SNK Lore Misconceptions(and possibly where the came from)

 In the process of trying to clean up(to only somewhat successful ends) the SNK wiki(which is quite good, but still not 100% accurate, running more of a 75-80% accuracy or so I'd say), I decided, for fun, to put together a list of some very common misconceptions. 

Now, I don't unfortunately know every one of these-but if others know other misconceptions, please by all means let me know. 

Canon Side Material:

It should be said that the only known canon side material are:

A. The Team Stories(located online and sometimes, like in the case of Adel's story in 03, in the Gamest mooks, which carry the official team stories, 

B. Official books, which sometimes have lore bits you don't find elsewhere(Character Encylopedia, Perfect Reader, Gamest mooks as mentioned above which also have character concepts, things like that), or

C. The Ureshino novels, which basically just novelize the games themselves but add things-his work is all official. 

No Manhua, other mangas or anything are official canon. Now, I am not saying that you can't have fun with your own headcanons or whatnot, by all means do that, but for purposes of recording canonical lore, I try to keep things to the official material.  The manhua in particular are not canon-no, Mr. Karate did not ride a T-Rex to fight Geese riding a mammoth, and I don't think over in Street Fighter land that Ryu ever fought Gene Simmons, but I'm not as schooled on Capcom lore so someone might need to corroborate that one for me. ;p 

(FWIW, the manhua are great, entertaining reads-but treat them like some fun fanworks, and not canon material. But if you do fanwork and want to borrow from them, by all means go ahead, like, I'm not trying to police fanwork here. I'm just trying to keep the wiki-lore straight.) 

"What about ANB/The Shingo Manga?"

These aren't stated as to be actual canon yet. ANB was said to have been written to be able to line up as to not mess with the timeline too much, that they 'could' take from as canon if they wanted, but AFAIK they haven't used very much of it. The Shingo manga is a big unknown; I guess we wait to see if he has some blue flames in the game, eh? 

"Shipping?"

The only 100% bonafide confirmed ships in this game are Andy/Mai and that took forever, and stuff in the background like "Daimon and his wife," "Saisyu and Shizuka", "Seth and his wife," "Vanessa and her husband"(See below for this one.) The rest? Are all just up to the fans. Ryo/King were never confirmed in the game-they keep dancing around it. They keep going back and forth constantly on Robert/Yuri and seem to love to just stop at confirming the Terry/Mary ship(which I thought they had confirmed, but I seemed to have been mistaken.) The latter two of these are 'Almost There', but SNK seems to tease everyone, lol. I have a feeling if you asked the devs themselves they'd say they'd all say something different. Something could change here of course and they could decide to finally hammer home another canon one, but yeah. (I notice most of the '100% confirmed ships' are all in the background.) Mature and Vice are another fanon ship-in the source material, they are barely even friends; they are co-workers who happen to work together often. (Mature and Rugal were never really confirmed, either, just hinted that they had a fling from some flirting, but again, never written in stone.) 

So anyway, here's a few misconceptions for you:

-"Leopold Goenitz."- Goenitz' first name to any novels, as checked by someone I know has read them, was never stated in any source material. A side comic made up a name for him. Like, use it in any fanwork you want, but this sort of thing doesn't belong on the wiki. 

"Gaidel the Water User."-Gaidel's element, if he even had any, was never stated in past material, either. The only elements actively stated in lore were the Four Heavenly Kings(Wind, Earth, Fire, and Lightning.) This was once again due to a non-canon manhua. Also, Gaidel was reincarnated without his powers anyway in the official material. He didn't even remember who he was fully. He MAY have had some subconscious memories that got passed onto Leona, but the reasoning behind his reincarnation going wrong was never even stated in the original novels. It was probably just to facilitate Leona's plot, a means to an end, rather than a technical reason why it went wrong. 

"Goenitz had Mature and Vice killed by Iori": Unlike the other two things that were caused by weird manhua/comic stuff, this one was instead caused by the game itself being translated imperfectly back in the day. As we know, Dweebenheimers, SNK had some...interesting translations back in the day, wubba-wubba. This unfortunately carried over to some more important things. It was a minor mistake all told, but one that changed the full context of the ending(once again, needing to go to the novelization for this.) 

What actually happened here was that Goenitz warned Mature and Vice from messing with Iori, because he was extremely powerful. They were basically poking the bear, wanting to use Iori for their own purposes to mess with the Orochi stuff, and in the process-between that and everything else that happened during the end of the '96 tournament-set him off, so to speak, and he killed them on the spot. But there were no issues with Goenitz wanting the other two dead. They basically brought that on themselves. 

"The Hakkeshu Dislike Goenitz": They don't. Not even Mature, Vice, or whatever. Gaidel, should he return, probably has a bone or twelve to pick with him but he's technically no longer a Hakkeshu as he reincarnated wrong, and of course Leona hates him, but the rest? They don't really...care. They're indifferent. Like you can even see in a recent team story, CYS and Goenitz are more cordial, but they aren't a bunch of buddies who go out for bowling league every Saturday or something(though this would make for some good artwork.) Think of the Hakkeshu as 'business partners.' If you notice, Goenitz in the recent Awakened Orochi story is more disappointed in the others than mad, but he knows that when 'The Call' hits, they'll come. They're a bunch of reincarnating beings of a force of nature; they have all the time in the world. They don't always get along, they sometimes butt heads on methods, but they aren't really enemies or anything. Yamazaki doesn't give a rat's ass, M&V are just in their own little world(they're still ghosts, too). Btw-adding this on: CYS, as we see in the game, are close, so that's all correct. (I mean, if it's in the game, unless it was specifically retconned by SNK, it's fine.)

"Goenitz gave Rugal his Power": What happened here was Rugal took the power, Goenitz(when he was only 18, Rugal was a young man himself in his early-ish 20s), whipped his ass, and took his eye. He let him *keep* the power, however, as a bit of a test on how it worked out. In addition to this one, Mature and Vice were not some long-time workers of Rugal, they were sent to spy on him like, around '94 and only lasted until after '95. They weren't with him very long. As mentioned above, it's unsure how close he and Mature were, but Vice didn't care one way or another about him. (This stuff's origins is I think simple mistranslations.) 

"Leona is somehow the leader of the Ikari team.": I have no idea where this one came from as this is just common sense with "How the Military Works, Rank-Wise," but here we go. This *may* have an origin in the '96 story where Heidern had her handing down his orders for one first mission, in a sense that he was still the Major Head behind the mission but he used her to pass down his orders for this one, and this somehow got taken as 'she is the leader in all games despite not outranking anyone.' It's the only thing I can think of how this one proliferated. I

But the rest all clearly state either Heidern as the main lead, or Ralf as the leader, with Leona not even having a proper rank(Heidern is a commander, Ralf is a Colonel-which is a rather high rank, mind you-and Clark a First Lieutenant.) He's even stated straight up as heading the team in a few stories('97, '03, XI and XIII come to mind), and in XIII Heidern goes as far as to ask Ralf and Clark their opinion on how the mission should be handled, despite his rank being above them in said team story. This stuff's even available in English, so I don't know how this gets mistaken. That said in the games themselves, it's pretty clear the three just...work smoothly together with no real 'power fights' or anything, some humor in the 03 story where he jokingly states "Is this how you treat your leader?" after some teasing. 

(On this note, it's ALSO an occasional misconception that Clark is higher ranked than Ralf, probably because he's more chill, but no, Ralf is clearly stated as a Colonel, which is a higher rank than a First Lieutenant.) 

