Fighting Games Friday: SNK, Don’t Forget About Tag Team King of Fighters

SNK’s The King of Fighters franchise is known for many unique features, the biggest among them being its legacy of characters and unique 3-on-3 battles. It was one of the earliest team battle titles in fighting game history, with characters engaging in quick 1-on-1 bouts until one is defeated, after which the next character jumps into battle for the next round. When the entire team is defeated, the other one has won the match. It’s the only franchise to have basic team battles for its default fighting mode, and it’s remained that way for most of its now-25-year history.

I say “most” because some installments experimented with the formula, since SNK knew they couldn’t stick with the same format forever. The King of Fighters ’99 and The King of Fighters 2000 introduced Strikers, which worked like assists in games like Capcom’s Marvel-based Vs. titles. It wasn’t a perfect addition thanks to how some extremely powerful combos were possible with certain characters and Strikers, but they were fun to play around with.

When the reformed SNK retained full ownership of the franchise starting with The King of Fighters 2003 (2001 and 2002 were handled by Korean developer Eolith after the original SNK folded), they made two key decisions to differentiate it from previous installments. For one, this was the start of a new story saga, which meant plenty of new characters. But the coolest new feature here involved the implementation of tag-team mechanics.

The feature eliminated the need for characters to wait their turn when they could be tagged in and out on a whim. It also made for more action-packed and utterly chaotic fights with characters jumping in and out of battle in a continuous manner. The mechanic could be used to bail out characters in trouble, though unlike other tag battle games, those not in use didn’t recover health while resting. It could also be used to make long combos, though it wasn’t anywhere near as game-breaking a mechanic as the Strikers were.

It’s a shame KoF2003 isn’t that well-remembered an installment in the franchise, though for reasons largely outside its dependency on tag-team fighting. It was the new SNK’s first KoF game, and consequently arrived with several glitches and lacked polish. But damn if it wasn’t fun to tag characters in and perform extended combos in the process. It had some of the fastest-paced matches of any KoF game, as seen through watching them in action. It also didn’t help that the game was released on old Neo Geo hardware, and was pirated in no time.

The game was an unbalanced mess, possibly due to SNK’s need to balance every character for 1-on-1 and tag-team action, a difficult task for a company with minimal resources in the process of revving up. Not to say they shouldn’t have gone this route, however. Can you think of a tag-team fighting game that achieves a near-perfect balance? They don’t exist. Even the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 games, which Capcom tried to carefully balance, had characters that clearly towered over others. This is simply how these games turn out, but it’s not a big deal when they’re so enjoyable to play.

SNK clearly had a good time making KoF2003, and the fan reception was fairly good, which is why they made another tag-team game with The King of Fighters XI. (They dropped the year from the names because the games were no longer releasing annually.) KoFXI had less glitches and better polishing, but retained significant imbalance qualities — around half the cast is rarely used in tournaments. It also made gutsy character roster choices that I respected, despite infuriating some fans. It took balls to cut out popular characters like Robert Garcia and Mai Shiranui, while bringing back more obscure faces like Eiji Kisaragi and Duck King. (Robert and Mai were added to the console version, however.) XI was even more enjoyable than its predecessor, and it’s still played in some tournaments to this day.

SNK dropped the tag team format in future installments for other priorities. The King of Fighters XII was SNK’s attempt to move the franchise to a new generation presentation-wise by creating new sprites, but they underestimated how arduous a task this would be and released an unfinished game due to needing quick money. Their focus for The King of Fighters XIII was releasing a complete game with the new presentation style. Meanwhile, The King of Fighters XIV featured another different presentation style using 3D models, and was their first game since returning to console game development after focusing on pachinko games for years. The upcoming The King of Fighters XV will mark yet another switch, this time from their own internal engine to Unreal Engine 4. Following this, they should settle into a calmer pattern.

This is where I’m hoping they’ll give the tag team format another shot. They have the cast to make one (XIV has nearly 60 characters including DLC), and the competition for tag team fighters these days is moderate — there’s Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle, Dragon Ball FighterZ, and Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid. They could reach another point where the fanbase gets tired of the basic team battle format again, and could go back to one that’s only been used twice. But another big question involves whether SNK will want to make this decision in the middle of a KoF story saga, since XIV started a new one. This means it could be a while before they release another tag team installment, but highlight the words “may” and “could” there.

Whether it happens at the start of a new saga or within the middle of one, I’d like for SNK to give this format another shot. The tag team games were fun to play and watch during tournaments, and it would be nice to see what the current SNK could do with that.