This Week In Retro: The King of Fighters '97 (Patreon)

July 28, 1997: The King of Fighters moves towards final destiny

by Diamond Feit

Imagine if Capcom released a brand-new Street Fighter game that suggested, on the title screen, that this would be the series' finale. Imagine if two popular characters, let's say Ken and Sakura, appeared in the game in a feral state, their mouths agape, with screams replacing all their usual dialogue. Imagine if this latest game introduced a trio of brand new fighters who doubled as mini-bosses, only for one of the three to transform into a final boss with powers nothing short of divine.

If you can picture all that in your mind, you can understand the shock SNK fans experienced when The King of Fighters '97 debuted in arcades 25 years ago. The annual series had begun just three years earlier but it quickly made an impression on players around the world by gathering characters from other SNK games and pitting them against each other in three-on-three team-based battles.

Taking his place alongside established leads like Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury or Ryo Sakazaki from Art of Fighting, Kyo Kusanagi debuted in 1994 as the leader of the Japan Team and became the default protagonist of the KOF series. The following year, Kyo got a rival to call his own in Iori Yagami, a flame-wielding fighter who closely mirrored Kyo's own powerset. These characters couldn't match the global appeal that Capcom's Street Fighter roster had in the mid-'90s, but with annual releases, SNK worked double-time to build the KOF brand with an assortment of memorable faces.

While the first game limited players to choosing from fixed teams of three fighters, subsequent titles abandoned that restriction, allowing players to mix and match their own teams, leading to thousands of potential combinations in each game. The flexibility and built-in variety of KOF encourages experimentation and trying out new fighters, as players can always test the waters by pairing a new face with two characters they already know well. I have always appreciated this feature as I tend to play fighting games for extended periods of time with the hopes of learning everything I can about the entire roster.

Storytelling also played a huge role in making The King of Fighters resonate with fighting game fans. The first game established the eponymous tournament as a front for madman Rugal Bernstein to find the strongest fighters in the world and adorn his lair with statues made from their corpses. Rugal returned in '95 for a rematch, but in '96 the narrative veered towards the supernatural with a final boss, Goenitz, informing the player about millennia-old blood feuds and warning of a great power called Orochi which must be sealed away. Turns out the stakes in KOF tournaments are higher than anyone expected.

In KOF '97 the Orochi storyline comes to head as three new faces join the tournament. Officially members of a band, Yashiro, Chris, and Shermie appear as rivals to the usual heroes, though players may select them like any other team and play through the story. After defeating six teams, a victory screen congratulates the player on becoming the new King of Fighters, but that's not the end of the game. Instead, either Iori Yagami or Leona Heidern will wander into the arena and lose their mind, driven mad by the power of Orochi awakening in their bloodstream. They attack the player and despite having a one-on-three disadvantage, they provide quite the challenge due to an extreme speed and damage boost courtesy of their rage.

The game accentuates the discomfort of this fight against a former friend by turning the background blood red and playing the sound of a heartbeat before switching to discordant background music that's half out of tune. Overall the '97 soundtrack departs from the usual formula with lots of stages featuring little or no music at all, settling instead for ambient crowd cheering or diegetic background noise. This lack of memorable tunes only makes the driving music of the final few stages feel all the more significant.

Speaking of which, let's get into how KOF '97 wraps up its story. Once players make their way past the aforementioned surprise attack, they meet the New Face team again in an tempestuous arena where nature itself threatens to tear the ground apart. This time around, Yashiro, Shermie, and Chris all possess new elemental powers and attack with different moves than before. Even their idle standing animations change, making these alternate versions of the characters essentially different people. Successfully defeating the trio leads to a final confrontation against Orochi himself, as Chris bursts his clothing off to reveal a tall, ripped, god-like being whose feet never touch the ground.

While SNK's reputation for difficult final bosses is well deserved, the Orochi showdown exceeds even their standards as his powers seem nigh-invincible. Orochi can fire black void pellets that fly through anything, erupt energy bolts from the ground at a moment's notice, and his super move fills the screen with light and drains an opponent's life in seconds. The reach and damage potential of Orochi's attacks are so high that stringing only three or four together into a combo can knock a player right out of the match, so even though players face him in a three-against-one fight, the battle still feels weighted in Orochi's favor.

With its shakeup of the roster, deep lore exposition, and an epic climax against an all-powerful deity, The King of Fighters '97 represented the largest sea change in the series since the first game established that all these characters inhabit a shared universe. As promised on the title screen and on certain home versions' box art, KOF '97 does serve as the "final" chapter of the Orochi saga, not the franchise. SNK would designate the next year's entry as a non-canonical Dream Match; KOF '98 became an immediate fan favorite, a game that retains its popularity to this day both in tournaments and on Steam thanks to its massive roster of playable characters

However, while it lacks the excesses of a Dream Match, '97 has die-hard fans of its own, even decades after the fact. A majority of classic NEO•GEO games are available today on digital marketplaces, typically sold in compilations or a la carte via Hamster's Arcade Archives series, emulating the look and feel of the original experience but seldom adding any new features. However, reflecting the longstanding popularity of KOF '97, in 2018 SNK published The King of Fighters '97 Global Match, a remastered edition that adds online play. Yes, you too can challenge a stranger and decide the future of the Orochi bloodline from the comfort of your own home.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.