kof 101
What is the King of Fighters? It's a fighting series by the now-defunct SNK corporation. It saw its first edition in 1994, and pioneered a lot of innovations in the fighting game world, such as 3 on 3 battles, and the ability to manually charge your power bar. It was, until recently, based on 12-year old hardware, the NeoGeo MVS, a purely 2D system that produces graphics that look primitive by today's standards, but I choose to overlook this. Suffice to say that KOF has a lot of things going for it.
How did KOF start? SNK envisioned a merger of its popular game franchises through KOF, which started as a "dream match" between the major game series of SNK. There was representation by the following SNK game series - Garou Densetsu/Fatal Fury (Terry Bogard, Andy Bogard, Joe Higashi, Kim Kaphwan and Mai Shiranui), Ryuuko no Ken/Art of Fighting (Ryo Sakazaki, Robert Garcia, Takuma Sakazaki, Yuri Sakazaki and King), Psycho Soldier (Athena Asamiya, Sie Kensou and a new character Chin Gentsai), Ikari Warriors (Ralf Jones, Clark Steele and Heidern) and assorted NeoGeo sports games (The USA Sports Team - Heavy D!, Lucky Glauber and Brian Battler). There were also a few original characters (Kyo Kusanagi, Benimaru Nikaido and Goro Daimon). The pioneer game, The King of Fighters '94, had graphics that eclipsed those of Street Fighter II and gameplay to match. Eventually, the series moved on to have a storyline, and the characters developed. New, original characters were added, as well as other characters from the abovementioned SNK series. All in all, KOF has had over 70 characters throughout the series.
SNK games suffer from an "age bug," though - this is especially true of KOF. The first King of Fighters tournament was supposedly held in the game Art of Fighting 2. The next was held in the game Fatal Fury, and again in Fatal Fury 2. The actual KOF series begins where Fatal Fury 2 left off. The trouble is that AOF2 takes place a very long time before FF. So the AOF characters are supposed to be a lot older than those from FF. Since KOF'94 was a dream match this didn't matter, but it became confusing when SNK gave KOF a storyline. Some characters have been the same age for so long that it's become really weird. Terry, for instance, was 24 in Fatal Fury, and is still 24 in KOF2001! It's a very odd lapse, but is necessary, I suppose, if a game is to be released annually. SNK is famous for recycling animations, and I suppose to draw characters looking older in every instalment (like in the Tekken series) would be too much of a pain, especially with such a large roster.
SNK continued to develop the KOF series annually until 2000, when bankruptcy forced them to sell the rights to their franchises to a company called Playmore. Playmore in turn licensed out the development rights for the various SNK series such as Metal Slug to third parties. KOF ended up with a Korean developer called Eolith, which developed KOF2001 and more recently, KOF2002. Playmore has since changed its name to SNK Playmore, and has abandoned the old NeoGeo hardware (KOF2003 was the last KOF on the platform) in favour of console development and Sammy's Atomiswave arcade platform. The future of the series seems assured, with games like KOF NeoWave and KOF: Maximum Impact looking to make a splash in the arcade and home markets respectively.
Read the other sections for more in-depth information about KOF.