The King of Fighters '97

The character select screen doesn't give you nearly enough time (20 seconds), and the victory screens are incredibly lame ("Announcing the victors. Here they are.") When Mai Shiranui ppears on these screens she has the shoulders of a linebacker and a head the size of a peanut! I do like how the high score screen appears immediately after you enter your initials. King of Fighters 97 tries to rock the boat, but it's not entirely successful. But even a mediocre King of Fighters game can kick the ass of most other 2D fighters.

Overall, KoF may not be the most aesthetically pleasing game on Earth, but it certainly is one of the best playing. Give it a shot, you 2D fiends just may fall in love.

This series would continue on an upswing, changing, manipulating, and swapping out pieces of the formula. King of Fighters '97 is true the start of all that. It would occasionally seem desperate, and that makes '97 the best of the initial four.

KoF '97 is an excellent fighter and a very welcome addition to Wii's Virtual Console. Like all fighting games it divides players — for everyone who prefers King of Fighters there's a Street Fighter II fan, just as Tekken and Virtua Fighter polarise opinion — but if you're after a solid scrapper you can sink some serious time into, you can't go far wrong with King of Fighters '97.

Where King of Fighters excels is the massive amount of playable, diverse characters. Even before Capcom started teaming their fighters up to see who was the better (my bet will always be on Strider), SNK was teaming the Art of Fighting combatants and the Fatal Fury kids with the Ikari Troupe ... all representing a different game SNK developed. I must say, this was always intriguing, and I wished more companies would do things like this. However, as much as I like this game, it seems like they have missed a wonderful oppurtunity to cross some of the Samurai Shodown, or Last Blade characters into the King of Fighters universe. This series has just improved over time, however subtly. And while it's not Street Fighter II, it isn't Time Killers, either. I wish there was more to it, but each of the games is fun to play.

Believe it or not, The King of Fighters '97 marks the first true two-player Virtual Console release since Mario Part 2 in December of 2010. Enjoy it while it lasts gang, because you never know when Nintendo is going to go on hiatus again. Now that the Neo Geo Station is up and running on the PlayStation Network (or is it Sony Entertainment Network now?), it's getting harder to justify these more expensive Virtual Console releases. The lack of an online mode hurts a game like this. On the other hand, it's about time Nintendo uploaded another 2D fighting game for the Wii.

The game even requires a load if you're about to play as the same character you're already fighting. Hello - isn't that guy already in memory?? Does changing the color of his outfit really require a load?! Throw me a bone, SNK! Another drawback of this CD version is that the backgrounds don't tend to change between rounds. As with the cartridge, the soundtrack is generally forgettable and occasionally irritating. Reviewing these King of Fighters CDs is draining my will to live. When will the hurting stop??