Billy Kane Hates Smoking: The guy has a favorite cigarette brand. I think it was even stated that he just thought the jacket was cool. The origin of this was his jacket, I guess? Where they saw his fav cigg brand and then that he hated smoking is beyond me but I guess the jacket was that convincing, lol. 

Vanessa's Dead Husband: This one originated from a website of a guy who was writing his own what-if stories(he even said as much, mind you, but the site is not in English so it got mis-translated as canon, I guess.) But yeah, there's a strange bit of fanon that Vanessa's husband is dead. He is not; in the lore her husband, and kid, are alive and well as of now. Unless this changes in the future, this was basically someone's bit of fanfiction that grew out of control that started getting believed as canon. 

Whip Dislikes Krizalid: Whoo boy, this was a doozy of a mistranslation in KOF '99. Much in the realm of 'You Jerks', during these days SNK's EN department loved to add insults when there wasn't any. The original translation had Whip extremely sympathetic toward Krizalid when she went to go see him at the end; there was not one insult, or even harsh word, to my knowledge, said. I can even link, thanks to a Discord member who I know, what the ending REALLY said right here: 

Needless to say, '99 butchered it and yeah. I would go as far as to say that at least half the time you see weird insults back in the day there was likely something much different written here. I remember people being so confused at this ending because Whip was throwing around words like 'Simp' and 'Puke' while crying after the fact and the Westerners, who I am now convinced were robbed in this, were had no fucking idea on why that was. Whip was incredibly sad about what happened to him. 

There are some other things that are not misconceptions, per se, but things that have never actively been clarified, like Ron killing some of his sons(it's *hinted*, but never confirmed, yet, if he did so, we just know the other sons besides Duo Lon are missing.)  Iori had a girlfriend that was mentioned in the past on and off, but nothing ever came of her; this is one of those 'Unknowns' in the background. The last time anything like this was mentioned was early NESTS saga, however, so as of now there is nothing in official material about her. Also, Rugal has an estranged younger brother-he was only mentioned once in a Falcoon interview from 2005, and was never named. He was never mentioned since that, either, so no idea what's up with this. 

Then there's other weird bits like "Why Not Team Bernstein?" I have NO GODDAMN CLUE on this one but the games spell out in black and white in big, block letters that Adel is nothing like his father and literally show the man working with Heidern, with him on speed dial like they're friends. Why they keep trying to shove him and his dad on a team together is beyond me. This is just pure fanwank. (And Rose isn't a fighter anyway, so it's not like this team would even work from that angle. Sport Fencing doesn't equal fighting and the stories make it pretty clear she hates even lifting a finger in the first place.) Since nothing like this happened in the games or anything I didn't put it above, but it's a really damn strange suggestion I keep seeing that basically flies in the face of the established lore, so I just stuck it at the end. (It's a damn shame the 2003 story was never officially translated since that explained a lot of their dynamic.) Btw, for those interested, here is the link to the 2003 translated story, with credits to the translator, Miau: https://twitter.com/AzzyFGC/status/1516428477918023707

Anyway, if I think of more of these(more like, WHEN I do, since there is quite a few, lol), I'll just keep adding to this, but after trying to fix the wiki today I was sort of inspired to put this together. 

Uhh...hi again!

 

Well hello again. It's been awhile, heh. 

Long story short: I've been busy, which is why this hasn't seen an update in about four months. On the bright side, I'm going to be working on a blog where I go over some of my fav KOFs, just for fun. More like a few blogs. 

I'll probably go over six of them, two per blog. 

For some Spoilers:

6. 2k2UM(The Dream Match with Everything)

5. KOF 97(The One with the Badass Story, even if it's busted)

4. KOF 2003(My Nostalgic Baby, it might be broken but I love it anyway)

3. KOF XV(It does everything really well, but nothing the best, but enough it places highly because it's super fun to play. It may tie for most balanced, though.) 

2. KOF XI(The Best Roster, and a really freakin' fun game)

1. KOF '98UMFE(The Best Gameplay, and some of the best balance.) 

Anyway, see you all soon!

Well we got the surprise DLC announcement!

 And boy, is it a doozy. 

(Disclaimer: Yes, I've seen the datamines and such-it's hard to miss them nowadays-this blog stays spoiler-free. And even then, gotta somewhat be careful with those, since stuff can get swapped around, etc.)

Welcome, Team Garou and Team South Town!

Now I'll come right out and say it; this pass is probably one of the most attractive DLC passes I've seen in a fighting game in the past years. They really weren't messing around with this one. I also kinda feel like its makeup is about perfect for XV right now in several ways:

-It brings back several favorites, for one. Geese is Mr. SNK Baddie(and Tekken 7 made him even more well known, let's face it), Rock is widely popular among the NA/EU audience(I can't really say whose popular overseas, but he seems well liked, going by fanart?) Garou characters are always welcome in, and so on. 

-XV's roster has three criticisms surrounding it that I notice. Lack of characters from certain sagas, (particularly Ash) a lack of baddies, and a lack of OGs/characters from other franchises(there's only 13 characters out of the 39 from other SNK franchises, and the rest are all KOF originals, even if many of them, like Kyo, Iori, etc, are at this point icons themselves.) 

This pass takes care of two of these, and at least touches on a third. Bringing in South Town brings in a 'baddie team'(even if Billy seems to be more of a 'Neutral, but feels indebted to Geese' guy, going by his interactions with other characters). The entire pass are either OGs(Geese, Billy, Yamazaki, all from the 90s), or characters from other SNK franchises(Garou, Fatal Fury). And, while it's minor since they aren't *originals*, and they are Garou characters first and foremost, Gato and Jenet at least showed UP in the Ash Saga the first time(though it still needs Ash Saga originals, not letting SNK off on this until I get some of those. ;p But it's a start!)

-It's just an excellent 'out of the gate' combo. Just straight up handing the fanservice over. If anything, this is going to make *follow up* passes a little hard to follow, maybe, depending. 

Now I get while it comes to Garou characters, everyone has their own ideas who should get in. It's a beloved game, with a lot of fan favorites, and I understand people who would rather have characters who hadn't been in yet(Kain, Freeman, Marco, Kim's sons, etc) over ones who have, but IMHO, they did really good with this, and this is the exact pass I would have chosen. Rock is extremely popular, though he has a few vocal detractors(which, well, any popular character is going to have-FWIW, I think he's cool, I'm more of a Gato person when it comes to Garou, and when it comes to the Conflicted, Anti-Hero Son of a Previous Baddie character you all KNOW whose side I'm on), B. Jenet has been requested to come back for a long time, and Gato has always been popular in whatever game he's in(though his fans are more quiet-I guarantee you Gato will probably see some of the most active play of these three, though.) 

I personally love Kain and Freeman, and would love to see them on sometime, but again, I kinda feel like this pass is like, THE Garou pass to have on there. (Also, see below, re: Story.) I feel like playstyle wise, it's got nice variety-Rock's classic Geese/Terry mix-which it looks like they brought in his Garou TOP attack and his Rising Tackle might be a direction now, which would be a small buff which he generally needs, Gato's brutal and powerful feeling Kung Fu style, and Jenet's more stylish stuff, complete with the Team Rocket Shoe Attack. 

And again, people just like these three characters. And I stand by my assessment this was three of the best to pick for a first DLC pass. 

