The dethroned king.
It was incredibly fun in arcades, when I used to play this game with 2 of my friends. We would become experts with one of the characters and each fight, as our characters take their turns, so would we. Anyway, enough with my rambling and let's get down to details. This game, in front of the cover should receive big cheese icon. This is one of the most cheesy game I've ever played. Fighting game fans should know what cheese means. The problem with King of Fighter 2006 is that it promotes cheesy plays. Actually most of the moves seems to be designed to be cheesy. Well King of Fighter always did promote cheesy plays. The difference is that in the past, they required you greater skills to complete those cheesy plays to dominate other players. The moves become incredibly easier to pull off due to very generous button input window and very simple button combination that seems to pull off great looking combos without any effort. Now you can be cheesy without having great skills. What does this mean? The fighting engine is more exciting for most new players, but ultimately there is no depth. Balance was never strong suit of KoF series, but depth was one large aspect of it. Now that has gone out the window and what remains is fun, but shallow fighting game. You can be good at this game, but you can't be expert at this game because there isn't that depth to reach out. If you know all the moves, and doesn't have trouble using that moves, there is always good chance you can win against anyone. You can't say that about other fighting games. You may know all the moves in Street Fighter (which isn't large set) but that doesn't mean you can beat someone that is better at the game. You might get lucky once or twice but most of the times you will get creamed badly. Same goes to Virtua Fighter. The depth is what brings people fighting game so you can rise above the opposition. When there are no depth, what you get is a quicky. Like some chick you met at the bar and had one night stand with. Fun, but not long lasting, and ultimately forgettable. At least KoF adds huge number of character selection to good use and incredible number of mini-games to help you hold on to the game longer. And those bouncy F-cup boobs don't hurt either. Still in the end, the shallow fighting engine catches up quickly. If you want simple fighting game that is fun to play without requiring heavy dedication from you, try this game. You will feel like you are great at it with 5 minutes of practice when you unleash crazy combos. However, if you want some depth, if you want fighting game where you can be expert at it, this game won't satisfy your needs and that is essentially the biggest charm in fighting game genre. Depth and Balance, something you can't find in this game.