagi:He's the hero, because he's from Japan. At least, he used to be the hero. Now he tries to be all cool and mysterious, but it doesn't work, considering he's a complete dork. For god's sake, the guy puts numbers in front of his special moves to try and make them sound cool. A special move should be cool on its own merits. In addition, Kyo's still in high school at age 20. But that's not as bad as his friend who probably got kicked out...
Benimaru Nikkaido, or whatever:He's the guy that looks like he got his head stuck in a cotton candy machine, then urinated on. He likes wearing tight pants and shirts that expose his cleavage. He hates fans, probably because he doesn't have any. He uses electricity and cheap-assedness as his strong points. He pimped himself out in '99, then came crawling back to Kyo in 2000. More proud, however, is the third teammate...
Goro Daimon: This is the big guy without a shirt. It takes a cool guy to be able to walk around shirtless and still look good. Goro is not that cool. He's the character the boys at SNK have still yet to affix a story or plot to, so I can't really say much about him. I can, however, say something about the guy who wants to take his place when he retires...
Shingo Yabuki:This is Kyo's mandatory fanboy. Though for some reason in '97 he was so strong he could take on entire teams by himself, he insisted that Kyo train him in the art of useless moves that had fire coming off of them. Kyo kept rejecting Shingo, who eventually went to train under Kyo's dad....
Saisyu Kusanagi:He was only in like one tournament, and even then he always scratched himself. He's a master of some martial arts form that I can neither pronounce nor remember. He decided to team up one year with Heidern and some other guy, maybe Geese, who he probably would have thrown out a window, ending his life. Anyways, he killed Iori's dad, but for some reason has been ignored by...
Iori Yagami: He's the guy with the red unibang, and in some pictures, the huge jaw and gigantic shoulders. He's supposed to be sort of like a Japanese Marilyn Manson, but ended up becoming a fangirls' bishonen. He is, however the ultimate in coolness and dorkiness mixed up in one. He has a bitter rivalry which will only end upon death, eats only meat, and gets possessed, but claims to hate violence, accidentally ties his pant legs together, and lies about having a girlfriend. His mother died during childbirth, due to baby Iori's three-foot wide shoulders. Strange indeed, but not as strange as..
K':His name's pronounced "Kay-Prime". He's the sucker that got Kyo's genes transplanted into him. He's supposed to be Whip's brother or something. He's got dark skin and sunglasses that he throws or sets on fire because he thinks it's cool. His fighting style is said to be "violins", whatever that means. Oh, sorry, that's "violence". Such a mean guy. Fighting with...VIOLENCE! Anyways, to balance him out is his buddy...
Maxima:Belive it or not, this burly guy's Canadian. And a cyborg. A Canadian cyborg can cause computers to catastrophically crash. But that's beside the point. He also has a bunch of guns built-in. Seems he also had a niceness-gravity-well installed in him, 'cause he drained all the nice out of K'. But if you want to talk about nice guys, there's always...
Terry Bogard:He's the dude with a hat on and blue jeans. He says stuff in what's supposed to be english, but most of his attacks sound like "rising taco" or "rannaway!". He won the KOF tournaments before the whole "team" rule dragged him down. If the NESTS cartel'd made Terry clones instead of Kyo clones, there's never be a kid needing a partner for basketball again. Entering all of "Terry"'s trainees into the NBA would net the NESTS cartel a whole lot o' money. Terry's had two girlfriends in the movies, and both of them have died by falli--wait, that's...
Geese Howard:Owner of Howard Industries, Geese Howard falls out of a high window, ending his life. How he keeps coming back is a mystery. Maybe that's why his name's plural. So would one of Geese be a Goose Howard? Aah, forget I said anything. Anyways, Geese/Goose hired a bunch of bodyguards, the most annoying of whom was...
Billy Kane:A supposed-to-be British Rocker who wields a stick. If you take his stick away from him, he cries. His quasi-English screeches make most people's ears bleed. He sings his BGM, I belive. And he hates smoking. Just look at the back of his jacket. For some reason, Geese likes to see Billy fight in the tournament, and joining him is....
Ryuji Yamazaki:Another one of them Orochi-blooders, Yamazaki was ignored when the blood riot happened. Or no one could tell. He keeps his hand in his pocket most of the time and bites and does lots of other nasty attacks, my favorite of which is the one where he mops the floor with the opponent's head. Billy and Yamazaki are watched over by...
