Racketboy

SPOnG is reporting that SNK Playmore has decided to celebrate the 10th anniversary of King of Fighters with brand-spankin-new re-release of The King of Fighters ‘94. This is coming on the heels of the 3D KOF Maximum Impact and the PS2 port of KOF 2003. Many hardcore fans would argue the ’94 release wasn’t necessarily the best of the bunch, but it does seem appropriate for the series’ tenth anniversary (it being 2004, in case you hadn’t noticed). Also worth mentioning, KOF ‘94 has never been released on a home console other than the Neo-Geo.

No confimation has been given for the platform, but I’m guess it will be on the PS2 at minimum. Rumor has it that a tweaked game engine and graphics are in store. However a arcade-perfect port (or maybe both) would be nice as well. It looks like the target release date is sometime this coming winter. SNK is really looking to cash in this holiday season from hardcore fans since it will be released around the same time as the three separate titles and the official KOF:MI arcade stick. What’s more, for the KOF completists, each of the three games will be an essential purchase because only by buying all of these can fans send off for their free “Pinky’s Street” figurines - superdeformed toys based on King of Fighters characters.

As I’ve mentioned before, the PS2 seems to really be getting the recent favor of both SNK and Capcom when it comes to 2D fighters. Although it’s understandable considering the sales numbers of PS2 games, the Xbox should be getting more attention as well. The demographic of older gamers seems to be a better fit. Also when XBox Live is added to the equation, the virtual arcade factor gives the XBox the theoretical advantage.

As with any retro re-release, I hope these sell well. It would be wonderful if this starts a trend of back catelogs being brought to the modern consoles. If we could see more KOF packs to fill in the gaps between this ‘94 release and the 2000-2003 releases, that would be incredible. What would be more interesting, in my opinion, would be seeing a Samurai Shodown Collection, a Fatal Fury Collection (including Mark of the Wolves), a Metal Slug colllection (Metal Slug 4 is due out in Japan next month), and the list could continue for quite a while. I could also ramble about how Capcom, Sega, Square/Enix, and Konami should do similar retro packs, but I think you get the idea.

As long as publishers offer a good game for $20 or less (more games per disk are nice for games of the same series), I think there are enough fans to generate sales. Of course they need to make the presentation (menus, extra modes, special features) good enough to win over cheapskates that have been playing these games on MAME and other emulators.