The King of Fighters 94

Release: August 25, 1994 | Size: 196megs | NGH-055 | Developer: SNK | Publisher: SNK

Author: M.E. Williams

The inaugural game that launched a fighting game phenomenon, King of Fighters 94 introduced the world to not only team based fighting, but also to the concept of a "dream match" style game that celebrates multiple games and characters from one publisher. While it's certainly not the strongest game in the series, King of Fighters 94 is a true classic. 

By 1994 fighting games were already becoming passe. Capcom had released five versions of Street Fighter 2 by this point, and other publishers were flooding arcades with their own takes on the genre with the likes of Mortal Kombat and others that focused more on spectacle rather than gameplay (sorry, MK fans). Not comfortable resting on the successes of their already established franchises, SNK continued to innovate by introducing new ways to play that differed radically from their contemporaries in the 2D space. Rather than release a game with all brand new characters, SNK leaned on their already rich 16 year history to create the very first team based fighting game full of characters and cameos from their storied past. 

The King of Fighters 94 is a technical marvel for the time in which it was released. Hindsight tells us that the Neo-Geo was and is a very capable 2D machine, able to produce some of the best, most revered arcade games of the 1990's. In 1994, though, what SNK did here was nothing short of wizardry to most gamers and critics. The young KOF team somehow managed to cram 24 characters with a decent amount of animation and voice overs onto a cartridge that is only 196 mega bits (24.5 mega bytes). To this point, the most characters ever in a fighting game was held by Fatal Fury Special with 17 individually playable characters. In order to perform this feat of engineering, the development team had to carefully consider every single frame of animation included and reuse sprite assets where appropriate. They also had to consider character sprite size and other metrics in order to save even more memory.

Characters in King of Fighters 94 are quite a bit smaller than other SNK series that typically used large, chunky sprites loaded with detail. Basically, the larger the sprites, the larger the memory footprint needed. For example, Art of Fighting 2, released that same year, has a ROM size of 174 mega bits and sports character sprites that take up a whopping 3/4 of the screen - but there are only 13 characters. The character sprites in King of Fighters 94 are about half that size with considerably less animation overall.

In the Bitmap Books publication The King of Fighters Visual History (released in 2022), interviews with SNK developers who worked on the game cited development challenges due to the "hardware limitations" of the Neo-Geo. It's never explained what these "hardware limitations" are, but given that the graphics are not exactly pushing the hardware to its limit, one could conclude that these limitations refer to finding a way to cram a huge roster in such a small memory footprint and all the nips and tucks it took in order to make the game stand up to other fighting games at the time without feeling or looking compromised just for the sake of having a huge roster.

When it finally launched in August of 1994, The King of Fighters 94 was met with massive critical and commercial success. For the first time ever fans got to pick a team of three fighters from a huge cast that includes brand new characters, characters from contemporary series like Fatal Fury, and a decent number of non-Neo-Geo characters from SNK's early years like Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier. Game center operators also saw positive returns from this game as patrons could try out three characters instead of just one character per credit. While it's hard to imagine today, the value King of Fighters 94 presented to both consumers and operators was just as innovative as the game itself.

If you were a fan of SNK in 1994, you had a lot to be excited about. The three-on-three team-based battles were like nothing else in the fighting game space at the time, and everybody took notice. To this day, the King of Fighters series is SNK's flagship IP with the most recent edition, King of Fighters XV, being released in February of 2022 to universal praise. 

Typically, SNK would double down on storyline elements to flesh out character motivations and give a sense of place and structure to the setting. Much like the prior year's Fatal Fury Special, though, the development team decided to give a loose story in a "dream match" format. This format allowed the designers free reign to mix and match characters from various games in order to create a varied and interesting roster of fighters. Due the immediate popularity of the game, SNK would create a series cannon storyline beginning with King of Fighters 95. The King of Fighters series cannon is set in an alternate universe where the Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury characters are roughly the same age and their storyline events tie into the larger King of Fighters universe.

Unlike later games in the series, King of Fighters 94 requires players to choose a pre-determined team of three fighters that all follow a particular theme. With a total of 24 individual characters, this was the largest roster of any fighting game to date in 1994 by a significant margin. Despite having a large history of interesting characters, SNK introduced a bevy of new faces to round out the teams to keep things fresh. Here's the line up.

In addition to the playable roster, the 25th character is the boss Rugal Bernstein. As was SNK tradition by this point, Rugal is the epitome of the "cheap boss" and is infamous in the fan community as being the hardest boss in SNK history. Despite his infamy, Rugal has gone on to be one of the most popular SNK bosses in their entire history and he has appeared as either the boss or as a playable characters in many subsequent SNK games like King of Fighters 95, 98, and the modern King of Fighters XV. 