Blue Mary:Not-so-secret agent and girlfriend of Terry Bogard, Blue Mary demonstrates exactly how thick the bad guys are. She helped Terry beat up Geese #15 in Fatal Fury 3, and he still trusts her to fight on the team with his two best men. Most people can tell she's a secret agent by looking at her. Maybe it's the huge belt. Maybe it's the hair. Or maybe, just maybe, it's the marshall's star on her pants. You decide. But it's already decided that she's in love with...
Terry Bogard:So I already talked about him. So what? He kicks ass. And he's not as loud as his brother...
Andy Bogard:Younger Bogard brother, Andy thinks he's turning Japanese. He really thinks so. He studies Shiranui. And he learns martial arts too. The poor man is haunted my Mai, his fiancee, who is destined to marry him--once she beats him. She will someday, too. Anyways, while looking for martial arts to study, he came across the Muay Thai Kickboxing Champion...
Sagat:But he's in the wrong game. He did get a little pissed about another guy lying abuot the title, and that man was none other than...
Joe Higashi:He looks like Benimaru now, only more shameless. He didn't have that white-boy afro earlier, I swear. He's a Thai kickboxer, which is like boxing...with kicking. He's also an idiot, as are most fighting game characters that have an American first name and a Japanese last name. He's damn fast, too, probably why most girls are turned off by him, including...
Mai Shiranui:Um..Definately one of the more popular female SNK characters, she has a tiny outfit and an inexhaustable supply of fans. She's also very cruel to poor Andy, who she taunts with fake babies often. Obviously, she wants to fight on the same team with him. When she's rejected, as she usually is, she goes to...
King:I guess that SNK figured if a gay man was a queen, a gay woman would be...King. She's a crossdresser who's had her clothes knocked off multiple times. She's the queen of comboes and a bar bouncer/owner/co-owner. She sometimes wears a hat that she throws like Michael Jackson. She also apparently has a thing for....
Ryo Sakazaki:The hero of the Art of Fighting series, he's a lot like Ryu from Street Fighter. Has a bunch of moves like his, only crappier. In his old games, he had a special bar that drained as he used special moves and was taunted. Not like that's a rarity. He's got a silly-looking stance and his fireballs stop after like two feet. In Capcom games, only joke characters have that weakness. He was trained by his father...
Takuma Sakazaki:I don't quite understand this guy. He kidnaps his own daughter and makes his students come after him to get her back. Then he disguises himself with an oyaji(father, ogre) mask and assumes noone will figure him out, but Yuri tells them anyways. Then he makes up with them and joins their KOF team. Maybe it's some kind of publicity stunt; their dojo is ALWAYS broke. Maybe because they only have one non-family student...
Robert Garcia:The greaser. He's the son of a millionaire, and he won't help out his dojo. What a jerk. Actually, his dad goes broke every year too, but it's likely tax evasion. His family's group joint-hosted the millionaire fighting 2000 tournament with Ken's group, but for some reason Robert wasn't there. However, the tournament was graced by his girlfriend...
Morrigan Aensland:No, wait. That's not right..or at least Robert doesn't want someone to know. Someone named...
Yuri Sakazaki:How cute. She's got an adorable voice with an adorable speech impediment, and adorable moves that are cheesy as hell. And she attacks with her butt. That's right. Her ass is a formidable weapon. As is her cuteness. But even Yuri's cuteness pales in comparison to...
Athena Asamiya:From her pre-fight introduction all the way to her victory celebration, Athena radiates cuteness. Anyone who disagrees will be shot on sight. Try as I might, I can't say anything bad about her, even though she uses herself as a human shield when she's a striker. And the hair thing isn't funny; it's sad. Don't even talk about it. In fact, don't play any of the games 99-2k1. Anyways, Athena's the goddess of defensive war, and is admired by every male on the planet, especially...
Sie Kensou:He's every fanboy's dream. He holds fanboy tournaments with Shingo and wins. That's because he not only gets to fight alongside his idol, he also gets to use the same power. He's also made many attempts to gain her attention, most of which have failed. Maybe if it weren't for that damn kid..
Bao:He's a communist, is what he is. Just look at that hat. And he stole Kensou's Psycho power. I'd personally have killed the kid for that, but instead he got to enter in the tournament. And it's all on account of...
Chin Gensai:He balances out all of the freshness and attractiveness of the Psycho Soldiers Team. He has standard drunk-guy moves, including firebreathing. Every drunk guy can do the firebreathing trick. The reason being that they're too drunk to care about the possibility of immolating their mouth and throat. Anyways, I think he's the oldest KOF regular, followed by...
Choi Bunge:He's the guy that looks like he hangs out in the "pre-teen" chat rooms. He's apparently married, though, or at least engaged, so sorry, ladies. He bears more than a passing resemblance to Samurai Shodown's Gen-an, and it's likely he was based off the little green freak, who also hated his wife and has freaky hand-things. His partner in crime is..
