The King of Fighters 97 iPhone App review

By Mark Rodriguez

As you know, Johnny and I are big fans of those good old fashioned Neo Geo fighting games. Fatal Fury Real Bout, The King of Fighters games, Samurai Shodown. Hell, we had fun blowing stuff up with Metal Slug and Shock Troopers. To celebrate their 25th anniversary, SNK announced all their iPhone games to drop to 99 cents from the 22nd to the 25th. These games include KOF 97, KOF 98, Samurai Shodown 2 and several Metal Gear games. I jumped onto KOF 97 cause it was one of my favorites. This review will be based mostly on the iPhone version and just the overall 'playing an arcade game on your iPhone' experience.

KOF 97 the game

This game marks the epic finale of the Orochi saga that started in KOF 94. Orochi is a powerful god and several characters and bosses from KOF 95 and 96 have either used its power, or tried to release it. This is the game where the New Face Team, Chris, Shermie and Yashiro manage to finally unleash Orochi into the world, and you have to enter the KOF tournament to stop it. KOF as a whole is a 3 on 3 fighting game series that throws original characters like Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami, and several other characters from the Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Ikari Warriors and Metal Slug series. 

The biggest addition to the gameplay in KOF 97 is choose two modes of play, either the Extra Mode where you can charge up your power bar to do the Super Special Moves and do the sidestep dodge, like in the older games in the series, or the Advanced Mode where you fill up your power bar as you deal out and take damage, similar to the Street Fighter games, as well as the rolling dodge.

The iPhone version

I personally never played an iPhone version of a pre-existing arcade game. Stuff like Candy Crush and the Marvel app I reviewed before are purposely made for iPhone where you touch the screen and all that. This is an arcade game that was never meant to be played without actual buttons. The game has this semi-transparent image of a joystick and the buttons on screen that you tap and such to move the characters. You can choose the set up, and you can use extra buttons that are the AB buttons at the same time (to do the dodging and roll-dodging in the KOF games) and the CD buttons at the same time (to do the knockout attack). There's also an SP button that you press for automatic special moves and super specials. You can also change the size and placement of the buttons to a degree.

Cool pic to remind us that yes, Iori is a musician in his free time.

The game is arcade perfect, graphics, music and all. Honestly, if anyone told me back in 1997 that you can play an arcade perfect version of this normally 200 dollar game on a 500 dollar game console on your phone... and for one penny short of a dollar.... I'd ask what you were smoking. The controls take a long time to get used to unless, I guess, you're used to playing these kinds of games already. Even then they're still not perfect, and we all know that SNK is infamous for insane controller motions for some of the moves. Thank God Geese Howard isn't in this game... trying to do the Raging Storm would destroy your phone. Unfortunately that's where the arcade perfection betrays you, as the game literally plays just like the arcade. In other words, the characters don't give a damn that you're playing without a joystick and just whup your ass as if you were playing the arcade version. Luckily this game isn't that hard and Orochi was known to be a disappointing pushover.... but it's still gonna take a lot of continues and patience to make it that far.

Yeah, you're gonna need that SP button to do the Super Special Moves.

Another thing this game has is that you can already select the hidden characters, the Orochi versions of Iori, Leona, Yashiro, Chris and Shermie. You can also play multi-player, but instead of playing it online.... you can only use the bluetooh mode to play with someone in the same room as you. This is kind of a shame since with the special deal going on, there's bound to be a bunch of new challengers waiting to take you down online.

My Opinions

What can I say? This is still a fun game. The controls are pretty bad though, and unless you really know your KOF, it might make the game downright unplayable for some. That SP button helps a lot, but holding down that button to do the Super Specials doesn't seem to work for all the characters, despite what the command list says. It works fine for some like Yuri, Blue Mary and Orochi Chris... but others like Leona are just standing there doing nothing. For 99 cents, it's not a bad deal. It's still fun to play and a delightful stroll through memory lane of kicking ass and taking names at the arcades. The perfect game to sneak in for a few matches during your lunch break. If you have the patience, give it a shot. If it sucks, well at least you only spent a dollar.

Like I said, I kinda skimmed through the actual game because this review is more about playing it on an iPhone and the overall experience. For a more in-depth look at the game, Johnny, Rakiarmas and I did an episode about it during the crossover of VGM and Raki's show at the time Rakiarmas Reviews. I know I posted this before, but if you don't want to skim through old articles, check it out here.