And on a personal note...let's face it. I'm biased here. Gato was one of my top 5 requests to come back to this game. I mentioned in my last blog that I only got one of my top 5(Ash), but I got half my top 10(CYS, Chizuru included), so I was REALLY happy with the base. But even then, I felt like I was missing a little something; and that something was 'One of my top 5 I DIDN'T think would make it.'(yes, again, datamines-but before I knew about everything confirmed, Gato was still a rumor.) While my Adel and Duo Lon are still waiting on the sidelines, getting Gato in made me over the moon, because I had a feeling Ash was inevitable. So getting that character locked in and confirmed that I REALLY WANTED to come back was a really good feeling that I think I needed. As highly as I ranked XV's base(hey, tied for 3rd place for a canon roster is pretty huge), there was that little "Man, I wanna get to flip out over someone getting in that wasn't a lock that some others got." I got that finally. 

Also good goddamn look at how GOOD he looks in this. Like, he looks SO good. One of my favorite models in XV so far. The embroidered dragon on his shirt was a great touch, his new Climax looks awesome, he still has his iconic neck snap and kick super, they gave his dp+K back, and now he gets to use EX moves. Gato with EX moves just makes me giddy, bwahaha. Going to maybe do a little breakdown of him at some point and see what he's got and what he might keep. 

                                            How do you glow UP Gato? Apparently like this. 

As for South Town team, holy shit. The suits, the style, the pimp coat, the swag. This glow up was extreme, and for me, this is *probably* the best combination I've ever seen for a proper South Town team. Hein was actually one of my fav of the XIV newcomers, but he didn't really give me a huge South Town vibe. '96 Boss Team, while it's awesome and I love it, has Krauser, who, while being related to Geese, is more 'German Noble' than 'South Town Guy.' So when it comes to a trio of South Town Antagonists(or two antagonists and one neutral dude who's lightened up over the years), this one just feels *right.* And the aesthetic is perfect. The fact it calls out the Real Bout cover with Geese and Billy was fantastic. 

                                                                  Just LOOK at them. 

Now, I do get that some feel that having a full team of XIV assets feels a bit off on a DLC pass, but eh, I'm willing to give a pass. That visual glow-up is perfect, they have this matching aesthetic while not having the same exact costumes(Billy's more laid-back nature with the open suit fits him, with his trademark bandana, and Yamazaki with the pimp coat again brings me BACK), and this is, again, basically everything I wanted out of the South Town team. 

DLC has story?

Jenet getting her crew together again(well, at least with Gato) makes sense, given she's the most personable one of the bunch. I wonder how that chat went...

But, yeah, it seems like we got DLC stories? At least small ones. Hence my comment about Kain and Freeman-those characters, I'd have trouble placing on a team together. But at the very least, the Garou team has some story. Now whether or not that keeps with every team on every pass is anyone's guess, but I actually hope we get some more story-tied DLC this time. This doesn't seem like it's like Strive(that continues after the game's story), the way this is worded, this team is supposedly in the tournament itself, which is interesting. I wonder how they'll handle cutscenes and such? (And damn, we need some Geese/Rock interactions. And...good lord in the future, please give us some Bernstein interactions, too, especially with Adel on the good guy's side, now. You know, future passes. ;)) 

On the slight downside to this-it DOES kind of put characters who were hard-deconfirmed from the main story on much thinner ice. Kim, Mature, Vice, Daimon, Gang-Il(for his three players), all of these were hard-deconfirmed in interviews or stories. (Kim was the only No-Miss here, to be fair. Daimon's a regular, but he sits enough that him sitting a game isn't surprising, and M&V aren't even regulars-they've been in all of 5/15 mainline games, and two of those are DMs. Mature was in XII, as well, but...uhh. Basically if this crew does end up sitting, I can't say it surprises me, beyond Kim a little?)

Now, not everyone MENTIONED is deconfirmed, but you can tell-like Joe mentioned Billy in a neutral way, and Billy's fine. Shingo was mentioned in a neutral way, so he can still steal onto a pass sometime down the line, Duo Lon was mentioned in a positive way in Betty's interview-she wanted to team with her old Rival team again with him and Beni. Kensou might not be in, but he was never really mentioned either. So I think these types are safe for now, but I do feel like story-based DLC does, again, put the hard-deconfirms further into the 'doubt' pile. 

They could decide to run Year 2's passes not connected, however, which would render this moot and put even the hard-deconfirms back on the table. Time will tell. 

All in all I was hoping for more story-based DLC, at least having a few teams there, since in XIV, I kinda missed that. I'm curious to know what's up with the South Town team after XIV. Is Hein still working with them in the background, or did he break loose? 

All in all this pass 1 alone I think brings the roster, for me personally, from 'Tied with '97s in 3rd place' to 'Tied with 2003 in Second Place.' It's still not tied with XI yet(that's gonna take a particular bunch of characters, and beating it is going to take a very specific combination), but jesus they are doing really damn well for themselves. 

And with that, I think I'm about done? I fucking love this pass and I can't wait to play it. Looking forward to what the last few trailers are before release!

'Til next time...

We have our Initial 39! So I'll go over my thoughts on it.

Yeah, I know I said I was going to update this thing more often, but the holidays coupled with a nice battle with Omicron(and not like, the cool robots from FFXIV, but the fucking virus which grounded me for the month of January), basically put paid to THAT idea. Well, here's an update, in any case!

With the launch of Elisabeth's trailer today(to no one's surprise, even without the incident, it was pretty obvious I think who was going to be on his team), we've now reached the full 39. Let's take a look at it! I'm going to give it a little mini-review here. Mostly just breaking down its upsides, and the couple downsides I do think it has. I gotta say it's been a pretty long and wild ride, and it's hard to believe it's been a year already. That said, I think time either stopped or started moving in a strange bubble at the end of 2019. 

                                                             Singles and teams.  

Just to note: Characters are subjective, who I love isn't going to be what someone else does, and vice versa. Everyone's entitled to like who they want, and pleasing absolutely everyone is going to be impossible. Like, some people aren't as into the Ash Saga originals, so they may be fine with limited rep, but miss the XIV newcomers. I didn't care for a lot of the XIV newcomers; I was indifferent to a lot of them, but loved the Ash Saga newcomers. And so on. So this is just my POV on it. 

Without further ado: 

Positives:

While I can't say the roster shattered too many expectations with the exception of Krohnen, I definitely rank it very highly. Like, tied with '97 highly, which I consider the 3rd best canon, non Dream Match roster in the series(XI is first, of course, and 03 I'd put as 2nd. Both of which I think were probably the absolute most solid for the times they came out in terms of how they were assembled.) 

For one, this is a hell of a who's who in terms of characters throughout the years. If I had to pick a roster of 39(keeping a couple spots for newcomers, so 37 plus the 2 newcomers), while it wouldn't be 1 for 1 with this, it would be damn close, to be honest. My wishlist, if you break it down, wasn't that incredibly far off(I even got half of my top 10 requests in, though only 1 was in the top 5.) 

We have classics(Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting characters), favorites from the sagas(CYS, Iori, Kyo, Ash, etc), all five Ikaris in a game again for once, and a rounding out of newcomers(even if they weren't my personal fav XIV newcomers-I was more of a Hein person over Luong or Kukri, but I did actually like Shun'ei and Meitenkun enough and Antonov's glow-up was great). Bringing back Krohnen was a massive treat and he got such a damn glow-up that I couldn't believe it; they took a copycat character(Nines went beyond 'tribute') and made him his own. 

They also maintain its habit of having a great variety of playstyles for people(Rushdown, zoner, grappler, whatever, there's bound to be something there-this IS, to be fair, usually the case in KOF though, I don't think I ever saw a KOF roster that lacked this. Even XII's notoriously cut roster managed to do this.)

Finally, it IS pretty big in terms of canon rosters, too. Folks gotta remember: XIV was an outlier in terms of roster counts. 50(16 teams plus 2 bosses) was not the norm. When you stack up base, playable rosters of non Dream Match games going down the line, we have:

94-95: 24

96: 27

97: 29 via teams, 30 including Kyo. (35 if you're counting the Orochi forms of CYS, O. Iori and Leona.) 

