King of Fighters 96 - playthrough on Super GameBoy - Advent Countdown - Day 7

Channel:

Grey Fox

Subscribers:

620

Published on December 8, 2021 12:01:27 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_hC7o2H3ZE

Game:

The King of Fighters '96 (1996)

Duration: 46:05

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2

I hope you are all healthy and safe wherever you are in the World right now and whatever challenges you are facing.

I thought I'd do a countdown to Christmas 2022 with a GameBoy Cartridge themed advent calendar. I'd hoped to make the videos a little more slick but this is a rough and ready proof of concept really to see if anyone wants to countdown to Xmas with 24 different GameBoy games - one each day!

The footage is genuine cartridges running on a SNES via the Super GameBoy. As a Xmas gift feel free to use the footage in your own videos (just give credit or link to my channel)

This is King of Fighters 96 - the SNK flagship fighter which brings together characters from across their many fighting game series such as Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury and more. This was ported to the GameBoy by Takara and they do a brilliant job of squeezing these games down to the GameBoy.

Using a 2 button control method - compared to the 4 button controls of the original MVS arcade & AES home releases - this works really well on an original GameBoy but shines on the Super GameBoy - which features a custom border, 2 player games on a single SNES (no need to dig out that Link Cable!) and really clever use of colour. You can also switch between two differing palettes by hitting the X button on the SNES controller.

The gameplay does tend to encourage spamming the Special moves as quickly as you can but it works really well and makes it fun to play. Loads of characters too (but sadly not my girl King :(

Ended up making a uch longer video than I intended to (this is my longest ever video in fact) as I ended up playing through as Terry Bogard.

The Super GameBoy has always fascinated me and fans of my channel will know I love it when portable games can be played on the big screen! It still has the limitation of the GameBoy in that 4 shades can be used as the games need to be compatible and playable on the console - however some clever palette switching and game design means you can show more colours on screen by defining different palettes for different areas of the screen.

You really notice this when the characters - which have one set of 4 colours - "trespass" into the Health Bar area which has a different palette of 4 colours - for example during a Special Move - as the characters temporarily are shaded according to that palette. Think of Colour Clash on the ZX Spectrum!

They make great use of colour though - especially in the cut scenes where more control can be had over which palettes apply to which areas of the screen and this gives an illusion of a much more colourful game. The character select screen shows this well too with characters depicted with a bold primary colour and simple shading but it really is effective.

Certainly a lot more effort for an add on system/peripheral than you might expect from a port of this type and this was true of most of their 1-on-1 fighting game ports.

I play it here through the Super GameBoy in order to show the game a little clearer. For some reason my capture card always seems to struggle with the SNES (and therefore the Super GameBoy) not sure why as everything else pretty much works fine through it.

I'm also thinking of doing a series of videos on specially enhanced Super GameBoy compatible games - including the very clever game and programming designed to maximise the use of colour while remaining compatible with the original monochrome handheld, multiplayer modes, enhanced sound and even a hidden game. Let me know if you'd like to see this sort of thing.

As always if you enjoy this video let me know. As always this is running on original hardware in this case a SNES & Super GameBoy peripheral (one day I'll get a GBA Consoliser!!!!) Also let me know if there are particular games or systems you'd like to see.

As always this is uploaded under the Fair Use Policy - no money is being made from this video.

Stay strong, stay safe and stay healthy - Grey Fox

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