Published in All About Series Vol. 7 – The King of Fighters ’94 (December 25, 1994). Interview with several SNK staff members about the recently released The King of Fighters ’94.
Investigating the secrets of KOF ’94!!
SNK Interview
The “All About Series” staff went to SNK headquarters nearby the Esaka station in Osaka to carry out an interview with the production staff of The King of Fighters ’94. In attendance were the director in charge of general supervision Ms. T, the main planner Mr. K, the sub-planner Mr. T, and Mr. Fujiwara from PR.
The initial plan was “Downtown Team Battle”
– How did plans for The King of Fighters ’94 (referred to henceforth as “KOF’94”) begin?
A: The original idea was that we would make a horizontal-scrolling brawler-type game. The selling point for the game would be that you lead a whole team, like a team of delinquents, into battle. It was generally referred to by the name “Downtown Team Battle” (laughs). Eventually, it ended up changing from a side-scrolling action game to the more popular genre of Vs. Fighting game. At that point, we were left with the direction of a “team component” from the previous plan, and thought we would make some kind of team competition-type game like judo or kendo. When that eventually took form, it became the Team Battle System you see in the current game.
– How did you end up deciding to use popular SNK characters from previous titles?
A: The idea for team battles came first, and then after that was stuff like scheduling, but when we got to thinking about how to make the game popular, the idea of “what if we use characters from Fatal Fury?” came up… but at first there was a decent amount of opposition. We would be borrowing characters that other teams had created… So then we decided that if we were going to have characters from Fatal Fury, we might as well make a celebration-like game covering all of SNK’s characters.
– Did you plan on making the general rules of the game similar to those of Fatal Fury Special?
A: Fatal Fury-type fighting games are some of the most mainstream in the genre, so that was a natural starting point for us. Beyond giving players a huge number of characters to use in team battles, we thought it would be best to make a game that didn’t change mechanics too drastically from what people were already accustomed to.
– How long did development take?
A: About two years. At first we would just use assets directly from the source games for characters from Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting, but in the end we redrew every character, which took up an enormous amount of time.
– When did you come up with the title “KOF’94”?
A: About a year ago. We decided on “KOF” because you would get a good idea of the game’s content from the title alone.
About the new mechanics
– KOF’94 introduces a number of new mechanics. Do you have any anecdotes to share surrounding those?
A: We had this mechanic where you would put the opponent character in a Nelson hold, and using the same requirements as an Assist Attack, could call your partner character in from the background to whale on your opponent… but when we considered how it affected the game’s pacing, it got scrapped. You could also do the sidestep input in midair to dodge attacks at first, but from a visual standpoint it was a bit hard to read, and the game had this hollow feeling when attacks missed too often, so in the end that was removed as well.
– The inclusion of sidesteps gives The King of Fighters a different feel than other fighting games up until now.
A: When your opponent attacks you, the only choice you’ve had up until now is to guard. We tried implementing this mechanic thinking “normally you would just get out of the way”, and I think it came out well. Oh, that reminds me. At first, sidestepping wouldn’t give you total invincibility. So, we would have characters whose lower body hitboxes would remain, or who would have hitboxes during certain frames, all sorts of things like that. But it made balancing extremely difficult. So, for the sake of the final game, we made it total invincibility.
KOF’94 is a parallel world story
– From a story standpoint, how should we think of this overlap between Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting?
A: As you’re aware, there’s quite a gap between the periods that Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting take place in. So, I think it’s best to think of KOF’94 as a game that exists outside the events of the original games. It’s like the movie adaptations of Dragon Ball or Kamen Rider. Try looking at it like that.
– It definitely has a kind of “dream game” or “special edition” feeling to it.
A: The Fatal Fury games have their own story in their own era, and the Art of Fighting games have their own story in their own era. KOF’94 is something like a parallel world to those. Still, when Fatal Fury Special and Art of Fighting 2 released while we were mid-development, there were quite a few things that took us by surprise. For instance, the fact that Takuma retires at the end of Art of Fighting 2 (laughs). In KOF’94, Takuma appears as a still-active martial artist, so we were rather startled (laughs).