99: 32(including unlockables. They were available in the arcade as base, so I'll count them.) 30 if you're being extremely by the book and not counting unlockables as base. 

00: 35, counting sub-bosses but not end boss. 

01: 40

03: 33

XI: 33 BASE, 5 Time Release characters in arcade(Adel, Gai, Silber, Hayate, Jyazu), who often get counted as the base as well, for 38. (It's up to your rubber ruler on this one.) 

XIII: 31

XIV: 50. (48, 2 unlockable, legal bosses.) 

As you can see, it ranks 3rd in biggest canon, non Dream Match rosters. I'm not sure if it's because it dialed back from XIV or what(yes, even I said in the past that traditionally, rosters go up within an arc, and not down), but I definitely don't get the 'small' argument. (Especially given the fact we've been in a pandemic for two years now.) It could, I imagine, also be the fact that the longer the series goes, we get more and more characters; thus the base rosters need to grow, lest we have to keep leaving more and more out. So 40 back during 2001, and 39 now, two sagas later, are a big difference. 

Still, it's large, especially given what they were making this game under(remote work, etc.) And let's face it-the chance of their being an unlockable but playable boss like Verse? Probably quite high, which would put this base on par with 2001's base roster. 

In short, it's got tons of favorites, brings back some amazing teams(CYS) as well as has like, the Sacred Treasures as an official team for the first time(03 they had a team story, but weren't official, they were all solo in the roster), and I've noticed in general, going around social media and such, that people are even hard pressed to pick one team. I have an entire row of mains and I'm going to be already 'maining' two teams. And somehow besides having a lot of favorites and such, it feels a lot less boring, to me, than what XIII's felt like. (It's weird, I consider XIII having more characters that I like than, say, 94 or something...but it just felt like SUCH a step backward from XI's absolute amazing roster it's hard for me to rate it more than a bit above average.) 

For me, KOF XV is a really good way to do a who's who of popular faces(even if it's not perfect.) 

It's a very 'attractive' roster, and is bound to I think bring in new players who see it. When you take a look at that big crowd, for me, it's hard to see a new player-unless they basically *only* play 'weirdo' types(I'll get to that), saying "Damn, I can't find anyone I'm interested in."

Downsides:

As good as this base roster is looking, it's not perfect(okay, no KOF roster is perfect, not even like, the S-tier XI's roster.) But it does have a couple of more standout downsides, at least to me.

The first, and biggest, definitely being the lack of Ash saga originals. This saga was important, well-received(XIII was the introduction a lot of players had to the series proper-XIII isn't even one of my favorites by a longshot, but I know the impact the game had on Western audiences), 2003 was a big comeback after a hard time, and the game gave people a lot of very well-liked originals; besides Ash and Betty, Adelheid, Shen, and Duo Lon were all very well received(yeah, again, they don't always pick on popularity, I know-just like I said above. But these guys rate rather highly in several polls I've seen going around, and SNK DID say they might look at what folks want for future DLC.) 

But the general impact that saga possibly had on everything(We're still learning about Verse), coupled with the fact they seemed to be trying to fly the flag for all of the sagas, it feels weird to not have one *full* Ash Saga team. Ash, Betty, and Adel would have been an excellent addition(Protag, Rival and Co-Protag), or even Duo Lon or Shen as the third, due to their ties to Ash and Betty. (And I think a fourth could have joined somewhere, too, I mean look at how many NESTS characters we had.) I still stand by what I said about highly ranking this roster, but this is probably its most glaring downside. All other rosters over the years-until the Verse Saga-managed to balance its saga representation well, so I'm hoping DLC can fix this by introducing some more Ash Saga originals. At least getting Adel, Duo Lon, and Shen floating around(the other three major story characters-Oz was a story character, but he had a a lighter impact than the other three, one of which was on two major boss-fighting teams, one of which helped with the boss fighting team in XIII, and one of which is friends with Heidern and worked with him to solve the entire plot of XIII) would be a great idea. 

The second, and lesser downside I think, is sort of the lack of a real good 'Weirdo' character. I feel like, while I personally don't go out of my way to use them(if I like one, I like one), not having a weird or quirkier character at ALL on a roster makes it feel like it's missing just a little something. I know that I have more than one friend who enjoys characters like this, despite them not really being all that popular. I think it'd be a good idea to at least try to slide one in over the DLC months. I guess the 'closest' we have for this is...Kukri maybe? And he's the like, barest minimum of 'weirdo' I feel. Dolores? Same, I'm not sure I'd classify them here, though I'd maybe say they're sort of the extent of 'Quirkier Characters.' (I don't think I can even consider KOD that weird-animal-themed wrestlers, after all, aren't particularly too weird of a trope/archetype.) 

Neutral 3rd Discussion Point:

There IS a third thing that I'm not sure I can call it a downside...or an upside...it's a very subjective thing that gets discussed; Use of Original KOF Characters vs. Use of characters from other SNK franchises.

KOF XV has only 13 characters who are from other SNK games directly. The rest were all created for KOF. 

People can like either/or. Sometimes both(like myself.) I sort of feel like a lot of KOF's OGs ARE like, classic SNK characters now-it's hard to describe Iori and Kyo as anything but, despite the fact they were made for KOF. And to be honest, even Ash Saga's newcomers are old now; there's 19 years between 2003 and 2022. There's 18 years between when Ralf(one of their earliest protagonists next to Sasuke in Sasuke vs. Commander) was created, and 2003. It puts into perspective that a lot of these characters are just as deserving of the 'title' of 'SNK Character.' It's REALLY hard for me to especially see anyone created during the Orochi Saga as anything but a classic KOF character. 

All THAT said, I know people would like more Garou characters(Kain gets suggested a lot, as does Marco, Freeman, etc), a Metal Slug team, a Last Blade team, other Fatal Fury characters, and so on. So I really don't think this is like, wrong or right-this one's very subjective(well, all of these ups and downs are), but I can sort of understand people who like the idea of the roster being split between 'Originals' and 'From other SNK games' being a little short-changed with this one, even if I don't necessarily agree it's necessary. mers and think they put in a few too many at the cost of other older classics, and so on. These are

I feel like, sometimes, this roster really would have been ideal to try to squeeze out 45-48 at launch, assuming a best-case perfect scenario(which they certainly didn't have during development this time, so I'm not being too hard on that.) I mean I can easily get 2-3 more teams on this that are all either OG or story-appropriate characters and STILL not be bloated at all. It would have given Ash Saga better rep, probably not left out Kim(tho many Kim fans I know would have rather him be late, but reworked from XIII/XIV, not that I blame them at all), and filled in I think those couple holes that I feel it has. 

The Short Version: 

So yeah, in short, great roster, great for OGs(tho I think, mayhap a few OGs might like a few more classics sprinkled about-I'm cool, others may feel differently) and great for new players, could really use some more Ash saga originals and maybe a weirdo, but still great. Hopefully they'll name-drop the DLC soon(Not discussing any rumors or anything here for now) so we can see how it all looks after Pass 1. (And then in years to come! I look forward to seeing how it all looks in the end.) 

Oh yeah, if you're curious: this is how I'm looking right now for it! No order on the rows themselves, I'm currently hammering out how I want my two primary teams to look. Likely Ash will be anchoring on one and Iori or Krohnen anchoring the other, with the Ikaris sprinkled about, depending. (Heidern may need his own setup since I usually prefer playing him 3rd...)