Chang Koehan:He's the fat-ass with the ball and chain, and is supposed to be the most physically strong character in the KOF series. It eludes me why he still carries the ball around when he could easily break the chain, but since he's the only regular with a weapon, most people forget it and don't question him. He and Choi were captured and reprogrammed by...
Kim Kap Hwan:From Fatal Fury 2/Special, which were the EXACT same thing, Kim is the justice freak of the KOF world. He uses Tae Kwon Do, which means he has practically no punches, just kicks. He's passing down his skills as a justice freak to...
May Lee:She already knew enough Tae Kwon Do to win the KOF tournament, she just needed to learn justice-ey-ness from Kim. She took to it pretty well, and is now a near-exact copy of Amelia from The Slayers. She has gigantic shoes which lend her kicks more power, and wears a tight shirt which...uh....is tight and has a little picture on it. I think she wears goggles or something, too. She was bribed by Kim to replace...
Jhun Hoon:He's supposed to be a friend of Kim's, but the way they argue and fight all the time, they're obviously lovers. Wait, NO. That's not right. Kim's got a wife, and two sons, one of whom is named after Jhun. That helped my argument out none. Oh, well. He was a damn good character, but he's conspicuously absent from KOF 2k2, along with...
Lin:This guy was SNK's last attempt to inject mysterious-coolness into the KOF series, but, as usual, no one gave a shit about him. The man's green. Between all the "jollly green giant" jokes and the fact that he sucked, no one cared enough about him to care when he wasn't announced in 2k2's lineup. He's supposed to have some sort of connection to K', but playmore farted around and they never fleshed out his personality either. They only had slightly more success with...
Whip:She's supposed to be K''s sister, or K''s original's sister, or someone pretending to be his sister. I personally believe her, because no one would try and fool someone like that when their skin tone is so dramatically different. She's got some sort of whip fetish, and has named her whip "wood doe" or something. I tell the truth. Anyways, for a year, she was on the same team as..
Leona:Heidern's adopted daughter, Leona plays the part of a good soldier and listens to her orders, carrying them out with perfect precision. She's also got Orochi blood like Iori, but her teammates managed to get her under control when she went into blood riot mode. While Iori acts like a zombie, she acts like a wild animal, and it's rumored that she killed her parents, or something. She's a sharp contrast to...
Ralf:I was pretty sure the Ikari Warriors were supposed to be based out of America, but their names are more German. Why am I talking? The real US military has generals like "Rumsfeld" and "Schwarzkoph". Anyways, Ralf is the gung-ho member of the Ikari warriors, and has been on the team each year it's entered in the tournament. The only one with a pristene record like his is..
Clark:The other permanent member of the Ikari Warriors team, and some sort of Terry Bogard clone, from what I can tell. He's like one of 5 characters that wear a hat, and has an extreme dislike of slugs. Sometimes I think that while making up the characters, SNK picked up an english dictionary and picked out words at random. He's also unquestioning about his orders, which usually come from...
Heidern:He wears an eyepatch, appears to be missing most of his hair, leads an underground para-miliraty group, and is rumored to be a cyborg. Oh, sorry, that's "Antoine" from "Upright Citizens Brigade". The resemblance certainly is shocking, though, isn't it? He's actually pretty badass, but he's more often than not used as a "filler" character, to fill the fourth slot on the Ikari Warriors team if they can't find anyone else. His organization's got some sorta turf war going on with NESTS, who was first represented by..
Krizalid:He's supposed to be the original from which K' was cloned, but it turns out to be the other way around. I personally think I'd know if I was a clone. In fact, I know I'm not a clone, as my name is Wraith'. He was attacked by some insulated ceiling tiles at the end of KOF 99, and itched to death because he wasn't wearing his winter trenchcoat. Next year, he was replaced by...
Kula Diamond:She, like so many other characters, suffers from the disease of being connected to K'. As usual, no one cares. She has a thing for candy, and I suspect trains as well. She can breathe ice, which leads me to belive that she is either A.One of NESTS's weird-ass experiments or B.The Ice Queen of Cheese. She also has some ex-godmother, who many people suspect she also has a thing for, or something, named...
Candy:She's some sort of NESTS robot. She's two or three years old, and weighs 180 KG. She's made of metal, you fool, what do you expect? I think she was destroyed, which is why she's now an ex-godmother. Makes you wonder who Kula's parents are, ne? No, you don't care, and it's all because of that K' bastard. Well, I doubt she has much rank in NESTS, which is probably why she has to take orders from just about everyone else, including..