– So, the game’s final boss is Rugal, but is he at all related to Geese?
A: Hm, I wonder. Originally, Rugal had an attribute where he would take moves from opponents he fought and make them his own, and would be able to use every character’s special moves. But for storage capacity and development time reasons, we couldn’t do that. So you can say that his using Reppuken and Kaiser Wave is a remnant of that.
– Can you not play as Rugal?
A: You definitely can’t. On that note, right after the game released, this rumor started spreading saying you can use Geese in KOF’94… people were even spreading codes to do so. Geese’s data doesn’t exist in the ROM, so there’s no way that’s possible.
– Now that the game has actually released, what has the player response been like?
A: The thing we’re happiest about is the popularity of the game’s protagonist, Kyo. At first, all the art and postcards we received were focused on the “Fatal Fury vs. Art of Fighting” angle. But lately, we’ve been getting a lot for the original characters, which all of us are really happy about.
Athena’s 16-sprite entrance
– I’m sure a lot happened in the course of the game’s development, but can you tell us about anything that was particularly difficult?
A: We approached Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting characters knowing that we wouldn’t be able to avoid leaving behind some special moves or unique characteristics. It wasn’t as much of a problem for Fatal Fury, but for Art of Fighting characters… the Art of Fighting games have the spirit gauge system, right? KOF’94 doesn’t have that at all, meaning they can use their special moves without using spirit. So then, the Art of Fighting Team becomes extremely strong… balancing the game around things like that ended up being quite a challenge.
– What about Athena?
A: Actually, my boss was on the development team of Athena, and has quite a lot of attachment to her, so he would often see Athena as she appears in KOF’94 and make demands of us like “no, that’s not Athena!” (laughs). Still, the Athena we ended up with had something of a young person’s sensibility to her.
– Athena wears a schoolgirl uniform in Psycho Soldier, right? Why does she throw that outfit off in her entrance animation here?
A: We did plan on having her fight in the schoolgirl uniform at one point. But we figured people overseas wouldn’t really understand the outfit, and we had designed a new Athena for KOF’94 that we thought would catch on, so it ended up being what you see now. That entrance animation was just something the staff was into (laughs). It even uses 16 sprites. They’d get complaints from other designers saying “why does only Athena use that many?”. Oh, and Athena’s Shining Crystal Bit was something the programmers decided to make on their own before they had heard any ideas from the planners (laughs).
4 rapid-fire questions
– What kind of ideas and moves did you try to add to the game, but eventually got cut?
A: At one point the Ikari Team would throw hand grenades as their projectile attack, but we thought having grenades blowing up in a fighting game was a bit distasteful, so it got scrapped. By the way, around the beginning of development, we had planned on including a Bonus Stage.
– What would that have been like?
A: We asked the planner to come up with 100 different kinds, and he actually did it. But a lot of them were very out-there, like having Bonus Items fly in from the sky that you would have your character destroy. At that time, the general thought was that Bonus Games were essential for fighting games, but our conclusion from having thought of 100 different kinds was that we didn’t need one after all (laughs). So we quickly decided to cut the Bonus Stage from KOF’94.
– What’s the algorithm for CPU characters like?
A: It’s a system with 8 levels of difficulty, and varies based on the remaining time and which round of which stage you’re on. It’s fundamentally similar to the one used in Fatal Fury. Something that’s a bit different is that compared to Fatal Fury, the computer checks for around three times as many different player states. In just one jump, it checks for the jump initiation, ascent, descent, and landing.
– By the way, the high schooler-looking girl in Kyo’s stage… is that Kyo’s girlfriend?
A: Oh, oh! Very well-spotted! That’s actually completely right. I didn’t think anyone would notice. At first, when we were working on the Japan Stage, there would be this crazy sequence where she would show up when Kyo dies. Other than that, we had also thought about an entrance animation for Kyo where he would drive through the streets on a motorcycle. The motorcycle that’s in the background of the Japan Stage is actually Kyo’s.
Mai doesn’t jiggle overseas!?
– How does the American version of KOF’94 differ from the Japanese version?
