#28 King of Fighters '96 BONUS: SNK Boss Team (Geese, Krauser and Mr. Big) playthrough.

Channel:

AdmiralMcFish - Bosses and Hidden Characters

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Published on January 16, 2015 7:48:06 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oALKQ8gaQk0

Game:

The King of Fighters '96 (1996)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 23:08

9,964 views

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A playthrough of the sub-boss team consisting of Geese Howard, Wolfgang Krauser and Mr. Big. in King of Fighters 96.

As this is a series for boss characters, it would have been ludicrous not to do a video on this.

No need to post moves for this one, they're readily available on Gamefaqs, Strategywiki or whatever you like.

KOF 96 was the first one I properly owned, and as such the first I got to properly sit down with and get in-depth into. It featured one of the coolest sub-boss teams in the series (who unfortunately would not return again). Its sort of a shame they're selectable at the start of the game; if you'd ended up facing them as a sub-boss team without knowing they were in the game, it would have been a good shock moment. That said, there is something symbolic to fighting them; fighting SNK's old bosses before fighting their newer, more dangerous ones.

They attempted to balance the characters for this one, but didn't really have all the time they need:

Geese has these slash type reppukens. Though I disliked these for a while, now by comparison I think they're great; they combo really well into things and normal double reppuken is relatively useful anyway. His Jaeiken barely combos into anything, which I don't like, but it's otherwise a decent character. I just wish they had made raising storm easier to pull off in this one, but in this particular hack he does have the ability to use the ryuuko ranbu-esque Deadly Rave. He also has his air slash from AOF 2, but it's not that useful. The most notably thing about Geese is his incredibly easy infinite combo; at max power, just hope and press C. I use a lot in this video and it makes up for his otherwise actually quite lacklustre strength. However, I like the way they really tried to make Geese a character fit for King of Fighters and brought in so many of his established moves.

Their really isn't much to say about Krauser. He has a couple of new moves including a counter move, but otherwise he's the same fireball throwing, kaiser wave launching and leg tomahawk spamming character everyone knows and probably doesn't love.
I find Krauser somewhat boring in this game, perhaps because most of his moves aren't that powerful or maybe that they just seem to be blocked endlessly. His super move is his trademark Kaiser Wave, already seen in use in the series by Rugal, and it's nice to be able to spam it, but it's more or less the only purpose Krauser serves on a team.

Mr. Big's incarnation in comparison to the other two is fantastic by comparison. Having played a decent amount of AOF and AOF 2 by this point, I could fully appreciate the way they tried to implement his moves and it makes him easily the best character on the team. He has a projectile, a couple of launch moves, a great super, a Joe Higashi pummelling type move and a fantastic comboing uppercut attack which just makes him absolutely ruthless. It's a particular shame they didn't bring him back.


When it comes to the Boss Team, I can take it or leave it. These incarnations (especially Krauser) didn't appear canonically again, making them pointless to put a lot of time into practising as. That said, getting to use the main villains of the games which inspired the series was a novel and fun idea, showing the development of SNK's mentality as they seriously tried to consider how to make proper, useable characters out of previously stunted and mostly undeveloped characters.

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