If you know me, you know that I am not a fan of SNK, the company. In a nutshell, it is my belief that they would have been a very different, and better, game company if the decision had not been made to ride the coattails of Capcom’s success with Street Fighter II for over a decade. Instead of being the "also ran" of the 2D fighting game race, SNK could have better spent those years broadening their horizons with game from many different genres, like they did before Street Fighter II.

Instead, a decade of tweaking, reinventing, borrowing, and, yes, some innovating, has produced King of Fighters ’99, perhaps the pinnacle of the SNK fighting game formula. Along the way, we were subjected to dozens of games, and you can almost trace the progress of innovation that led, finally, to this one game. Some ideas that started out horribly (remember the nigh-impossible to execute desperation moves from the early games?) eventually became good (supers in KOF ’99 are now mainly double quarter or half circle motions). Teammate assist attacks that started as barely useful have evolved into the new Striker attacks. Other bad ideas were scrapped altogether (remember the plane shifting from Fatal Fury?)

And so, after years of this sort of constant upgrading, deleting, remaking and fiddling, what is the end result? Is it possible for me to choke down a heaping helping of crow as I say this? Gah…urgh… gulp… it’s a damn good game.

What you get in King of Fighters ’99 is a collection of pretty much all of the important characters from the Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting and King of Fighters series, all of whom are served up here at their most powerful, playable best. Unlike the recent Capcom vs. SNK, watered down many of the SNK juggernauts to balance the game, in KOF ’99 they are loud and proud. The older characters are packing all of the special moves you remember, plus new attacks (try out King to see what I mean – she’s got nearly a dozen special attacks at her disposable!).

There are oodles of options for gameplay this time, as well. You can choose a standard one on one match, or take a team of three fighters into battle in the usual KOF team play. The big difference in this game is the addition of Striker characters. You’ll choose a character to act as an assist during battles, with the ability to call his or her out a set number of times. These "helpers" are very much in the same vein as the buddies in the original Marvel vs. Capcom, but they are much more useful. Many of them have more than use; Yuri, for example, will attack your opponent if she connects, otherwise she’ll cheer for you, raising your super meter. Terry has two possible attacks; whether your opponent is in the air or on the ground determines which of them he’ll come out with when you call for him.

Graphically, this is pretty standard SNK stuff where the characters are concerned. They haven’t changed their look since the Art of Fighters days, although it has become slightly more streamlined over the years, and the animation has definitely been improved. The real showstopper here is the backgrounds – rendered in 3D, with beautiful parallaxing ground and loads of movement, this game packs a collection of some of the most stunning environments I’ve seen in a 2D fighter.

So there you have it – an SNK fighting game that I really like. It took them ten years to do it, and the decisions that led to its creation very likely cost SNK everything, so I guess it was worth it. Enjoy it… there aren’t many SNK games left on the Dreamcast horizon, and as far as I’m concerned, KOF ’99 is the magnum opus of a once great game company.