Dianna:The reason for the failure of NESTS should be pretty obvious when you look at some of their officers. Diana's one of them. She's got some sort of anti-gravity haircut, which NESTS spent approximately 2.3 billion dollars developing. She also seems to hire others who have similar taste in fashion. Her best student seems to be...
Angel:The poor man's Mai Shiranui, she's actually not considered as attractive because she'd be easier for any man to pick up. Why? She's a drunkard, that's why! She seems like the type that exploits the men she goes out with, which are any men that have money. I mean, look at that outfit! It's a disgrace to all that is...Hey, you guys aren't listening! Stop looking at her! In fact, take a look at...
K'9999:No, I don't know how to say his name. It's okay, we have our own name for him. Who does he look like? Think! Hint:That metal arm turns huge and fleshy, he has a thing for "his(Kaneda's) precious bike", and IS TETSUO from Akira. That's such a blatant ripoff. The weird part is, get this guys, girls think he's attractive. Makes you want to undergo mutilative surgery, eh? He was determined to be more useful than...
Foxy:Foxy is the team's senior member, and one I place in a special class of characters I call "the cheap-asses". This is because she uses a sword. It looks like one of those fencing swords, only made of rubber. Noone's sure where foxy went, maybe she's sulking after the death of....
Ling:The leader of NESTS, operating out of a satellite, and some sort of incarnation of the trapped Orochi, or something. I really don't care. He was a cheap-ass. He pioneered the art of using moves that you have to block or die no matter where you are, and even then it does like half of your life in damage. I sure hope Playmore killed him off for good, and the same goes for...
Zero:Another cheap-ass boss, the second-in command of the NESTS cartel. Or maybe he's the leader, and Ling's the second-in-command. It doesn't matter, they're both dead. He wore the same outfit, with a coat with blades on the edge that he swung around and managed to kill his opponents but not himself. Both him and Ling were dead by the time the Zero Cannon fell from space, something that was arranged in part by...
Seth:He's supposed to be some sort of secret agent, but it seems obvious. He wears suspenders and a TIE, which he apparently values almost as much as his wife. He appeared on the case for the PS KOF '99 game, confusing the hell out of many players. The reason for this was that the case had the same insert for the DC version of KOF 2000. He has a partner, too....
Vanessa:She's got nothing but punches, and moves around like a little bitch. She's supposed to be a super-sexy secret agent, but since she dresses just like Seth and joined a different team, that pretty much blew their cover. Hey, that's not the imagery I wanted. Besides, she's taken. Taken by....
Ramon:Oh, boy, another guy with an eyepatch! How many of you see a guy with one eye walking down the street? It's not very likely. In KOF, however, there's like a 5% chance that a character's a cyclops. He's also a professional wrestler. They don't say who his mentor was, maybe it was Big Bear. Just a guess. The team he's on is interested in the great power of...
Orochi:This is the evil power from 1800 years ago that appeared and lost in 1997. Since then, however, he seems to keep trying to come back, unsuccessfully every time. You'd think he'd learn to give up by now, but noooo.. He's already lost a bunch of agents. The first one he lost was...
Vice:Maybe you haven't noticed, but I stopped putting down last names. Maybe I don't remember, but it's more likely that I don't give a crap. If I cared, I would have talked about them earlier. Anyways, Vice is the short-haired freaky lady that was on Iori's team with...
Mature:She was also on Iori's team, until he RIPPED THEM IN HALF! MUAHAHAHAHA!! Sorry, they both freak me out, and I relish their deaths. Mature not as much, but still to such a degree that I stop caring. After her boss was beaten, Orochi decided to use a little boy from Sweden named..
Chris:Chris is the youngest member of the "new faces" team. The name of the team is confusing at first, but once you learn their secret, it becomes easy to understand. You see, Orochi made the team's members by sending little face-aliens(aliens that were just faces, you fool!) to find a trio of musicians to latch onto and take over, hence the "new faces". Chris's graft was successful, not so with his other two members, the first being..
Yashiro:The face grafted onto Yashiro's body was a bit too small, and ended up looking weird. I personally think he's some kind of child molester. I mean, I doubt Chris can play any instrument or sing or anything, he just keeps him around for the same reason a Catholic priest keeps an altar boy around. To keep the illusion that he's not raping poor Chris up, he keeps a woman around him. Well, I think it's a woman. I mean, her name's..
