Fatal Fury. But it wasn't until 3 years later, in... well, you guess the year... when SNK

decided to throw their franchises in a blender and frappé until they had a tall, refreshing,

fighting-game smoothie. It's an idea that's been rather played to death in the modern

era, but back then it was SOMETHING. Thus, The King of Fighters '94, the first installment

in one of the pillar series of 2D fighters. The invitations have been sent, the teams

have been assembled. But Kula's not on 'em, cuz she won't be introduced for another 6

years, and that makes me sad.

Apparently, when drug kingpin and arms trafficker Rugal Bernstein gets bored, he summons the

best fighters from around the world (or SNK's catalog) to battle for his amusement. Because

that can't go poorly, can it, having the strongest, fastest, fiercest, and yes, bounciest combatants,

exactly the kind of people who might just have a really strong, heroic sense of justice,

and who would think nothing of pummeling a drug kingpin and arms trafficker. Or, alternately,

they just beat the hell out of each other because that's fun too. Bucking the one-on-one

trend of fighting games up to this point, though, KOF'94 introduced three-fighter teams,

representing nations around the world that really didn't make all that much sense. The

classic Fatal Fury cast is the Italian team? What, did they clean up Southtown then go

out for gelato?

But that's all tangential plot and doesn't really have much to do with VIOLENCE. Good,

classic, quarter-circly, 2D fighting from the guys who tried to do Street Fighter better

than Street fighter (and succeeded in some respects). You've got four attack buttons,

your standard back-is-block configuration, and a dodge command that lets you take a step

into the background to let that fireball pass by. KOF94 also folded in concepts like a power

meter for unleashing stronger "lethal" attacks, taunts that deplete the opponent's power (thereby

giving them a tactical use as opposed to just being a jerk), and defensive attacks by your

allies on the sideline. Let's be fair, there were a lot of games trying to ride on the

success of the Street Fighter II concept, but SNK were usually the ones taking those

ideas another three steps further, culminating in the - again, I go back to the image of

the refreshing fighting-game smoothie.

Fortunately, this landmark step in the history of fighting gaming has been remade and emulated

a number of times, from a direct virtual console ports on the Wii and PS3 to inclusions in

compilations like the SNK Arcade Classics collection and the King of Fighters: the Orochi

Saga bundle. A remastered version called The King of Fighters '94 Re-Bout (yes, "re-bout")

hit the PS2 in Japan, and was planned for a US release on the original XBox, but disappeared

in the middle of night like a fart in the wind. And that's unfortunate, because KOF'94

really feels like one of those fighting games that you can actually go back to and that

still holds up. More than I can say about Clayfighter 2: Judgement Clay, let me tell

you.