                                                           DLC is going to shift things.

Also ya all caught how Elisabeth mentioned Duo Lon in her story, right? Like, actually mentioned that she wanted to team with him again(and Beni!). Even Elisabeth knows XI's roster is amazeballs, lol. Gotta wonder how batty Kukri's driving Betty if she wants her old team back, despite getting her best friend of forever back from another timeline/dimension that he snapped himself out of. 

Look, getting a namedrop of Duo Lon three days before my birthday may not sound like much but the fact is it didn't deconfirm him for later, I'll take it, lol. 

(And yeah, if they could get on with giving me my two boys with Adel and Duo Lon in a later pass, that'd be greeeaaat. Not trying to be TOO greedy here, as I'm not asking for much.) 

                                 I can now officially say this roster tier list is Elisabeth Approved.

Anyway, 'til next time! 

The Timeline of Krohnen(Welcome Back, Holy $h1t!)

Good evening and happy holiday, gang! Yeah I've been gone for awhile. Long story short I was ill for most of the autumn it felt like and I didn't really have much time nor inclination for blogging as such, but I'm feeling a lot better now, at least.

And, well now, THIS is something that I did not expect to happen. I can't say I'm not pleasantly surprised, though. 

Welcome back, K9-ehm, welcome, Krohnen! Consider my expectations fucking shattered. 

So some of you might be newer to SNK and KOF, and don't know this character's(due to international copyright law, it's not)rather checkered history, including the fact he actually stopped existing for awhile. 

See, our boy Krohnen wasn't always like this. He started life as a complete rip-off of another character, become disappearing, ending up being replaced by another character, and then becoming his own. 

For fun, I'll give a brief rundown on what this character's timeline looked like. 

So the order of events, as I have managed to gather them up through various sources and books, plus my own memory of remembering the Eolith years:

-Eolith ends up taking over the IP for 2001/2002. 

-Eolith makes K9999, a total Tetsuo rip off down to his move names. Just with 'NESTS' scribbled in his background. Like full bore ''Original Character Donut Steel'' sorta levels of it only less shameless. His move names were literally lines from the movie. How they never got in trouble for this was beyond me. 

-SNK gets control back, and eventually strikes him from existence. The last time I actually saw him featured in something was a page of the Perfect Reader, which was released in 2005, and then in the Character Encyclopedia, he was struck to a silhouette(sorry for the phone picture, but I don't want to break the binding on these)

                                           You can see him there on the NESTS relationship tree.

-2k2UM comes into play, and they make a new guy to take his place. He's in a DM, BUT he's got a backstory that fits in(which was different than K9999's...who to be frank didn't have too much as it was since he was, again, a Tetsuo knock-off), and it's different from K9999's, so they could conceivably both exist in the narrative, I imagine, with a few tweaks. (Nameless had a small spot in the Character Encyclopedia, putting his creation at probably somewhere around 2007, if I had to guess. You'd have to ask them for an exact date, though.)

Now that basically was the history up to Nameless' creation. However, behind the scenes, the developers acted a lot more hostile to K9999 than they seemingly actually were. I and many others always figured that they could just like, redesign the character, since the fact he was a Tetsuo rip-off was his problem, not the fact he was a NESTS creation. But, Nameless continued to be used in a lot of side material-licensed mobile games, card games, and the like, making it almost look like Nameless was the dude they'd be using in the lore as his replacement(in the actual series, he seems to be, for lack of a better term, Schrodinger's Canon, since he was written in, but has yet to appear in a canon game). 

Fast forward to 2016, when during an interview, Oda was quoted as saying, "Maybe one day we'll find out what happened to Ángel's partner K9999." In some of the lore, it seemed that Ángel was used as the NESTS traitor instead, and K9999 wasn't even mentioned. 

So fast forward even further-amid rumors that his name was forbidden(which, I mean, was kinda believable among the fact they actually struck him from the books and such)...we suddenly get this trailer dropped on us during the announcement for the Open Beta test on December 17(oh yeah, we're getting another PS4/PS5 Beta! Just an FYI.)

                                   That crouch has entirely too much asshole energy and I love it.

And I couldn't believe my goddamn eyes. Somehow they managed to keep this behind the scenes. 

Now, granted, this dude got a hell of a makeover. Which, well, he actually *needed.* His big problem was his overall appearance...move set, voice and...yeah the whole fact he was freaking Tetsuo Shima. There was no way he was coming back in that old form(despite some people insisting he come back in that old form.) 

Personally, I think his makeover is about perfect. And it actually shows him as, once again, becoming his own character, rather than be a ripoff cut and pasted into the game. 

While I can't speak to the developers' ideas on this, for me, I can say what the redesign says to me:

-His outfit shows his interest in biking and motorcycles(he was shown in a picture on one once back in the day). They took this one aspect about him and turned it into an interest, which really helps his character. His outfit has patches on it(shows interest), though keeps his old color scheme, including some of the tattered red cape(maybe as a reminder?) The goggles? Also biker oriented, and fitting. The leather, the big boots. And in a design sense, separates him visually from the old. (His face changed, too, though I guess that can be an easy enough retcon.) The worn glove shows he's been on the road for awhile(yet the thing is still somehow intact.)

-The long hair is awesome. I know some liked the older style, but besides being a little biased toward the long-haired look, I like how it almost seems like he's trying to differentiate himself from the other clones, who all tend toward having the messy, shorter hair like he used to have. (Krizalid's is more styled, K's has a case of 'clearly doesn't care, takes scissors to it when bored.') It's almost like he's trying to look like his own person too. (And on a meta standpoint, it separates him even more visually.) 

-He looks more full cyborg now. I'm not sure how they're going to explain this-did he get an upgrade? Did they retcon him to always be like that? (And this is definitely some cyborg stuff, his arm has actual lights on them). Did he choose to get himself outfit in basically full metal to get rid of the nasty bio-stuff they did/to try to forget? Will be interesting to see his story, but as a huge fan of Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020 on tabletop I really love the cyborg stuff. How much of his body is changed over? His legs even maybe look bulkier under those cargos(which can be be bulky anyway), but I almost wonder if those are metal now too? Does he have some eye mods under those goggles? He also looks a lot bulkier than the almost-scrawny predecessor(clothing or not, you can tell) which makes me wonder if he gave his full body over, or if he just worked out a lot more or something. 

-His belt, as you can see above in the full model, was the NESTS belt...that's been carved up with a knife, easily showing that he's no longer a part of them nor wants to be a part of him. So he treated it violently like he does with everything(he did still keep the short-tempered, violent attitude, which at least is something that's his and capable of carrying over.) 

-Curious to see if his name was chosen by him to escape, or if someone gave it to him and he kept it. (I doubt NESTS cared about naming him.) 

Just those few things alone work well. My big question is...why didn't they do this to begin with? How long were they planning this? I imagine due to Nameless' creation, this may not have been on their mind in the late '00s, but maybe around XIV's era? (Since that was there the interview was.) Well, better late than never, I suppose? It just feels so weird to retcon a character, create another character, and then redesign the first character instead of just redesigning him in the first place. (Perhaps there were some leftover feelings, perhaps it was a case of them getting back on their feet, so a redesign of a single character made up when they didn't have the IP was one of the last of their concerns at the moment-I wouldn't be surprised if it was that last thing. 

Besides the full cyborg looking set, he also has the fire(instead of the dust/energy stuff), which, of course, fits his status, given he had the fire abilities given to him, fits a lot more(since, again, the other stuff seemed lifted from Tetsuo.) They do refer to him as an 'Exceptional Esper', which generally means someone with weird abilities, but, well, given that's like everyone in KOF...yeah. Right now he seems to look like a 'Technological/Clone Fire User'. Hoping sooner than later we get the deal with him. (He probably controls his arm through a mix of electronics/cybernetics and powers, I'd imagine.) 

