The KO #106 - KOF 2002 PS2 speed battles!

Channel:

smbhax 2000

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Published on September 5, 2018 5:11:56 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzLGy1MeiW4

Game:

The King of Fighters 2002 (2002)

Duration: 35:25

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4

Set the training dummy in Practice mode of The King of Fighters 2002 on PS2 to VS CPU and MOVE, set the LIFE to O-LIFE, and the CHARACTER CHANGE, AUTO and STAGE SELECT to RANDOM, and you've got yourself an endless series of quick 1-round battles with (usually) different combatants and a different setting every time.

While a lot of SNK's late PS2 era games could be set up this way, 2002 probably has the smoothest and most flawless set up of all of them. Coupled with the game's highly polished and fast-paste gameplay, it makes for a real zippy time.

I'm not a fan of how replacement developer Eolith changed the KOF series' combo system to allow combos that simply repeat the same move over and over--this can lead to combos that are really long and boring--but neither I nor the AI at the level at which I play--typically difficulty level 3 of 8--are capable of doing those types of combos, so I guess that's all right. : p

2002 has rather odd backgrounds that go for a halfway photo-realistic effect at times, with muted color palettes that are distinctly different than the palettes original KOF developer SNK used in the KOF games they developed themselves previously (94-2000). The colors come across as a bit off-kilter: neither bright and pop-colored, nor realistically accurate.

Those colors clash, to my eye, with the colorful, SNK-determined default colors of the classic characters still in the game, so I find it more interesting to use one of the alternate character color sets; the one you get using the PS2's Square button when selecting characters, in particular, seems to be by and large the oddest one, which almost harmonizes with the weird background hues. (I screwed this up twice at the beginning of the video, and didn't select characters with Square until 3:36).

Set up this way, the endless parade of weirdly tinted stages and characters makes for a mildly psychedelic experience. : o One thing the game has going for it is that while none of the stages are incredibly well designed, they at least share a common style, and similarly muted palettes, and so they flow together well, and mostly inoffensively--maybe that stormy skies stage with the downed power lines, almost completely gray, is the ugliest, but even that one mostly blurs together with the others, especially at a one-round battle clip. That makes 2002 better for this purpose than 2000, which doesn't have a per-round random stage select feature, and 98 UM, which has stages in at least three clashing visual styles. 2000 and 98 UM also have various glitches or limitations under this "speed battle" Practice mode set-up.

Oh, and 2002 Unlimited Match, the later, expanded version of the game, replaces all the backgrounds with garish 3D stages, so that's just out. : P

So 2002 may suddenly and unexpectedly have jumped to the front of my KOF to-play pile! : o

My King of Fighters series playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZO3OPzPjIzNvBWZPI5W7JycAiwsVbKgh



Recording: PS2 to Framemeister to Elgato HD60

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