My copy of KoF: Orochi Collection arrived yesterday...
.... Ehhhh, it's not without flaws. First big problem I noticed was that the intro sequences (on all five games) are out of sync, and there's a rather irritating sound bug on KoF '98 where you'l start the second round and the announcer goes 'ROUNDD TWO! FIIGH- WINNARRR'... yeah. That gets very annoying very quickly. The challenge mode uses the KoF '98 system all the way through, which feels slightly lazy, and the options are very bare bones - like, literally just difficulty level, music/SFX volume and load/save settings.
The two biggest problems I've got with it though are the game speed and the lack of game modes. Speed first of all, there're NO speed settings whatsoever and since I don't have a 60Hz compatible TV in my room (I've got a VERY old TV) I can't check whether or not it's just a sloppy 50Hz conversion that's causing this and the sync issues. But as forthe game modes, you literally have two options per game - arcade mode (team by default) or training mode. That's it - no Vs. options, no single player select, no survival modes anywhere. Fair enough, there're five games here with a shitload of unlockables and challenges, but even though the conversions are nearly (NEARLY) arcade perfect, some single character modes or at least 'proper' Vs. mode options would've been kind of mandatory.
That said, shit still fucking rules in every other way. The King of Fighters '94 is really difficult to go back to - mostly because it's hilarious in comparison to every other game here - but jesus christ, '97 and '98 are pure fucking gold. Regardless of the ridiculous amount of loading times, bugs, sound errors and speed issues I'm really fucking stoked that I own this compilation. Even though I've been playing SNK's fighters almost as long as I've been playing Capcom's (I think I started playing Fatal Fury in arcades a year after I first played Street Fighter II), and despite being a big capcom fan in the past, I hereby refuse to acknowledge that anybody can make fighting games better than SNK. Guilty Gear and Street fighter are cool, yeah - but SNK are as close to perfection as it can get. Only after playing nearly every KoF game one after another (with the exception of '99) on top of games from the Art of Fighting, The Last Blade, Samurai Shodown, Fatal Fury and World Heroes series PLUS a bunch of one-off titles (Aggressors of Dark Combat, anyone?) can I genuinely say that the progression they made with their efforts year to year become more and more apparent.
tl;dr - SNK > everything else, the compilation is buggy but fuckwin. Also, inb4 disagreement because you're 100% wrong. And that's not even an opinon.
That's not me having a go at you or trying to be a dick either, that's just plain old truth.