So Azzy, what's your take?

I'll be honest-I was indifferent on K9999. I wasn't a huge fan back then, but I wasn't a hater either; he was just there for me. I wasn't really into 2001, nor 2002 Vanilla(wasn't really into how they played, their aesthetic and the like, and I think part of me was a little bit sad about SNK losing the game back then), and the character himself, while I'm a big fan of Akira, just was...a ripoff. Again, Donut Steel. Copypaste. Yeah, Benimaru is inspired by Polnareff, and Heidern by the Colonel(Hokuto no Ken), but this was shameless, 'I'm surprised the lawyers weren't on him.' There was nothing there that really endeared me to the character. 

But I love his glow-up. As you see above, the little things they did took a character who wasn't even theirs, and turned them into one that was, while still keeping ''NESTS Construct'' as part of his background. Everything I listed above goes into why I really love this redesign. 

I enjoy Nameless for who he is(I liked his backstory, his design was decent, and he was fun to play in 2k2UM), but I'm really sold on this guy. I really can't wait to try him this weekend to see how he feels in a system I like to play. His gameplay seems to keep his moves(his drill still hits OTG, and I really hope he keeps his curb stomp since that fits the hotheaded bastard to a T), so I really wanna get my hands on him. He scratches all of that cyberpunk itch for me, where the old one didn't really do anything to really attach me to the character like it did others(I love a good shout-out like anyone, but this just carried over too far into the other direction.) 

I admit that I figured a redesign would work, but I didn't think they'd do it, since I figured they already did it with Nameless, but it turns out perhaps they got other ideas a few years later. But I was not only surprised, I was pleasantly surprised, since I don't think I've been so excited about a character redesign since like, ever, almost. Re-designs can be hit or miss(hell, I like everyone have favorite 'eras' of characters, like Benimaru's NESTS outfits, Kyo's Ash outfits, and so on), but I can't think of one that hit so well in ages, to be honest. I hope he clicks well with me(I can see myself using him as a backup at the very least, but we'll see if his playstyle clicks with me enough to push into the Main Crew Level.)

While I'm still waiting for Adelheid(and will be waiting for Adel until I GET Adel, which I imagine will be DLC by now, but I don't mind waiting), I'll indeed be quite happy to check this guy out and hopefully invite him into my main pile. I also look forward to seeing how his story develops. How will the others react to him? How much did he and Ángel miss each other? Why will the 3rd be who they are(if it's Kula, did they retcon the fact he or Angel hurt Foxy? If it's Whip, was she sent there due to Heidern sending her? If it's Maxima, did he join to keep an eye?) 

(And to people who wanted his old design; I get it, I get being attached to something at first, but his design was his biggest problem, and without a redesign, you likely never would have seen this character again. He would have been stuck in retconned limbo forever. If you wanted this character back, he needed a new look, a new identity, and I expect some renamed moves, even if he kept them. If you wanted this character back, he was going to need to come with a new identity.) 

In any case, welcome(back-ish) to the fold, Krohnen. Congrats on beating the Tetsuo allegations, and may your new, improved cyborg design and asshole energy actually stick around for years to come. 

Guesses for KOF XV, as of mid October, using some character relationships

 Alright, folks are in big guessing mode, so I'm going back to this guessing thing, using my usual guessing method that has served me well so far: Narrative and character connections. I've had a surprisingly good hit rate so far using this method(no one's been 100% but it's been solid), so I figure I'll keep using it. 

So here are my final guesses for who will be filling out these last teams. I feel like the six we get will come from these:

Basically, this is who has connections to who we have in, OR the potential Sound Beach stage(but see below.) I just listed everyone pretty objectively here. Some characters are connected to more, other less, but they all have connections(Adel is connected to both Heidern AND Ash, while Duo Lon and Shen are more Ash-connected, etc.)

Oh yeah, here's an interview with Famitsu: It states that we will be getting two more 'surprises' which I'll get to at the end, what I think that means(spoiler: two pre-XIV characters.) 

So let me first address the two elephants in the room I see mostly when it comes to the discussion: the Sound Beach stage and last game's DLC: 

Sound Beach Night:

This stage was featured in Blue Mary's trailer, which released a week before the delay was announced. This is sort of important to recognize; since it has not been seen SINCE Mary's trailer, as well. The fact is these trailers are probably made somewhat ahead of time-while I can't say for sure how much, but I'd say 3-4 weeks if I had to guess, going by the time Luong's was uploaded at the same time as Mary's, which happened two weeks before her own trailer. So knowing all of this, Mary's trailer was probably getting made before the delay was happening. 

Which meant that this stage may be connected to one of the DLC teams, if one of those teams were originally planned for the roster but had to be pushed back. I can't say for sure, and I doubt we'll ever find out regardless, but this is just a hunch I have given how we have never seen that stage again since then. 

Now, I still feel there is a chance this is the last stage! But I'm saying it *might be* tied to a DLC team instead, so I'll be giving more than one set of guesses. 

Last Game's DLC:

While I myself once thought we'd be getting all the DLC main cast, I no longer think that's the case for several reasons. For one, in about every interview I've seen, they've discussed this game as if it is following a heavy narrative. They discuss 'Key Characters' to the storylines, and make a big point of showing important saga characters.

The DLC has a few characters which, while people might LIKE them, are not important to the sagas. 

Plus, as listed above, we're getting 'a couple more surprises.' Now I've narrowed this down as said above, but that also puts a big damper on this theory. On TOP of that, it requires things like Kula being DLC(highly unlikely; no, not impossible, but guessing and predictions are based on likelihood and I don't see it as likely) to make room, as well as things like Rock teaming with Yamazaki, which, while not impossible, needs a lot of behind the scenes stuff and I'm failing to see how this connects with the important saga stuff at all. 

FINALLY, I feel like the push on important sagas re: Heroes and Rivals, that's another reason I think Kula won't be DLC-she's the rival of NESTS. 

Do I think some DLC will be main still? Yeah, I think if Heidern gets his own team Whip will be there likely with him, but I think Rock is going to be KOF's version of Baiken so they can just keep selling him, I don't see Najd back due to the fan character thing and I feel like Oswald is someone else that could end up sitting this out totally without being sold again.

So with those two things out of the way, here are my guesses, again, based on the character relationships and narrative above: 

Rivals Team: Isla, Delores(Braids Lady's apparent name), Kukri. 

This is simply because Kukri seems to be aligning with them narratively. Heidern wouldn't just join them to investigate I think-if he had to investigate them, he'd do it through someone else since otherwise it's far too "HOW DO YOU DO, FELLOW KOFFERS?" I can't really think of anyone else who can fit them atm, since the 2 surprises do not lean toward new characters thanks to how some of it was translated. Also, Kukri's clothing designs matches that of the braids lady(and they both have long, bluish-white braids, funny that), so I almost feel like they could be connected. So this is my guess for this. (Backup: Kukri will be with Ash and Betty, like the original guesses have been doing, including my own-I changed my own after Gamescom.) 

K' Team: Most likely K', Kula, and Maxima. ALTERNATELY: Possibly K', Kula, and maybe Heidern, IF Heidern doesn't have his own team. I do NOT think Kula is likely DLC like some, because I feel that breaks the narrative they've been pushing of Important Saga Characters, and I believe that each main Saga Team will include at least the Hero and the Rival of each saga, which means K' and Kula. Keep in mind I am firmly and thoroughly in the 'DO NOT SEPARATE K' TEAM, THEY COME AS A SET' camp, but I *have* to allow for the Heidern possibility. 

