Ash Crimson - Creation and Development

Creation and Development

Ash was designed with the intent of creating an "attractive evil character" in contrast to previous The King of Fighters hero characters. The supervisor designer created to fit the desired appearance to a "T," little changes done to him since conception. Because of his recent introduction by The King of Fighters 2003, the staff did not want to reveal more information about him, and told fans to look forward to his "exploits." Falcoon adds that the main goal for Ash was to make him an ambiguous protagonist that purposely makes players "feel bad" for cheering for him. Ash's character design was not made by Falcoon. However, he did add extra details to Ash while he was illustrating him to better fit his character. As a result of Ash's final appearance, the staff joked that his teammate Shen Woo appeared to look more like the series' main character than him. For The King of Fighters XIII, Producer Kei Yamamoto wants gamers who played previous titles from Ash's story wonder what are the character's motives for his actions as well as whether they could relate with him. KOF: Maximum Impact 2 Regulation "A" earned its title for three reasons with one of them being the character of Ash introduced in the spin-off series for the first time. Falcoon also labelled the character as "really wild" because of his role within the series and personality. Nona, another artist in charge, stated that from the original The King of Fighters characters, Ash was one he liked as he looked forward to his development.

In The King of Fighters XII, Ash was the character who the staff worked the most. They reworked his moves and speech to be more consistent with the rest of the cast. Producer of The King of Fighters XIII, Kei Yamamoto, commented that Ash was a character players could use to "show off", comically adding it was as a result of his personality. His EX version from such game tends to perform more multiple hits than his regular form. Particularly, his technique "Genie" (ジェニー?) was commented to fit well within his character due to its "disgusting" style. Ever since his introduction, Ash gained new moves in accordance to his actions in the series. After The King of Fighters 2003, Ash gained Chizuru Kagura's "Germinar" (ジェルミナール?), a move which allows him to seal his opponents' special moves. After defeating Iori Yagami, Ash gained the "Fructidor" (テルミドール?) Neo Max move which works as his strongest attack from The King of Fighters XIII. During development from the game, the staff thought about changing the animation style of Fructidor for an early one they used in a location test.