Introduction:

Welcome to one of the best fighters to appear in 1996 on the legendary NEOGEO.
With a huge roster of characters of your favourite scrappers from Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury and Ikari Warriors you wont put the controller down for quite some time. With Omega Rugal gone...a new force of evil appears before you, the orochi power. The man behind the loss of Rugals eye has come out of the shadows and his name is Goenitz! And is ready to fight, READY, GO! Fight in the KOF'96 tournament to show your true power and then defeat Goenitz and seal away the orochi power forever!...

The Game:

The characters roster is filled full of great characters ranging from the fast to the slow but always keep you coming back for more as each character has his/her super Desperation Moves. These Super Desperation Moves or even normal Desperation Moves can be pulled off when your life bar has gotten atleast 3/4 low, some normal special moves get an extra 2 hits or more when executed in this status, for example Terry's Power Geyser. The mode selection screen consists of Team Play, Team Vs, Single Play, Single Vs, Survivor and Option, I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't any practice mode but there are alternatives by going into Single Vs. The option menu consists of all the required options you would expect with a fighter with the difficulty level, how any sounds for each battle and even a language select for some of the major languages. This time round you get a POW bar which you can power up by pressing A+B+C or by being hit or blocking your enemies attacks. With a Maximum POW bar you can pull off all the Desperation Move's and Super Desperation Move's but keep in mind that you only have Maximum POW for a number of seconds. The difficulty on this game is rather high and can come as annoying at times as the Combo system has very tight timings for special moves and more than likely you will end up trying around 5 or more times just to pull of one Desperation move. Also what is new is the introduction of the roll in and roll out system where you can do an emergency roll in and roll out of an attack or going in for the kill with a roll in. There are 9 teams of 3 and one team is consisted of Geese, Mr Big and Wolfgang Krauser! You will have to fight them before you fight the sub boss and they aren't easy so watch out for them. The Sub boss is Kagura, the Guardian of the Orochi power and held a KOF tournament to find the strongest fighters to defeat Goenitz. Goenitz is a hard boss with moves that range from random mini tornados to his crazy Super Desperation Move that will quickly slash your health away.

The Graphics:

The graphics are amazing especially for NEOGEO. The backgrounds give an atmosphere that draws you into the them and not only that the Background Animation is superb ranging from puddles of water that ripple to objects flying around and utmost destruction happening before your eyes and even traffic in one of the ackgrounds! I mean how much more animation and attention to detail could you want! this game truly has great backgrounds. The characters animation is excellent with detailed special attacks and Super DM's that keep you coming back for more.
The attention to Detail still amazes me today with Ralf drinking from a bottle and then throwing it on the ground and doing up his bandanna just after it is just amazing and the animation gives it justice. There is one thing i have always liked about KOF Characters is the sharper look they have compared to what they look like in their original game, for example Terry in KOF looks so much sharper and more detailed than in FF3 or even the Real Bout series.

The Sound:

The Music and sound in KOF'96 are AMAZING and im not exaggerating, the music and sound is really that good. The Music is somewhat godly with awesome guitar and bass that makes you want to buy the Album and even some what id say is Jpop with Athena's music is just catchy and good for any fight, the sub boss and end boss music fit the backgrounds and the characters well and present a deeper atmosphere than before. The cut scenes are amazing and really tell you what's going on but of course it's also accompanied with brilliant music to fit the scene! Even though other newer NEOGEO games have blown away games with their amazing sound quality, KOF'96 still stands strong with its beautiful music and sound.

The Final Verdict:

This is a great fighting game that all 2D fighting fans need to pick up even if you can only afford the Saturn and PSX ports, this game is still a great game to play with a dark storyline, great game play and beautiful sound and music, you will love it on any platform. This is one of the best fighters to grace the NEOGEO and is a definite must buy for KOF fans! Not the best fighter when it comes to combo timings but if your skilled enough you can do them like it's your second nature. I enjoyed this game allot and I still play it today!

See you next time.....