A: For starters, there’s no blood spray in the overseas version. Then there’s the matter of Mai’s breasts (laughs). In the overseas MVS version, Mai’s breasts don’t move. That was reckless behavior from the designers… (laughs). Generally, animations are 6 sprites at most, but Mai’s breasts move with 16 frames. This is something that was received well within the development team (laughs), but overseas these kind of naughty influences quickly lead to complaints, so it was removed from the arcade version alone. But if you enter a secret code, they’ll start moving again. If you want the code, ask SNK America and they’ll give it to you.
– Did you face any other difficulties bringing the game overseas?
A: Right as we were about to make the master version of the game, we got comments from overseas staff saying Choi Bounge was too similar to a certain movie character, and fixing it was a huge pain. Originally, Choi wore a shirt with horizontal stripes. So we hurriedly did work like adding facial hair, changing his clothes to a plain pattern, and adding suspenders.
Also, the Brazil Stage has some native children in the background, but at first they would flash their bare butts. We thought it was okay because they’re kids, but in the end it was determined to be distasteful, and was changed.
Secrets behind the names
– Moving on to character names, do names like Choi Bounge and Chang Koehan mean anything in Korean?
A: They do. In Korean, “Koehan” means “giant”, and “Bounge” means “lightning”. This is a bit of a digression, but the name “Sie Kensou” was decided on by the programmer who put together the “sequence” (the automatic control program)*.
* [“Sie Kensou” is phoenetically “shii kensuu” in Japanese, and “sequence” is “shiikensu”]
– Were there any characters whose names were changed mid-development?
A: There were. Lucky’s name was originally “Vincent”, and Heavy D! and Brian both had their names changed as well. People who are more well-acquainted with foreigners pointed out to us “Black people and Americans don’t really have those names”, so we changed them.
Also, Kyo’s name was original “Syo Kirishima”. “Kyo Kusanagi” was only really settled on towards the end of development. Thanks to that name, we were able to come up with a pretty cool backstory. His ancestors are actually the clan who defeated Yamata no Orochi, but what they used wasn’t the Sword of Kusanagi, it was the Fists of Kusanagi… So that’s why his Super Special Move is named “Orochinagi” [Orochi Cleaver], and how it was decided that it was the ability used to defeat Yamata no Orochi.
– Did the names of special moves also get changed?
A: Kyo has a special move named “Yamibarai” [Darkness Purger], right? At first it was a ball that flew through the air. So it was called “Hi no Tama Tobashi” [Fireball Hurl]. “Oniyaki” [Demon Cooker] was “Guruguru Punch” [Spinning Punch], “Oboroguruma” [Haze Wheel] was “Kurukuru Kick” [Whirling Kick] (laughs). Daimon’s “Jigoku Gokuraku Otoshi” [Hell Paradise Drop] was originally “Okiraku Gokuraku Otoshi” [Carefree Paradise Drop], Athena’s Super Special Move was also called “Kurukuru Psycho Ball” [Whirling Psycho Ball]. “Baribari Vulcan Punch” [Rapid-Fire Vulcan Punch] was a nickname given to the move so it would be easy to understand when we checked the program, but it ended up being popular, so it was left as is. In opposition to that, Clark’s special move was named “Garigari Gatling Attack” [Crunching Gatling Attack] (laughs).
Surely KOF’95 must exist!?
– Since KOF’94 was received so well, can we expect a “KOF’95” next year?
A: That’s what we were afraid you’d ask (laughs). Right now, we’re considering it. It all depends on the player response.
– If you were to start on a version for 1995 now, it seems like it would be a really tight development schedule.
A: That’s why we really don’t want to think about it (laughs).
– Lastly, any final messages for the readers?
A: For the first time in a while, I think we made a game you can really mess around and have fun with. It’s a game you can mess around with that’s very demanding in which you can find yourself knocked to the ground in seconds, so I hope everyone enjoys it. Personally, I’d like to see excitement build around the Hero Team of Kyo, Benimaru and Daimon, so I’d be happy to see everyone rooting for them as well. If they get popular enough, I think we’ll be able to plan on a “95” or “96”. If the readers hope for a sequel, then please use all your power to support Kyo.