The KO #143 - a bit of Art of Fighting 2 (PS2 AST) w/ King
3(Gah well I forgot to check the video output in OBS's full-screen preview, which is important because sometimes the Elgato's gamma settings don't fully initialize, resulting an a grayed-out capture like you see here. : P)
I love the big meaty sprites in the first two Art of Fighting games, and I hadn't tried out the Arrange soundtrack in the PS2 version recently, so I took it for a spin here with King. This is in the "NeoGeo Online Vol. 4: Ryuuko no Ken: Ten-Chi-Jin" collection for Japanese PS2--it came out as "Art of Fighting Anthology" on PS2, and the PS2 version has come out on PS4 as well. Like SNK's Fatal Fury, Fu'un Super Combo, and World Heroes PS2 collections, the Art of Fighting games in this collection (not the collection's initial menu screens, though) run in 240p. : ) (Really wish their PS2 KOF collections had done that too--but those are stuck in 480i. : p)
The game *is* pretty darn difficult even on the easiest difficulty setting, but you can get decently far with a little effort, so it's not actually not too off-putting in that regard.
The Arrange soundtrack is pretty nice!
What I found I didn't need more of, though, was the flickering of the very large character shadows--most SNK NEOGEO fighting games use that frame-by-frame flicker effect to simulate transparent shadows, but the shadows are usually partially blocked from view by energy meters, and are usually not quite so huge--and the quick vibrating effect of characters who have been hit: I guess that's to make it look like they've really been rocked by a hard strike, but it also makes it difficult for the eye to focus on their image (the early Real Bout Fatal Fury games use that effect as well). (I just noticed 3rd Strike vibrates characters back and forth when they're hit, too--but only by maybe half the distance that AoF2 does.)
Minor interesting (well, to me : P) note about the shadows here: in some stages the shadows are a dark color, rather than 100% black, to give more of a transparent effect against the floor color; Mickey's training ring stage, for instance (12:00), has a slightly greeny-yellow floor, and the shadows sprites are a very dark yellow, rather than black.
King's deep pink alternate color scheme when you select her with a kick button (7:22) is a little intense! : o
10:33 - STRENGTH TRAINING! mini-game--King's "venom strike" made short work of that one =o
Recording: PS2, OSSC, Framemeister, Elgato HD60