The King of Fighters XII - What Happened?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] it all began in 94 kept on rolling 95 things got weird in 2006 then came to an end in 2010. now it comes and here we go kuf is here again nothing's going to stop cause it's look i tried welcome to another episode of what happened the show that looks at upcoming release lists to see if it can harness the vague mysterious power of algorithmic synergy and speaking of which snk has had a very rich history throughout its 43 years of existence and while they've published and developed hundreds of titles in that time it's premier fighting franchise known the world over as king of the monsters world over as the king of fighters is what they are best known for but just as the company that created it this spectacular global slugfest featuring martial artists hobos pimps clones literal children and bouncing ninjas has had a rocky road and today we're going to be discussing the rockiest part no not that part many fans cite today's game as one of the weakest links in the dynasty that is kof a game which was immediately invalidated and forgotten by its apologetic sequel so grab your three sacred treasures and keep that cursed bloodline in check it's time to find out what happened to the king of fighters 12. the early 2000s were filled with the troubles for snk they shut down reformed his play more lost employees gained some back all of the stuff one would expect to happen to a company as arcade focused as snk at a time when the industry was rapidly shifting away from the arcade one unexpected highlight was the surprise success of kof maximum impact mixman impact a 3d spinoff co-developed by noise factory that thrust a bunch of poochies right into fans faces whether they wanted them or not it went on to sell over 100 000 copies worldwide on the ps2 which was an improvement over the last few kof titles at retail following the success of maximum impact kof maximum impact 2 or kof 2006 for you north americans was announced and offered a lot of new characters content bizarre costumes and was also pretty unbalanced yo yo yo i see you on the ralph oddly before mi2 could even release snk would also announce a next-gen maximum impact 3 via press release at tgs 2005 damn extremely soon after that in an attempt to get this spin-off subseries over with hardcore japanese fans that had cluck their tongues and stroke their beards at the series shift to 3d art and 1v1 gameplay a more competitive arcade edition of mi2 dubbed regulation a was released in game centers and on the ps2 in the summer of 2007. it brought back the traditional 313 format dropped the single player story modes and threw a handful of new characters in just cause regulation a was also scheduled for international release but these plans were dream cancelled before undisclosed reasons looping back on maximum impact 3 despite being eagerly announced ahead of mi2's release it obviously never happened where did it go falcoon the character designer and producer of the maximum impact series left snk for unknown reasons which could have been related to mi3's cancellation even more tangentially related is the failure of samurai showdown sen a new three-dimensional entry in the weapons-based franchise that struck arcades with a dull clunk in 2008 getting received extremely poorly by basically everyone the specifics of this time frame at snk are unclear and this is speculation on my part but this may all have contributed to snk then pumping the brakes on new 3d titles and falcon leaving the company then suddenly king of fighters 12 was unveiled at the 2008 arcade operators union amusement expo or aou for short in japan and showed off a distinct 2d visual style that prioritized fluid animation as well as bold new sprites some fans felt that the characters appeared somewhat jaggy and low res compared to the insanely good looking stages but people generally welcomed a brand new traditional looking kof game as other series like street fighter had degraded themselves with an unholy union to filthy polygons the game's producer masaki kukino said up to version 11 the series succeeded and capitalized on its legacy artwork but everything had to go when shifting to a new style this decision to wipe the sprite slate clean may have also come from the negative reaction fans had to the remake kof94 rebout which filtered the ever loving [ __ ] out of the character art and subbed in new 3d backgrounds for some reason i don't really remember this version but i mean it can't be that bad wow so wow okay okay anyway snk realized that if they were going to bring kof into a new generation the series needed a visual overhaul however 2d game development had changed over the last 10 years and the old methods they had used to make sprites wouldn't necessarily get them the high fidelity results they're looking for in the hd era the team opted to animate the game's cast in 3d then use those 3d animations as a base to painstakingly create the sprites pixel by pixel frame by frame this produced a stunningly fluid effect that blew older sprite-based fighting games out of the water an effect called rotoscoping as seen in prince of persia or the take on me music video the downside was that this was a mind-numbingly slow process that sent ripples or even waves across the entire project kokino went on record in multiple interviews explaining just how much work was being poured into all this 2d artistry our designers are very good and they are also very experienced at what they do but even with all their talent it takes one of our designers up to 16 man months to complete just one character so what we had to do was we had to divide the artist teams for each individual art process in order to maximize our efficiency and streamline our productivity so this helped us meet our deadline except it didn't kof-12 was scheduled to have its first japanese location test in april of 2008 and once the data from that test was collected it would work towards polishing the game all the way up to its final release the location test was then delayed to later in the year and with it the entire game snk reasoned that if they had pushed forward with this original time frame then they would have wound up releasing the game with less than 20 characters which was deemed unacceptable thus the game slipped to a nebulous tba now since it apparently took a year to fully complete a single character this delay as you can imagine was more sizable than team ikari's biceps it wasn't until march of 2009 where ignition entertainment oh that's a blast from the past announced that they would be handling the worldwide publishing duties duty of kof-12 and it would release later that year now any particular reason as to why well it was due to the fact that the franchise was celebrating its 15th anniversary and if you're familiar with this show any game that gets saddled with an anniversary release year winds up on this show it seems like 2009 was ironclad because there was a lot of material snk had to cut from kof12 to make that deadline material that would have surely started this new era off on a much better foot three nameless brand new fighters were dropped from the roster altogether the akari warriors had their designs changed at the last minute to be almost identical so they could cut down on unique frames and perhaps worst of all fan favorites some having been around since the beginning were completely mia sounds like you guys are having a great party why wasn't i about it it was a weird omission because newer kof characters