SNK Playmore reveals the release date for the hotly anticipated King Of Fighter XIV with a flashy trailer showing off fan favorite characters, new fighters, and furious fights.
When Capcom’s Street Fighter II: The World Warrior hit arcades back in 1991, fighting games became all the rage. Companies rushed to release one-on-one fighters to cash in on the craze, with varying degrees of success. While most of these knock-offs were lost in the shuffle, one company seemed to understand the genre: SNK.
Starting with Fatal Fury in 1991, the Japanese based developer quickly became the Pepsi to Capcom’s Coke. SNK would later bring its biggest series together into a mega fighter dubbed King of Fighters, with the first entry, King Of Fighter ’94, becoming a bonafide fighting game classic.
Now, while Street Fighter deals with a variety of issues in its fifth numbered entry, SNK is gearing up to unleash the fourteenth entry in the King Of Fighters franchise, King Of Fighters XIV. And with the release of a new trailer, fighting game fans finally know when they’re going to get their hands on the eagerly anticipated title.
The trailer, which shows off a bevy of returning fan favorites such as flame-summoning protagonist Kyo, buxom ninja Mai, and totally-not-Ryu-karate master Ryo, reveals that the latest entry in the fighting game franchise will release on August 25th. SNK is pulling out all the stops for the fighter, revealing that a special Steelbook edition of the game will be made available as a day-one limited edition.
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Fans wondering if the new quasi-3D graphics will put the game in the same category as the better-forgotten 3D spin-off King Of Fighters: Maximum Impact need not worry, as the trailer shows off the fast and furious 2D brawling the fans have come to know and love.
The trailer also offers a glimpse at the laundry list of new characters joining the KOF roster, including a wrestling dinosaur luchador, a bionic arm-rocking ninja, and an electricity-summoning woman with eyeballs on the side of her head. SNK promises that King Of Fighters XIV will feature a whopping 19 new characters, joining the 31 returning fighters for a massive 50 fighter roster.
In addition to showing off the new and returning fighters, the trailer offers a look at the series first real story mode, with snippets of character interactions illustrating that story seems to be a big emphasis for the game.
Fans hailed King Of Fighters XIII as one of the greatest entries in the long running series ever, so it remains to be seen if SNK can continue this trend with KOF XIV. But with big name fighting game series such as Street Fighter and Guilty Gear to contend with, King Of Fighters will have to do a lot to stand out from the crowd and secure the title a coveted spot on the EVO line-up.
Gamers will just have to wait until August 25th to ask King of Fighters XIV that burning Terry Bogard question: “Are you okay?”
King of Fighters XIV releases August 25th for PS4
Source: Polygon