Shermie:Shermie is the human sheepdog, who we THINK might have eyes. She has an amazing ability, though:she can kick with both legs. And land on her feet. For those of you who haven't seen it, think of a person lifting both their legs to kick while the rest of their body stays stationary. If you're confused, you've got the right image. Her and Yashiro were killed when Orochi showed himself, and didn't really come back until...next year! Ugh, dream matches don't make any sense. Anyways, they're not coming back in the real game, in part due to...
Chizuru:Chizuru was important to the Orochi saga, because the whole thing started because she fucked up somewhere. I mean, her people were supposed to keep the seal to Orochi locked up, and she comes out and says "Oh, dear, somehow Orochi managed to escape, by no fault of my own!" She doesn't say how Orochi escaped, but we all can assume it was because Orochi put on a fake beard or a pair of glasses and tricked her. She joined the female team for awhile, but was eventually tossed aside, just like...
Hinako:She's the flight-attendant sumo wrestler. Given her outfit, the first part sounds believable, but the sad part is that the second part is all I can verify. She's the latest wrestler-type character, and she was recently thrown out with the trash, just like...
Xiangfei:Another drunkard character, except this one's a girl! With hair rings like Devil Hunter Yohko, too. She's always out of money and is apparently a waitress at a Chinese restaurant. Yes, she's a stereotype, but so is everyone else in the damn game. Or they're just plain weird. She seems to have learned her profession from her father, and what a coincidence! So did...
Kasumi:Ooh, she so ugly. Oh yeah, she's a ugly girl. Not only did that statement trigger the spell-checker about a dozen times, it also makes little sense. If you don't understand, there was a movie called "ugly girl" made with Iori and Kasumi. Anyways, she's the daughter of the first guy you fought in Art of Fighting. Uh..she should be the last person, but I forgot about a few, the first of which are...
Kyo clones:This is what K' and K'9999 are supposed to be. The only difference is that EVERY OTHER clone looks just like the real Kyo Kusanagi. There are many theories as to why this is, but since it's K' we're talking about, no one cares. The Kyo clones were a useless multi-billion dollar effort funded by the NESTS cartel, which is in no way associated with..
Rugal Bernstein:Arr. He's a wannabe pirate, matey. Except that he mistranslated the word parrot to panther instead. He's a boss, which translates to cheap-assedness. Cheap-assedness, by the way, is a word that spell checker hates. He's hosted all but 1 of the tournaments 94-97. That's three, by the way. The other tournament was hosted by...
Goenitz:Gonads-err, Goenitz, hosted one of those tournaments, '95 I think, and tried to absorb the Orochi power. He failed, and pushed a button that blew up his ship. I personally think Gonads-Goenitz, dammit! Spell checker, you know. I think he's really Rugal in a false mustache or something. I forget what he looked like, but he was big and dumb. What a coincidence! So was...
Brian:One of the members of the American all-stars team, Brian was a stereotype of a standard American football player. Sadly, the stereytype fits him quite well. He does tackle and charging moves, and talks with worse English than most non-English characters. A bit like Terry, actually. He shared a team with...
Mr. T:No, wait. Wrong black man with a mohawk that pities foos. His real team-mate was...
Heavy D!:The man whose name I won't say for fear of prematurely ending the sentence. You see, Heavy D! Dammit. That joke got old long ago. He's supposed to be a professional boxer, and is one of few black guys in the King of Fighters series. The other member of their motley crew was...
Lucky:The lanky black guy with a basketball, he's obviously supposed to be a basketball player. He's, like, ten feet tall, and apparently does insane damage with an air-filled basketball, many more of which appear out of nowhere. That's gotta be cheating. Their whole team had no special moves, though, so I guess it's okay. Even though they all sucked. Like I said, he's one of a few black guys, the last one being...
Mr. Big:Um...at least I think he's black. He's a pimp, though, so that's gotta count for something. He uses hookers and billy-clubs to fight. Okay, I was kidding about the hookers. They only come out at the end of a fight. He's a guy from the original Art of Fighting, and they decided to put him in one KOF game, which sounds just like the life story of...
Wolfgang Krauser:He's likely the first man to push Geese Howard out of a high window, ending his life. He one-up-man-ated Geese throughout his whole life, which made Geese hate him and come to fight him again and lose like the skirt-wearing girl of a man he is. He's from Fatal Fury 2 and Fatal Fury Special, which I am considering the same game, mainly because they're the same. Someone else who was dumped from the KOF lineup just as quickly was...
Eiji:Yeah, he's got a last name, but it's Kisaragi or something, and I don't remember. He's apparently the descendant of a character from the Last Blade series. Last Blade and Last Blade 2 were great games, but SNK made a fatal mistake... That's right, they let K' market the game. Oh, well.
There, that's it. I swear! Now, untie me!