Скачать или смотреть The King of Fighters '96 playthrough (Neo Geo, 1CC)

Playthrough with the Japan team. KoF '96 was the first major shakeup in the series, as all the character sprites were redrawn, and several teams have different members. Takuma's spot on the Art of Fighting team was replaced with Yuri, whilst Heidern was replaced with new character Leona. Mature and Vice, who previously appeared as Rugal's secretaries in cutscenes, are now playable characters.

The sprites used in this game would go on to be used in future KoF games for the next several years. They would have animations added or tweaked, but the cast wouldn't get fully redrawn again until 2009's KoF XII. Perhaps SNK just didn't have the time to redraw everyone when trying to keep the Neo Geo KoF games to a yearly schedule? Or maybe they lacked the budget.

The main changes to the gameplay is that the attack avoider has been removed, and replaced with rolling. By holding a direction and pressing the A and B buttons together, your character can roll forwards or backwards, which can pass through most moves. The super moves have also been altered, as if you do one when the life bar is flashing red and the gauge is at max, the super move will do a lot more damage and usually have different animations. For example, Terry will do three power geysers instead of just one.

The presentation for this game is great, but I feel that something's off with the gameplay, like it doesn't quite play as well as it should. There is evidence that this game was rushed, as hackers have found a large number of unused moves in the game. It seems SNK intended to give every character at least two super moves, but then cut them. Many of these moves would be tweaked and used in the next game, but some would be cut entirely.

KoF '96 is also famous for having one of the most universally-hated bosses in a fighting game: Goenitz. Having apparently learnt nothing from their previous disastrous bosses, SNK decided it'd be a good idea to put in a guy who can summon tornados at will (you can't roll through them by the way), be able to zip around the screen quickly, block every move the player does 99% of the time, and have INFINITE SUPERS. Need to shout that last point because that was clearly the devs simply not thinking. One of Goenitz's supers is an extremely annoying grab where he doesn't have to be that close to you to get you.