like ash and shen wu had made the cut but kdash maxima yuri king and mai that's almost two entire teams did not there is data on the disc suggesting that they and other fighters were at one point planned but were never completed i'm sure many of you out there might remember the homegrown grassroots campaign no my no buy which was shouted loudly from the rooftops by snk's most ardent and horny fans get the caregiver all of this cut content resulted in kof12 tying maximum impact 1 for the award of the smallest roster in a kof game ever with 20 characters in their initial releases they would wind up increasing kof12's cast size to 22 for the console version with neither edition being my huh which was still shy of even the original kof 94 which sported 24 characters plus one unplayable borderline unbeatable end boss let's see if the the extras oh [ __ ] reduced content didn't just come in the form of characters sadly since snk knew they would have their hands full slaving away on all the sprite work they decided this particular kof entry should be a dream match or more accurately that it would need to be a dream match for those not familiar traditionally a dm is when a game would deprioritize story lines and the current canon to focus on fan service and bringing back dead or long absent characters i say traditionally cause 12 didn't bother with the bringing back the cool characters part there were zero bosses no substantial cut scenes or character dialogue and everyone had the exact same ending and jesus this ending you know what in fact roll the clip [Applause] amazing now in terms of newcomers well there was only one and he wasn't even all that new this was ryden's first kof but he hailed from fatal fury originally so yeah i think he barely counts background saw similar devastating cutbacks while all of them are lavish unique and bursting with high quality animation snk only included five unique stages and one nighttime variant stage which is just i don't know kind of depressing even if you group the roster into the traditional three-person teams there still even wouldn't be enough locations to represent each one and oh i almost forgot teams the select screen in 12 was unmitigated chaos if you wanted to choose team japan for example you have to play where's waldo to find them and despite maintaining the 3v3 format the game actually de-emphasized teams in general in terms of presentation it's a minor thing i know but it just showed how rushed kof12 was in certain respects the real kicker to all of this though was that this was originally intended to be the send-off for the current storyline with its sequel intended to be the dream match as snk's eyes started to bulge out of their skull as they looked upon the mammoth amount of work they had given themselves they realized they had to pull an old switcheroo as it was the only viable call they could make there was one other aspect about kos 12 that many out there might have forgotten and i don't blame you online play what qf-12 had online play no not really well fighting game netcode has come a long way since 2009 even in its day qf-12 was considered abysmal with many fans citing numerous problems such as long wait times connection errors and incredibly laggy play so when the game launched in july of that year fans had to wait months for the very first patch to address these issues which is an eternity in fighting game time thus his popularity in the online space quickly fizzled out when you look at all these issues it really all comes down to time management the laborious process of painting over 3d models is what doused this game's flame before it could ever even start burning fortunately the gameplay was largely unaffected kof12 felt different but solid especially when considered the number of new elements that added depth to the fighting system like clashes and critical counters all in all a solid gameplay foundation on which to build upon unfortunately the threadbare content and pittance of a roster couldn't be ignored and koa 12 got trounced for it between the poor online experience and the game only featuring a brief stripped-down arcade ladder as far as single-player content goes it got slapped with a lot of room temperature reviews by most major outlets sitting pretty in the lavish range known as mixed sales weren't much better in japan it pile drived itself towards the bottom of snk sales data by delivering the worst first week launch for a mainline kof title selling just under 18 000 units across both platforms the wood eventually crawled past 41k in north america though the game didn't crack the npd top 20 for july or august of 2009 so when you run the numbers it almost definitely sold well below maximum impact 1. hopefully the game's arcade release somewhat made up for this [Music] snk knew they had delivered an underwhelming game but thankfully kof 13 released in arcades almost exactly one year later did a great job making up for it there was plenty of story and dialogue the roster had ballooned up to 31 including where is she oh god thank jesus had more modes better but still not great online and an actual n-boss best of all it deleted ash crimson from reality never to return again the god dammit sadly despite all these improvements which resulted in far better reviews it didn't result in much better initial sales barely edging out 12 in japan on launch week and actually selling less over time and failing to chart worldwide once again 13 would find success years later in its 2013 steam version where it now sits at over 616 000 players according to steam spy unfortunately 2011 was also a year of controversy for snk months before 13's release its producer masaki kukino suddenly burned knuckled out of the company's windows citing a lack of faith in the new management change rumors began to churn that snk's newly appointed president ryo mizifune wanted to shift focus over to licensing ai pachinko and wanted to leave actual video game development behind snk actually responded to these claims stating in response to internet rumors snk is planning to release a full slate of games in 2011 and expect to continue publishing games worldwide for many years to come they wouldn't ship a single new fighting game for almost 6 years yeah that makes sense instead we saw ports from snk's back catalog a smattering of new mostly mobile titles and try to act surprised a lot of goddamn pachinko it was not what i wanted it could very well be that 12 and 13 were so unprofitable that it pushed snk's higher ups to look to other ventures but thankfully it doesn't really matter anymore in 2022 the company is in a better position than it's been in a long time bolstered by a steady lineup of new titles and stronger ports of their classics health have even been making some interesting moves with their non-fighting game ip while their mission statement of making the ultimate 2d fighter with 12 and 13 was an incredibly admirable one it ultimately wouldn't pan out like in terms of making money that said in a refreshing change from what i usually cover on this show the mistakes made during this era thankfully didn't fully ko the company kof15 is here so so that's great now bring back fatal fury if you know of any other button bashers good or bad i can cover on this show make sure to check out my worst friday game series sound off in the comments below over on my twitter or grab an invite to the flophouse vip patreon to nominate what i'll be tackling in the future see you next time and thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 309,204

