King of Fighters 2000/2001 Review

SNK hasn’t had much activity in recent years, but with the ports King of Fighters 2000 and 2001, they step back up to the plate. KoF 2000/2001 is a 2D fighter that is and has always been based on you forming teams of fighters and pitting them against other teams to determine who the best is. King of Fighters is a good game, but is it the king of fighters?

King of Fighters 2000 and King of Fighters 2001 were each originally released in 2000 and in 2001, like their names obviously indicate. They of course have added new features to the game, such as the addition of strikers. If you don’t know what a striker is, then you probably haven’t played Marvel vs. Capcom, so for those of you who are unfamiliar with strikers, I will explain. Strikers are characters that leap onto the screen and can hit your opponent, allowing you to make longer combinations, as well as do more damage.

There are more new features, other than the addition of strikers in KoF 2000/2001. There is the new counter system, which allows you to interrupt your opponents’ attack and lets you score some hits yourself. As well, in this game you are able to form a team of up to four fighters, the combination being one character with three strikers or a group of four fighters.

Besides just having new features KoF 2000/2001 has more unlockables. You have the ability to unlock new levels, as well as new strikers, and Kof 2000 lets you unlock intro-sequences from the other King of Fighters games. To unlock these features, you have to go through a rather tedious process; you have to play party mode. Party mode doesn’t sound like a bad thing, but it is rather mislabeled, because it is nothing like a party. Party mode is just a string of endless battles, in which you fight opponents that don’t even fight back until you have defeated like 50 of them (exaggeration intended), so needless to say, it is not worth it, unless you really want those new levels.

Though King of Fighters 2000/2001 does not offer much in the way of graphics, due to the fact that it is slightly outdated, it does offer quite a bit in the way of gameplay. With two discs, it has hours and hours of play-time, normally not even counting the unlockable features. If you are looking for a decent 2D fighter, I would suggest King of Fighters 2000/2001, but there are better 2D fighter titles out there like Guilty Gear X; it all depends on what you are looking for. Either way, King of Fighters 2000/2001 are good games, conveniently rapped in one package.