I know people like to guess Whip here, but I'm just far too iffy about Kula being DLC. I just feel like it doesn't fit the narrative, and I feel like she's not a DLC type. I think they're going to put the Hero and Rival on the team, at least. If Whip isn't with Heidern, she may end up DLC later.

Ash Team: This gets a little more complicated since it's based on where Heidern is. I think Ash and Betty are two, with Betty being one of the possible 'surprises'(despite being one of the most predicted characters). The final member I feel like will either be Duo Lon, Shen, Adel, or Oswald, if Adel is not on Heidern's team(see below.) All of these characters have narrative ties to that saga(the former two teaming with Ash, Adel as the co-protagonist of the saga). Duo Lon, Adel or Shen would ALL tick the 'Surprise' button, since they're all pre-XIV, and quite popular at that. 

Oswald isn't impossible here, but I feel like Duo Lon or Shen have better narrative ties to Ash and Betty if Adel is with Heidern; Oswald only teamed one time with Ash, and it was for convenience, and he doesn't really know Betty, either.  That being said, if Betty IS considered one of the 'surprises', and Adel's over with Heidern? Yeah, Oswald might fit here after all, even WITH his flimsier narrative ties. But again, that depends if Betty is considered a 'surprise' or not. Which we have no idea. She won't surprise ME, but maybe others feel differently. 

Adel being the 3rd would cover Protag, Rival, and Co-Protag very well(even nailing the Joker, Queen, and King songs from XI while they're at it.) 

Heidern: I believe Heidern has a good chance of having his own team, and narratively, Whip and Adelheid would be his two most appropriate teammates. He's had a thing going with Adel for ages which I've posted pictures of before but I will again just because:

He was meant to be playable in XIII but had to cut him because of resources, he's popular, and he's very possibly tied to the story right now. So for me I feel like if Heidern has his team, this is whose gonna be on it, IMHO, and Adel CERTAINLY ticks the 'Surprise' button, as said. That said, yes, I could see him on another team-K's team more likely, but he COULD end up as the third on Ash, in which case, again, see the Sound Beach section(this is far less likely though, I think.) 

There is a chance, as I said, Adel ends up the third with Ash/Betty, in which case I can't say the 3rd if Heidern's on his own team. I don't think it would be anyone too special, though-possibly just someone from XIV who could be crammed there. (THAT being said, if Adel is with Ash/Betty, I do not think Heidern is getting his own team as much. It's a big connection thing.) 

Sound Beach Night: IF Sound Beach Night ends up as a team in the MAIN roster, I think it'll likely be Kim's(Gang-Il, Jhun, the latter especially if Heidern is with Ash, or if Heidern is with K' and they use Oswald for the third on Ash), or some sort of Yamazaki/Billy based team, or maybe Rock or something, but I...kinda feel like Rock, again, is going to be their 'Baiken' in which I feel like they're just going to be selling him. So if this stage belongs to a team, I'm feeling the Kim/Jhun/Gang-Il combo since that covers a potential 'Surprise.' If Heidern's with K', Adel's with Ash, then this team would probably be all made up of XIV characters who might fit the stage. 

But I'm kinda admittedly leaning toward Heidern getting his own team, thanks to how the cover has him set up next to Ash(a team leader), and K'(a team leader.) 

DLC Set 1: Kim's team will be one if he's not on the Sound Beach thing, and I think we'll find Angel somewhere here too. Keep in mind I sort of believe these two teams were meant for the main roster, but ended up cut because none of the other characters/teams really could be due to the heavy focus on narrative. 

Yes, I think Kim can be DLC. Mai was console only in XI, after all, as was Robert. I don't think he's 100% safe. 

DLC Set 2: Really depends on things, but I think if Duo Lon or Shen don't get used, we could see that Dragon Spirit team with them and Kensou? Possibly a non-canon boss team, as well, where they just smash together three fav bosses like Geese, Rugal and Goenitz in a not-narratively likely but totally off the books team. 

A team with Rock/Shingo or something is also possible and would probably sell gangbusters. In fact I'm pretty sure we'll see Rock and Shingo show up *somewhere* on DLC, I just dunno if it'll be in the first group or the second. 

--

Anyway, those are my guesses. Again, I've had a pretty good guess rate so far-I've hit most of the characters and even like five of the teams(I had guessed King on AoF on my first pass even! Only teams I missed were Agents, GAW and WT and even those I had nailed who two would be together, though to be fair that wasn't too hard. I also said that we wouldn't be getting too many XIV newcomers back on the initial roster-and it seems that I was, indeed, correct there as well. 

I could totally be wrong here, though-wouldn't be the first or last time(I and many have been wrong on how big the initial roster would be, for example) but this is what I'm sticking with since the guessing method has worked alright so far.

I guess we'll see in a couple months? (You know they're going to drag this out, heh.) 

TGS! New character trailer. Stealth K' trailer drop! Gameplay bits! Demo! Stuff!

Well I'm not going on a ton of sleep here, but I'll see what I can put together. We got a lot of stuff today! This is mostly going to be me compiling stuff from around online and then bullshitting about it as I usually do. 

For starters, we got a bunch o' info at TGS about KOF XV! For starters I'll just link the stream here, if you happened to miss it. It's a bit of a long watch, but you can jump around. 

It has a slightly updated trailer, and it goes over some of the gameplay basics, as well as has some people playing an eight-character demo(consisting of Iori, Kyo, Leona, Athena, Mai, Shun'ei, Terry, and Isla, the new rival girl.) Speaking of which, we have her trailer here!

Now I'll be honest; she's not really my cuppa tea. Moveset doesn't really look like, well, too 'Azzy' and neither does her aesthetic. Still, she's vibrant, seems to fit the cast alright(in terms of more modern games, I mean I'm still kinda old school admittedly, if designs are busy I prefer them more 'Elaborate' than 'Loud' for lack of a better term.) I mean I find her pretty inoffensive, it looks like she'd drop into League or something. I'm sure she'll find a few players, even if she's not really what I'm looking for. The hands are pretty cool, though, and she apparently greets them as 'Amanda' which is interesting. The spray-paint super is pretty funny and troll-like, I'll give them. 

They mentioned ''Surprises'' in the presentation today. I'll get back to that(character wise.) 

So as the day went on, we got to see bits and pieces of trailers. Like Iori's win screen! 

A gorgeous Athena alt color:

                                             These make my King of Fantasy self very happy.

We also got to see some bits on the Max Mode. The Blue(Neutral) max does indeed get a much bigger bar, as you can see from these three comparison pics I'm about to post; the red bar is what the anchor Quick/Red max looks like from the website. The smaller Blue bar is what the Point Neutral caps at. 

                                            

(Despite it saying 3 in the 2nd and 3rd, the activation is 2 bars, so they had five. The top bar was definitely done on a point character in the video.) 

So Neutral Max bar is just plain bigger. Both of them seem to grant free level 1's-the Quick *seems* to end it(maybe it just uses so much of it it ends up ending it), but the Blue does not end on super. Blue is where you can connect three of them; I have not seen yet how much a level 2 or 3 costs in Blue max. I'll get back to people on that one. But what seems to happen is that it just costs a chunk of the mode to use a super. Which means maybe Ash could, say, pop Sans-Culotte for some meter, and do his wreckage with increased damage and guard crush(which only Blue offers), and then when that mode wears out, if he still has regular meter, he's free to pop Sans-Culotte again(the Max Mode meter seems to have a cooldown on it, I'm not sure of how long that is.) And continue more fun? Yeah this has some potential; I definitely can't wait to lab the game. 

