What is the big difference between Fatal Fury 2 and Fatal Fury Special?

[termis]

BTW, is there really a definitive KOF out there?  I hear 98 and '02 gets the most love from majority KOF players - is this generally true?

[Keranu]

I haven't been able to put good time in '2002, but KoF'98 is a perfect competitive fighting game. Casual gamers might not like it because it doesn't really have a story and the backgrounds aren't as creative as the other games, but the gameplay is perfection. I've probably put more time into KoF'98 than any other game from all the practicing and playing against other people. The gameplay is so incredibly deep and I'm always learning something new from it, it's like learning a martial art or something.

[Seldane]

Why do they make new games almost every year though? Is there a valid reason for this or is it just them milking the series?

[Keranu]

They don't make them each year anymore I don't think, but I don't think they were milking the series from '94-98 because each game kept getting better in those years and really made solid improvements, but after '98 things took some strange turns and just didn't come out right.

[MrFulci]

For about the same reason there are sequels to Final Fantasy, Sports, Mario, etc games neary every year.

After a while you figure out most of quirks of a game, if the game has enough of a following/sales a sequel may be made in which they change things up, add new characters, remove some, sometimes codes for special moves are changed, new ones are added, some are removed, etc.

Something new to work with. That's what I look for in fighter sequels.

[Joe Redifer]

The reason they do the yearly thing is because they wanted to become synonymous with John Madden Football in the respect that it is increasingly difficult to tell them apart from title alone and people will sell the old version faster than they can buy the new one and flood used game shops and thrift stores with old, unwanted and outdated games that are meant to be played for one specific year and then discarded, further filling our landfills and causing pollution which makes Al Gore extremely angry.

[SNKNostalgia]

That is why I thought SNK actually was doing it right with games. In most of their games they made major improvements in just a year. Look at KOF 94 and then KOF 97, you can see the long way the series came in just 3 years. I personally like KOF 96 and 97 the most since the fighting system is solid, top notch graphics/music and had really damn good story with great endings. SNK did put most of their effort in the KOF games, so the Samshow, Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting games kinda suffered a little because of this. They still did a good job with most of them.

The main problem later on was that 2d gaming in general was dying as well as the arcade industry itself. That was a double wammy for SNK and even capcom, which is why SNK merged with Aruze Ent. So, games like Koudelka, Psycho Soldier and KOF Kyo was made for the PS1. Same for Capcom evolving to 3D with Resident Evil and others. Just think about how the Neo Geo has been going strong for 13 years like that. Well, really 8 years is more like it though.

[nat]

The reason they do the yearly thing is because they wanted to become synonymous with John Madden Football in the respect that it is increasingly difficult to tell them apart from title alone and people will sell the old version faster than they can buy the new one and flood used game shops and thrift stores with old, unwanted and outdated games that are meant to be played for one specific year and then discarded, further filling our landfills and causing pollution which makes Al Gore extremely angry.

Longest.sentence.ever.

[Keranu]

That is why I thought SNK actually was doing it right with games. In most of their games they made major improvements in just a year. Look at KOF 94 and then KOF 97, you can see the long way the series came in just 3 years. I personally like KOF 96 and 97 the most since the fighting system is solid, top notch graphics/music and had really damn good story with great endings.

Yeah that's what I am saying, it's really amazing how much the series improved within those years. '98 was much of the same as '97, but tweaked the gameplay to make it perfect and added some more characters. I agree that KoF'96 and '97 are the best as overall games because of their awesome story lines, but I generally play fighting games for competition and nothing can come close to '98 in my opinion .