Month: January 2016

The very first installment of the King of Fighters series was a monumental undertaking for SNK. By pulling together characters from properties like Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Ikari Warriors, and more, they were essentially putting the best of themselves into one of the earliest crossovers the fighting genre had seen.

While we’ll never know everything about the creation of King of Fighters ’94, some new translations by the folks at Shmuplations have provided a bit more insight on the work the developers put into established characters and newcomers alike. Some of this may already be common knowledge to hardcore fans of the franchise, but we’ve compiled some of the more interesting tidbits from the old mook below.

One thing that immediately stood out was portion dedicated to Yuri Sakazki. Due to parallel development with Art of Fighting 2, which was set to make the diminutive karateka playable for the first time, the King of Fighters team found themselves eager to include her in their game as well. This led to Big Bear (Raiden’s babyface persona) and Billy Kane being removed from the game entirely to make room for Yuri on the newly-formed Women Fighters team with King and Mai Shiranui.

Sticking with the Sakazaki family, Yuri’s father Takuma was able to combo off more moves than was intended thanks to a system bug. Thinking he was too weak without this bug, the developers kept it in the game, only to later that he became pretty cheap. That said, they describe the Art of Fighting cast as being much easier to bring to King of Fighters than those from Fatal Fury.

Some of the information may even provide hints to the direction SNK Playmore is taking King of Fighters XIV. While both Chang Koehan and Choi Bounge retained criminal pasts in King of Fighters ’94, their original incarnations were more violent and grouped with another unrealized prisoner character. With the pair rumored to reform this team in the next installment, it would be interesting to find out how if any part of that scrapped design was repurposed.

These are only a few of the facts detailed in Shmuplations’ translation, so be sure to visit their original article by following the link below and see what else you can learn about this classic fighter.

Source: Shmuplations via Orochinagi