I'm going to also point out in the video, the developers pointed out specifically how they geared things to get away from XIV's issues, like cr. B fishing into Max Mode. By making it more expensive, that helped a lot, and splitting the max modes into two, I think they already well started on their way. The fact they targeted this(as well as making sure the game has rollback!) shows they do, indeed, care a lot. 

Shatter Strike definitely looks fun-and strong, I think the fact it costs an entire bar to use(tho refunds half on hit) is probably necessary. This is, however, going to I think counterbalance people from spamming those ''When in Doubt'' EX moves, which I think, at only half a bar, could get a little out of control themselves. The meter is going to be working quite a bit, I think, between Shatter Strike needing one to activate, EX moves taking half, and both Max Modes needing two to activate, along with supers still costing if you aren't in max mode, of course.

I see some are skeptical about it and I get why, but I sorta feel like it's in there to help vs. the EX's that are going to get spammed the second someone has half a bar. 

Some other neat things, gleaned around Twitter and compiled for your perusal. Speaking of those awesome EX's:

Iori's EX dp+K just happens to have projectile invuln. 

Reddit had discovered the old CH system back, which was skipped in XIV.  That's good news, IMO. 

Some Climaxes. Leona's, Athena's, Iori's, and Terry's. All look fantastic(Leona's Rebel Spark remains a very iconic one for her-it's short and simple, but she's about precision), but Iori's takes the cake; it's so...visceral and it ends so damn brutally. I've watched it for like five hours now. 

On the site, we got a preview of Classic Leona! I admit, I'm one of those weirdos who loves her new outfit because I like the military longer trousers with the tank top, but this IS a great outfit and I know a lot of people love it. 

Then, we made an interesting discovery. Someone was posting a cool video showing color variants on Reddit, when it occurred to us that the Character Select theme was the theme that played in Kukri's Trailer, which I actually forgot to link since I forgot to blog about it since I don't really play him. Oops. 

                                                        

                                Better late than never? Something something Fetishism Explosion?

Okay I'll give them credit: I like the fact they leaned harder on Kukri's troll side. To be honest after SNKH I kinda think even if the game itself was some fever dream and only the endings were canon, it's probably their best bet. And to be honest he looks pretty fun? Not really my type of character, again, but it seems Kukri fans are happy with what they gave him. 

Anyway, listen closely and you can hear things. This is a fairly decent discovery; a lot of us, pre-Gamescom, were pinning him for Ash's team. After Gamescom, however, we started to have a change of heart, seeing how the Rival and the Braids Lady(apparently named Delores), are teamed; I would assume so hearing in the trailer how she says ''I call the shots.'' It may be a hint. When having a good look at Kukri, though, and seeing the braid, and the decorations on his clothing, and how it matches with some of the decorations on Delores' stuff(as well as the braid...), I think there may be some Verse Connection stuff happening. Besides that, he simply doesn't fit that snow stage, like, at all. The teams we've seen so far all at least decently match their stages well; GAW in the ring, I think the Agents fit a shady night stage, Treasures fit Esaka, CYS the Concert Hall, and so on. 

Kukri sticks out like a sore thumb on that snow stage. I won't say it's impossible, but given all the info I have now? I'm leaning stronger toward Rivals. 

Anyway, again, the day went on. More little things pop up, like Terry's Rising Tackle being back to a dp motion, and Kyo's RED kick having its notation changed slightly. You can peruse the move lists here, if you're curious. 

Suddenly, as I was checking my feed debating the best way to shoot the concentrated caffeine into my veins so my eyes would stay open, and I thought I was hallucinating due to lack of sleep, I thought I saw K's trailer pop up. Okay, maybe it's just from the big trailer? Nope, apparently they just up and stealth-dropped K's trailer! 

                                                            Welcome back, K of Dash. 

Fashionably late as always, probably hitting his snooze alarm and not wanting to be here at all, his trailer on the other hand looks awesome. He's got 6K back from XI which is awesome to see, and his dp follow up looks sooo good. 

                                                            Remember this, XI fans? 

He's going to be fun by the look and I gladly have him on my backup crew for certain. He's K', but better, and I swear this looks like it's going to be one of the more fun K's to play in a while. But man that was a good trailer surprise. The initial announcements said "characters", plural, but after just seeing the one this morning for Isla, I figured that'd have been it. But K' literally woke up and chose violence, as we all expect him to. 

I guess that's somewhat it for now in terms of footage and pictures! I am still going to be combing my feed over the next couple of days for more fight footage, but right now running on low sleep and a lot of info I think it'd probably be better if I broke this up. 

So are we any closer to the teams? 

Well, not quite. Maybe a little, with the revelation the song in Kukri's trailer was the character select. 

But otherwise, we know Ash, K' and Isla are all on their own teams, they DID Mention there are 13 teams, so we know that bottom team isn't solo, and they just have not shown Heidern yet, except for the one Gematsu render. And we still have several weeks of announcements, probably bi-weekly. To be honest, while I can see them closing off the Rival team sooner than later, since I think that team has less 'weight' behind it since it's not going to involve returns and will involve the newcomers by the look, I feel like it'll be the others they want to keep us waiting on. 

Basically, here's where I'm at. Looking at this setup I have here, look at the top two rows, and pick six. That's who is likely going to cap off the roster. They did mention in that trailer some 'Surprises', and so if there are surprises still after bringing CYS back from the dead and Ash back from another timeline, we may well get a doozy on one of these teams. 

Basically those last three rows are just mentioned, but I think the six will come from the top 2 rows. We also don't know a few things like-is that initial DLC supposed to have been in the initial roster(which I almost think it was?) Is it story based? This would answer some questions. 

I would prepare for some high-end trolling, though. With birthdays coming up of characters(which they may or may not follow), just be prepared for them to sprinkle a bunch of characters in that everyone's going to fight about. 

That said, please give up on that atrocious Angel/Kula/Sylvie team. Good lord, why would you even attempt that. Edit team, sure, but as a canon story team? Please, read some lore. Even a little. Sylvie's afraid of Angel. Kula and Angel hate each other. A story team with rivals needs *someone* to kinda tie them together. K' stopping Kula and Angel throwing hands? Sure, that can work, though not optimal. Chizuru with Kyo and Iori? Yeah that works due to like, a long time clan responsibility and such. 

Ideally, K' team will stick together, though I hope they don't try something silly and swap out Maxima for Angel or Heidern(the latter of which I really think should have his own team, and it could well be they wanna sit on that team.) At least Heidern being there would make some better narrative sense, if they *must* swap it, so long as they put Adel on Ash team's third to get that team going or something. ;p 

BUT I digress. Predictions and wishes aside(FWIW I think Ash Team will most likely be Betty and then either Duo Lon, Shen, or Adel, Heidern's team if he has his own will indeed be Adel and Whip, if not, he's more likely with K', and that last team goes to South Town Something), they're gonna leave us hanging. (I will say I will stick by my guess of, out of these last six, two or three of them are going to be from before XIV, since I feel like those are the best to sit on, to book-end getting some comebacks at the start, and some comebacks at the end.) 

And I think that's a wrap for now!

OH YEAH A BONUS! It's not KOF XV related, but KOF 98UMFE related. This winter...

WE CAN REJOICE. 98 fans can now continue playing one of the best KOFs(certainly my personal favorite), only this time, with proper netcode-especially since we know Code Mystics does a hell of a good job on it. 

Yes indeed, today has been a good day. 

If you want to make things even better, now, SNK, moving forward...