Keywords: Matt McMuscles, What Happened?, wha happun, The King of Fighters XII, The King of Fighters XV, Video Game Documentaries, What Happened The King of Fighters XII, KOF XV

Id: S0jgHaGWmKI

Length: 17min 56sec (1076 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 19 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/penpen35]

Still remembered the day when KOF XII was announced. Holy crap, those sprites looked really awesome, I thought. We KOF fans won't get laughed at by others saying KOF is still using sprites from 1996!

But what Matt covered here also basically mentioned everything that's wrong with the game - it's basically more like a tech demo. It felt barebones.

Gameplay wise it was also quite off - didn't really feel like KOF first and foremost. The game came out and died off pretty quickly, essentially.

Obviously XIII after was well received critically and there's always people who clamor for those sprites again. Though the process was painstakingly time consuming. I made a comment about this some time ago but it's lost in history it seems. The short of it was it's so time consuming that they essentially took 4 years to make a critically panned game (XII) which also didn't sell well. So they had to transition to 3D after XIII due to the time and manpower it took. Though if you want to learn more, this page about the sprite creation process was pretty awesome: https://kofaniv.snk-corp.co.jp/english/info/15th_anniv/2d_dot/art/index.php

It however, didn't bankrupt SNK (then SNK Playmore) - I don't know why some still have the misconception that SNK bankrupted after releasing XII or XIII (it did bankrupt in 2001). It's covered in this video and can easily be found on the Wikipedia page of SNK.

[u/bfnnhy]

Thanks for finally taking a look at this. The whole story story of the rise and downfall of SNK in the early 2000s is definitely worth an episode of its own.