Fighting Games Friday: The King of Fighters 2001’s Portraits Were Great, Actually

SNK fans rarely have good things to say about The King of Fighters 2001, for mostly understandable reasons. It was the first KoF game to not be handled by SNK themselves after their original iteration filed for bankruptcy and shuttered in 2001, with South Korean developer Eolith taking it up. Its gameplay was unpolished compared to prior installments, even compared to the rushed The King of Fighters 2000, the music was a massive step down, and the new character design style was a jarring change compared to prior games. Some new characters were good (I was a big fan of May Lee and Foxy, though both haven’t been playable in years), though one was so blatant a rip-off that SNK had to retcon and replace him.

(To clarify: Nameless, who debuted in The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match, was fine, but I did like K999. Only partly because he was one of the most blatant rip-offs a fighting game design has ever attempted.)

There’s one way in which the game has an undeservedly dubious reputation: The character designs. It was, to be fair, a jarring change to go from Shinkiro to Nona after the former had contributed the designs to the KoF series since its inception in 1994. Since Shinkiro was hired by Capcom immediately after SNK folded, where he still works nearly two decades later, they couldn’t keep him. But hiring Nona instead of Hiroaki, the latter of whom served as a kind of protégé to Shinkiro, seemed baffling ostensibly. This doesn’t mean Nona was bad. Actually, Nona’s KoF2001 art was good.

Nona’s best art was on the character select screen, some of the best portraits ever seen in a game. I only remembered them when they were lightly discussed on Twitter a week ago, brought up by Necrosoft Games director Brandon Sheffield. They’re simple, but ridiculously expressive and exude personality. The bigger characters have more conventional designs, like Kyo and Iori, but it’s evident that Eolith let Nona get creative with others like Li Xiangfei and even Yuri Sakazaki. They’re two of my favorites.

Xiangfei originates from the Fatal Fury series, and works as a server at a restaurant that often struggles to pay the bills. The art shows how she’s willing to, let’s say, indulge in the delicacies she might sometimes serve. She’s not the only one eating or about to eat in their portrait: Kula is licking a lollipop, while Sie Kensou is about to eat a pork bun that he hopefully won’t choke on.

Others simply have good expressions. Yuri’s shows how she’s still a goof despite being 20 years old. Chang is clearly having a good time. Meanwhile, Vanessa’s puckering up for… something. I also can’t stop looking at Ralf’s, who’s exhibiting how hip and cool he is.

The character select screen designs are great, but the victory screen portraits have just as much personality. Xiangfei and Yuri once again have standout examples here, but please make sure you look at Joe Higashi’s to see what he’s doing. There’s a video comparing all the 2000 portraits to 2001’s, and you only have to read a few comments to see why SNK didn’t commit to this any further. A lot of fans just need their bog-standard designs and freak out with the slightest changes. This video isn’t a remnant of the old YouTube from the mid-to-late 00s, either; it’s from 2018, and several comments are mere months old.

It’s true that all the portraits in this game didn’t get the appreciation they deserved, but I won’t mislead anyone by saying I always liked them. There was a time where I would have read those comments and pointed at my screen while saying “right on, brother.” There is, of course, an old cliché saying that you never fully appreciate something fully until it’s gone (that’s not the direct quote, but I’m not interested in providing that), and that’s partly what’s happening here. I haven’t seen evidence suggesting the group that’s come to appreciate them is large, but reactions like those in that video’s replies show why SNK immediately changed them.

And I mean “immediately,” as they were altered for the game’s home console release. The PlayStation 2 version of KoF2001 opted for using the character concept art instead of the unique portraits, and while they looked more traditional for the franchise, they were comparatively boring. The portraits were switched back to those from the arcade version for subsequent ports, however. Future installments have contained more traditional-style portraits, including The King of Fighters 2002 despite featuring the same artist.

We will never get portraits like this in a KoF game again thanks to the continued and undeserved virulent reaction towards them. It’s an opportunity to cherish the moment when we did get them, even for those of us who didn’t appreciate them as much as they could have at the time.