General gameplay takes cues from Fatal Fury Special as it is a little more traditional and approachable than some SNK's other franchises. Attacks buttons are the SNK standard of two punch and two kick buttons. SNK also introduced the A+B dodge which can pass through projectiles or bypass melee attacks. The CD power move from Fatal Fury Special was also included, but rather than pushing the character into an alternate line (this is a single plane game), it results in a hard knockdown upon hit and can also be done in the air. The general speed of the game is faster than any other SNK release of the day due to the introduction of a short forward or backward dash and duck walking. We wouldn't see further movement options, like the hop and running dash, until King of Fighters 96.

Like many other SNK games, King of Fighters 94 includes a Max Meter (super bar) you can charge by holding down ABC at the same time, or it will fill with special move use and other parameters. A full meter grants you the ability to use a desperation (super) move and provides a generous damage buff. Like Fatal Fury Special before it, you can also do unlimited desperation moves if your life bar is flashing red in order to try and turn the tide of battle in your favor. 

Because this is the earliest King of Fighters game, the general gameplay here is pretty wonky compared to the rest of the series. The hit-boxes could have had more fine tuning, the impact animations and effects are weak, and characters are rather unbalanced. All of this is made worse by the exceedingly high damage and complete lack of damage scaling on combos. This game is full of jank, but it is still well loved in the fighting game community today because of the wild and crazy antics you can pull off. Make no mistake, King of Fighters 94 is a good game, but if you're new to the game don't walk in expecting a level of polish you've come to expect out of later King of Fighters releases as the finesse isn't there just yet. 

King of Fighters 94's sprite work is well balanced, and all characters have a consistent feel across their designs. Colors are a bit more muted and dark than other SNK fighters at the time, which brings a more serious and mature vibe to the game. Backgrounds, while good, are not the strongest in the series. There are some standouts, though, like the Italy scene which holds quite a few cameo appearances from the cast of Fatal Fury Special. Each background also opens with a short introduction sequence, and some of these like the Pao Pao Cafe are quite unique. Where the actual character sprites and backgrounds are good overall, the portraits in the post-fight screens are...odd? They all look very strange when compared to the marketing art for the game with some really odd proportions and strange looks on their faces. Mai looks especially strange. This presentation art isn't bad, but it's certainly not SNK's strongest pixel art when compared to the rest of the series. There is also a lot of color dithering in this game which makes it look gritty on modern displays. This is one Neo-Geo game that I truly recommend playing on a CRT monitor rather than an HD display to really appreciate the art. 

Music is a high point with some memorable tunes that are revisited multiple times over the course of the series. There are some truly standout tracks here, like the Fatal Fury Team's Napolitan Blues and the ever catchy Esaka for the Japan Heroes Team. I whole heartedly recommend listening to this soundtrack outside of the game, but I do prefer the AES original soundtrack over the Neo CD arranged version. There is much more bass in the tracks, and the instrumentation better fits the composition. The sound effects are mostly reused from Fatal Fury Special and Art of Fighting 2, as well as voices from those games. All new characters, of course, have all original voice acting. 

The King of Fighters 94 is a great game, but it was easily overshadowed by King of Fighters 95 the following year. The inability to choose the characters on your team is a bummer as well as the shoddy hit-detection, janky combo system, and some weak roster choices leave a bit to be desired (looking at you USA Sports Team). Still, it's early days for the King of Fighters team at SNK, and King of Fighters 94 presents a very strong start for a truly legendary fighting game franchise still relevant today. While it's more of a curio these days, there's still a lot to love here for a visit every so often. 

If you're looking to play this game on hardware, you're in luck as this is one of the cheaper games on all Neo-Geo formats. You can easily get a good condition CIB Japanese AES copy for less than $100 in 2022, and the MVS and CD versions are both under $50. The US AES version is of course much more expensive, sitting around the $400 mark in the modern US retro game market. 

Unfortunately for SNK fans in 1994, King of Fighters 94 did not see a port to any popular home console of the day despite generous sales in the arcade and on all Neo-Geo formats. Actually, the only SNK game from 1994 to see a port to any console was a middling port of Art of Fighting 2 exclusively on the Super Famicom (Super Nintendo) in Japan. Given the incredibly huge roster of characters at the time and other innovative features, the 16-bit consoles were far too underpowered to handle such a game. 

In the early aughts SNK released a brand new version of King of Fighters 94 on the Playstation 2 called King of Fighters 94 Re-Bout that saw some success by updating the backgrounds to 2.5d and adding a smoothing filter to the characters that made them look a little smudged. It's a mostly worthy update, but lacks the old-school charm of the original release. 

The King of Fighters 94 is a great addition to your  Neo-Geo collection, but I caution to get King of Fighters 95 first as it is not much more expensive and is leagues better across the board. As with most Neo-Geo releases, you can grab the game in the modern Arcade Archives series for $8, and it is included in numerous other compilations and mini systems on the market.