In 1994 SNK put its fighting game heroes in one ring. “Imagine a Fury team with the likes of the Bogard brothers and Joe Higashi locked in combat with Ryo, Robert and Takuma Sakazaki from Art of Fighting 2!” Nintendo Magazine System wrote of The King of Fighters ’94, which had “24 fighters split into eight teams”. Instead of one fighter, each player chose a team of three. SNK named each game after its year and brought out a new one every year for a decade, and The King of Fighters became what Retro Gamer called SNK’s “most prolific and profitable franchise”, outlasting both the Neo Geo it began on and the original company.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: SNK; from 2001 its successor, Playmore, later SNK Playmore and now SNK again.
- First game: The King of Fighters ’94, in Neo Geo arcades in August 1994, then on the Neo Geo home cartridge and CD systems.
- Format: teams of three fighting one at a time; the winner of each bout stays on.
- Annual editions: ’94 to ’99, then 2000 to 2003; later XI (2005), XII (2009), XIII (2010), XIV (2016) and XV (2022).
- Home versions: Neo Geo, PlayStation and Saturn in the 1990s, then Dreamcast, PlayStation 2 and later consoles.
Eight teams
The name came from SNK’s earlier Fatal Fury, whose story was built around a “King of Fighters” tournament run by Geese Howard in South Town. The King of Fighters ’94 turned that into a world tournament of national teams. Three came from earlier games: the Fatal Fury team of Terry Bogard, Andy Bogard and Joe Higashi, the Art of Fighting team of Ryo Sakazaki, Robert Garcia and Takuma Sakazaki, and the Ikari Warriors soldiers Ralf and Clark with their commander, Heidern. Athena Asamiya from Psycho Soldier fought for China alongside Sie Kensou and Chin Gentsai. There was a team of women fighters, among them Fatal Fury’s Mai Shiranui, a Korean team led by Kim Kaphwan, and an American sports team of a boxer, a basketball player and an American football player. A new Japanese team was led by Kyo Kusanagi, with Benimaru Nikaido and Goro Daimon. The final opponent was Rugal Bernstein, an arms dealer with, in Retro Gamer’s words, “a supreme array of uber-powerful attacks”.
Retro Gamer’s history of the series explains how it played. A team’s three members fought in an order chosen beforehand, and the one who won a bout stayed on to face the next opponent. Characters could not be swapped in during a fight, but a team-mate on the sidelines could be called in for help. A power gauge charged up until a super special move could be released, with easier commands than the comparable moves in Fatal Fury. Nintendo Magazine System called the cartridge a “shocking 300 meg” of memory.
The yearly game
SNK started on a sequel straight away. The King of Fighters ’95 began the first of several story arcs, the Orochi saga, and introduced Kyo’s rival, Iori Yagami. It also let players pick any three of the 24 fighters with a new Team Edit mode. Computer and Video Games thought the team idea made it “one of the most varied, exciting combat games around”, though it found the computer opponents “as cheap and as unsatisfying as ever” and the game “best enjoyed with two players”. The Neo Geo CD version, it noted, loaded each fighter separately, which “breaks up the game horrendously mid-bout”. When it covered The King of Fighters ’96 in 1997, the magazine reported that ’95 had been voted game of the year by the Japanese magazine Famicom Tsushin.
The Orochi story ended with ’97. The King of Fighters ’98 dropped the story to be a “Dream Match” of almost every earlier character; Sega Saturn Magazine counted 38 fighters. SNK’s Akihito Kadowaki told Retro Gamer in 2007 that it was among “the most popular titles in the franchise”, and that year it was one of the games chosen for the one-on-one contest at Super Battle Opera, the big tournament held in Japan. The King of Fighters ‘99 began the NESTS saga, with a new lead, K’, and four fighters to a team, one of them called in as a “striker” to attack during a bout. Strikers lasted until 2001, and 2002 went back to teams of three. The King of Fighters 2003 introduced tag-team switching in mid-fight, began a new story around Ash Crimson, and was the last game in the series on the Neo Geo’s arcade board.
Through the collapse
SNK went bankrupt in 2001, and its founder’s new company, Playmore, took over its games. The Korean developer Eolith worked on the series through the change, and Retro Gamer names 2002 as the last King of Fighters it worked on before SNK Playmore took over for 2003. In 2004 SNK Playmore moved the series off the ageing Neo Geo to Sammy’s Atomiswave board, where The King of Fighters XI appeared in 2005. A 3D branch, KOF: Maximum Impact, began in 2004.
Takashi Nishiyama, who had made the first Street Fighter at Capcom before joining SNK, oversaw the early games as head of development, Wireframe reported in 2022. Yasuyuki Oda, who joined SNK in 1993 and became the series’ producer, told the magazine that SNK concentrated more on fights against computer opponents than Capcom did, “because they had cabinets not just in large arcades, but also smaller shops”, and that The King of Fighters XV (2022) had found “a good balance, and new players have joined because of it”.
Latin America
The series had a following far from Japan. Brazilian magazines covered each new edition in detail, and in 1998 Gamers wrote: “A febre de King of Fighters se fortalece a cada ano que passa” (King of Fighters fever grows stronger every year that passes). Wikipedia, citing later interviews, links the series’ popularity in Latin America partly to price, since machines running King of Fighters were often cheaper for arcade owners.
Sources
- Nintendo Magazine System issue 25, October 1994, p. 13: The King of Fighters ’94, 24 fighters in eight teams, 300 megabits, the Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting teams.
- Edge issue 14, November 1994: the Neo Geo CD launch, with The King Of Fighters ’94.
- Computer and Video Games issue 169, December 1995: The King of Fighters ’95 review (the team idea, Team Edit and the 24 fighters, the CPU opponents, the CD loading).
- Computer and Video Games issue 186, May 1997: The King of Fighters ’96 feature (’95 voted game of the year by Famicom Tsushin; changes to the roster, rolling and dashing).
- Sega Saturn Magazine issue 36, October 1998: The King of Fighters ’98 (38 fighters, the American sports and master teams).
- Gamers (Brazil) issue 33, 1998: The King of Fighters ’98 (the returning teams, among them Kim’s Korean team with Choi and Chang, and the USA team of Heavy D!, Lucky and Brian, unseen since ’94; “a febre de King of Fighters”).
- Retro Gamer issue 35, 2007, pp. 64–71, “The story of The King of Fighters”: the series from ’94 to XI, interview with SNK Playmore’s Akihito Kadowaki; p. 6: the Super Battle Opera 2007 line-up.
- Retro Gamer issue 54, 2008: Neo Geo MVS feature (The King of Fighters as SNK’s “most prolific and profitable franchise”; teams tied to countries; Athena, Sie Kensou and Chin Gentsai for China; the 716-megabit KOF 2003).
- Wireframe issue 62, April 2022, pp. 84–87: SNK’s fighting games, Takashi Nishiyama, Yasuyuki Oda and The King of Fighters XV.
- Wikipedia, “The King of Fighters ’94” and “The King of Fighters” (accessed October 2026) (web, secondary): release dates, the full ‘94 team rosters, the series’ release years, Eolith’s work on 2001 and 2002, and its popularity in Latin America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_of_Fighters_%2794 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_of_Fighters
- See the SNK and Neo Geo entries for SNK’s bankruptcy, Playmore and the move to the Atomiswave.