Curry-Hakase
Member
Why are we talking about the XIII alpha?
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RTTP:The King of Fighters 12- Something feels off about this one.
- Thread starter CreeperBlocks
- Start date
NinjaCoachZ
Member
I found a source, and this is from right after XII was released, so before XIII was announced. While I misremembered and the K' Team aren't actually in there (though there are extra, unnamed dummy slots), XII does indeed contain data files for Vice, Hwa Jai, Takuma, Dark Ash, Mai, Yuri, King, '98 Iori, and Billy, all of whom ended up in XIII - plus an unnamed "boss" who likely ended up being Saiki.
http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showt...eveals-all-story-characters-and-boss-spoilers
No idea if an official explanation was given. But SNK had repeatedly emphasized the difficulty and time-consuming nature of making character sprites for the game (I think they said a single character took a bit under a year), and it was probably somewhat expensive too. Plus, 2009 was the 15th anniversary of KOF, so they probably wanted to have a game out by then. So they just took what they had, turned it into XII, and rushed it out I guess to satiate the fans?
Holy Order Sol
Member
no I don't like how it plays either
Oh hey, I was just working on grabbing some graphics from The King of Fighters XIII today, so this thread is perfect!
I don't think anyone will defend The King of Fighters XII as a game, because it was definitely a huge misstep for the franchise, but it's also one that I can understand and accept. As NinjaCouchZ already explained, the task for the art alone must have been monumental.
In the ending credits for XIII, there's a whopping 54 Object Artists listed, some of which held other jobs as Art Directors or Modelling. For reference, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike had 16 listed Object Artists, and is another game considered to be at the pinnacle of pixel art. Paying out for that many artists (not including all the others who worked on Background or VFX), and I'm sure SNK Playmore were sweating just to release a game. While you could argue that putting graphics ahead of gameplay is no excuse, the fact that these are the results is something I'm okay with.
It also laid the ground work for the much better The King of Fighters XIII to exist, so I feel like the mistake was short lived. We also got that cool KOF XII 2D Dot Graphics site that went into depth on the process they used, which is really cool and often something you don't see in the AAA market.
EDIT: I'm still sad that they shelved this style for the more easy to work with 3D models. If only best-girl Angel could've reappeared one game sooner...
I don't think anyone will defend The King of Fighters XII as a game, because it was definitely a huge misstep for the franchise, but it's also one that I can understand and accept. As NinjaCouchZ already explained, the task for the art alone must have been monumental.
A shame because the game butchers the art by zooming in and adding AA to the sprites.
In the ending credits for XIII, there's a whopping 54 Object Artists listed, some of which held other jobs as Art Directors or Modelling. For reference, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike had 16 listed Object Artists, and is another game considered to be at the pinnacle of pixel art. Paying out for that many artists (not including all the others who worked on Background or VFX), and I'm sure SNK Playmore were sweating just to release a game. While you could argue that putting graphics ahead of gameplay is no excuse, the fact that these are the results is something I'm okay with.
It also laid the ground work for the much better The King of Fighters XIII to exist, so I feel like the mistake was short lived. We also got that cool KOF XII 2D Dot Graphics site that went into depth on the process they used, which is really cool and often something you don't see in the AAA market.
EDIT: I'm still sad that they shelved this style for the more easy to work with 3D models. If only best-girl Angel could've reappeared one game sooner...