The King Of Fighters XII Clan-Play PS3 Exclusive
At yesterday's pre-E3 The King of Fighters XII event, just-off Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, Gaming Union had the opportunity to get some hands-on time with the game, and also interview KOF12 publisher, Ignition Entertainment.
Shane Bettenhausen, Ignition's New Business Development Director and former Executive Editor of both the 1UP network and Electronic Gaming Monthly, MC'd the KOF12 event, and subsequently sat down with Gaming Union for a chat about the game. Myself and Gaming Union Editor-in-Chief, Darryl, conducted the interview with Shane.
Kyle: Why did Ignition decide to publish The King of Fighters XII?
Shane: Actually, Ignition has a multi-game contract with SNK Playmore. About a year ago SNK Playmore closed its US publishing branch and were looking for partners to publish their games, and the first game that Ignition [published] was Metal Slug 7 for the DS and then we did King of Fighters: Ultimate Match for PS2, and now King of Fighters XII for PS3 and 360. We also just announced a new Samurai Showdown: Edge of Destiny for Xbox 360, so I think there's more where that came from.
Kyle: Are you worried about competition at all, with other Fighters saturating the market right now?
Shane: I think fighting games went away for a while for a long time, and not until Street Fighter IV came back out did the general populous remember, "Oh yeah, fighting games are awesome!" I think it's just the beginning of like a renaissance, and I think there's room for 2D, 3D, all sorts of different kinds of fighting games.
Kyle: A rebirth of the Genre, more or less?
Shane: Yeah, I hope so, because I'm a huge fighting game fan, and it seemed like after about '99 it started fading away.
Darryl: If anything, things like Marvel vs. Capcom 2 coming out around the same time, that's good for you as well.
Shane: Yeah, and even the competition, like Blaz Blue, I'm excited to play that, and Tekken 6 coming out this Fall. As a fan of fighting games, the more the better, because I think anybody who buys a Street Fighter, a Tekken, is someone who might also try a Samurai Showdown or King of Fighters, who might have never played it.
Kyle: Like people who play First-Person Shooters buy a lot of First-Person Shooters.
Shane: Right, and a lot of people weren't around [when fighting games were popular]. This is the 15th anniversary of King of Fighters, it was the 20th of Street Fighter; a lot of the younger players don't remember why these series were so good.
Kyle: Yeah, as Darryl was mentioning, a lot of Street Fighter 2's development team went on to work on King of Fighters.
Darryl: Yeah, and Samurai Showdown.
Shane: Yeah, it's interesting actually, between SNK and Capcom there's tons of borrowing. If you look at a character, like Dan, Dan's obviously based on Ryo in King of Fighters. If you look at Crimson Viper, she looks a lot like, and plays a lot like King of Fighters characters as well. So, there's a lot of back and forth.
Kyle: What are the defining features of King of Fighters XII that set it apart from other fighting games out right now?
Shane: The big change is the gameplay, actually. If you play this, they bulldozed most of the systems that had been introduced in the last five games. It'd gotten pretty complicated, and they wanted to get back to the basics of how it used to play, like King of Fighters '94, '95. So they reverted most character-move-sets to that.
Darryl: Which could explain why I was just having difficulty playing the game (Laughs)
Shane: (Laughs) Yeah, I mean, in some of the established characters, like Yori, totally different now. He played the same for 14 years, then all of a sudden it's like, you have to relearn that character. The system, such as the Critical Counters, the Deadlocks, it kind of balances things out, it makes it a little easier. It's almost like custom combos from Street Fighter Alpha 2 where if you have the opportunity you can get in and just do a huge combo. In general it's a lot more accessible, so if you've never played it it's easy just to pick it up and play.
Kyle: Are those the leading features of this new edition? Or are there other things that are new to this edition of King of Fighters?
Shane: This is the first version to ever have online play, and that's kind of a big deal. Especially, it has eight player lobbies, which I know a lot of people with other fighting games have been complaining [about]. You know, you only have two people in a lobby, it doesn't feel like the arcade experience. Here [in King of Fighters XII] you can have eight guys quartering up, watching the matches, chatting. Other new features, besides the obvious graphical changes, if you look at the old King of Fighters games usually the same sprites were reused year and year again, like the same Kyo sprite from '95 was being used like ten years later. So in this game everything got reset, so that's why it took so long to come out. Instead of being an annual game it took four years because they had to redraw every single sprite in twice the resolution of the old game.
Kyle: Is there anything else you can tell us about the online modes? Stats and features like that?
Shane: There's leader boards, and the big thing actually is between the two platforms there's different features. On PS3 there's a clan system that you can play as, that's a big deal because no fighting game's ever had that.
Darryl: So does that mean there's going to be clan matches, which we've seen in games like Killzone 2 recently? Or is it literally that you can just join a clan?
Shane: You join a clan and you're actually in-charge of the clan. You can kick people out, you can send newsletters to them, and then there's clan-play, where your three characters play against another clan, their three characters.
Darryl: So you get one character each?
Shane: Right, you're one character each, and then there's a separate clan leader board. You can have up too, I think, over a hundred people in your clan. So, I'm excited to see how that plays out.
Kyle: Are there any other differences between the PS3 and 360 versions?
Shane: Well, the 360 version has a TrueSkill leader board. TrueSkill is like a Microsoft thing, so that's exclusive to that version, but other than that they're identical. They run the same, same loading times, same graphics.
Kyle: We heard you've added dual languages to the console versions, is there any other differences between the arcade version and the console versions?
Shane: Besides the addition of online play and as you said, the dual languages, the big change is the two characters that are exclusive to the home versions, which are Elizabeth and Mature, they're not in the arcade version at all.
Kyle: Why isn't there a Wii version?
Shane: That's a good question actually. We asked why there wasn't a PS2 version and it couldn't quite do it on PS2. So maybe it could have happened on Wii, but I don't think that's where the hardcore fighters are, you know. Maybe if enough Wii-people ask for it, they'd consider it, but I'd have to wonder if they'd instead try to make something that uses the Wiimote, more Wii functionality.
Kyle: What's your favourite team in the game? You mentioned your favourite characters.
Shane: Well actually, that's a different thing about King of Fighters XII, there are no preset teams. This is considered a dream match. Every so often in the King of Fighters franchise there will be one where instead of having set teams and a set story-line, it lets you do whatever you want. In this one you can actually pick whoever you want on your team, so my default team is Ash Crimson, Joe Higashi and either Athena or Kyo.
Kyle: That's everything, thanks.
Shane: Thanks dude.
-Gaming Union
