The King of Fighters XII, now making early appearances in the Land of the Rising Sun.

For those who hadn't seen, The King of Fighters XII is making public appearances on the other side of the Pacific at the Amusement Machine Show 2008. Videos of the game are also starting to pop up on YouTube, beyond the original trailer from AOU.

KOF '94: The start of a great fighting series.

For those who aren't familiar, The King of Fighters is a series of 2D, one-on-one fighting games that started in 1994 with The King of Fighters '94. The original game offered plenty of interesting new gameplay features that combined some of the best (and arguably, some of the worst) features of the two SNK fighting series that influenced it, Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting. KOF had the meter charging and taunting of Art of Fighting (the series that invented both), the knockdown attacks and the defensive attacks of Fatal Fury, plus new mechanics like stationary dodging and super jumps. Most notably, it let you play as a team of three characters (not just a single character, like in most traditional fighters), which meant more bang for your arcade buck (or quarters, or tokens).

KOF '98: A fighting-game classic.

Since then, there have been 11 games in the 2D series, not counting the compilations that have been released over the years (like the excellent KOF '02/'03 compilation for PS2) and "re-mixed" games like the disappointing KOF '94 Re-Bout and the very intriguing KOF '98: Ultimate Match. I consider KOF '98 to be my single favorite fighting game of all time--it's the kind of game you can sit and play for hours on end, and is rewarding in competitive play for weeks on end because of its many different characters and strategies. The series also gave rise to a mediocre 3D spinoff series known as Maximum Impact, which hasn't been all that impressive so far.

KOF: Maximum Impact.

The entire series has evolved and added and subtracted different features that didn't always work well, such as dodge attacks, recovery rolling and offensive rolling, numerous types of block cancel attack, "strikers" (external characters that leap onscreen to deliver a single attack), designated "leader" characters in your team that had access to a powerful and unique "leader desperation attack," and others. KOF XII's biggest claim to fame seems to be its "redrawn" 2D graphics, which show very, very strong influence by SNK artist-turned-video-game-producer Falcoon.

SNK character Mai Shiranui as interpreted by Falcoon. I've never been a big fan of the character myself.

I guess the idea is to get excited about the higher-res graphics with more frames of animation. As you can see by watching some of the gameplay videos that have started to trickle out of Japan, the character "sprites" (effectively the 2D "models" of each character" have been enlarged and either redrawn or retouched with new frames of animation. In motion, the game seems to move slightly slower than traditional KOF--you can tell the development team had to accommodate having more frames of animation to improve the game's graphical quality against having the kind of fast-paced action fans have come to expect from the series. KOF has always leaned toward speed over pretty animations, since every frame of animation counts in gameplay terms--yes, your characters are winding up to throw a punch, but won't actually connect with your opponents until they get to the actual hit frames (the actual "punching part" of their animations).

KOF XII:Ralf's unblockable Galactica Phantom attack still packs a mean punch.

The influence of Falcoon's art style, which tends to favor big, bulky men (and big, voluptuous women) over thin, wispy characters is clearly visible so far from what can be seen in screenshots and videos. Ralf, the former Ikari Warrior-turned-fighting-game-character-turned-Metal-Slug-character-turned-fighting-game-character-again is absolutely huge. Seriously, he's really big now. There's a video floating around on YouTube that shows him fighting the now-tank-top-clad Leona which really shows off the size differential.

KOF XII's preliminary character roster includes, from left, Terry, Kim, Ryo, Leona, Ralf, Robert, Shen Woo, Benimaru, Kyo, Ash, and Athena.

I'm reserving judgment on the character roster, which hasn't been fully revealed yet, but it's clearly leaning towards the roster of KOF 2003, which included the debut of Shen Woo (who is playable in KOF XII), the less-than-interesting hipster with spiky hair, chain belt, and the ability to slide forward and deliver a straight punch, and Ash Crimson, the new "hero" of KOF 2003, who clearly has some new moves in XII (he appears to have Orochi Shermie's old "lightning kiss" attacks, for instance), and will obviously be a very strong character to play once all is said and done. Several of my personal favorite characters, including Terry Bogard, Kim Kaphwan, Ryo Sakazaki, and Robert Garcia have also made the cut, so I guess I can't complain all that much.The game still seems to have offensive and recovery rolling, CD block cancels, and a lot of the characters' original arsenals. I'm reserving judgment until I can finally get my hands on the game myself (though I still need to get ahold of Ultimate Match first), but I'm cautiously optimistic.