Development
According to an interview with veteran designers of the The King of Fighters series, the prototype version of the game was a side-scrolling beat 'em up, titled Survivor. It would only use core characters from the Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury series, specifically allowing players to play Robert Garcia and Terry Bogard for location testing. However, the idea was quickly abandoned after the debut of Capcom's game with similar gameplay, Final Fight. Since SNK were attached to the idea of the two-series crossover, they eventually agreed to make their idea into a fighting game. Characters from Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier were also added to the roster. The concept of a three-man team was one of the ideas kept from the side-scrolling version. The title "The King of Fighters" was re-used from the subtitle of the first Fatal Fury game, Fatal Fury: King of Fighters.
The King of Fighters series director Toyohisa Tanabe asserted that the Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury fighters were added specifically for adults, and the newer KOF characters were aimed to appeal to younger and newer audiences. Characters such as Benimaru Nikaido and Chang Koehan were added an off-beat variety to the cast, which he has previously deemed to be too serious. SNK artist C.A.C Yamasaki commented that although the lead programmer thought the game would not sell well, he believed it would eventually become popular. Ten people arrived at the first location test, but larger numbers came to subsequent tests. The SNK staff also had troubles with advertising the game due to a lack of money and some of their ads were noted to be of a poor quality.
Designers wanted a new, "snazzy" lead character who would easily fight Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting characters. He was named Kyo Kusanagi in order to relate him with the Yamata no Orochi legend. The boss character, Rugal Bernstein, was developed to be "the mightiest (most violent) and most evil boss character ever". The game was developed to have a "Fugitive Team" composed of Chang, Choi, and an unknown criminal, but Kim Kaphwan was placed in their team. The English Team was composed of King from Art of Fighting, and Billy Kane and Big Bear from the first and second Fatal Fury. Designers had several problems with Big Bear concerning capacity and the Art of Fighting staff insisted on adding Yuri Sakazaki to KOF. Yuri replaced Billy Kane, and later Mai Shiranui took Big Bear's place to form the England Team (later known as Women Fighters in the following games).
Most of the characters from other games were meant to have some of their moves changed or removed in order to balance them with KOF's new characters. However, designers focused in adjusting the imbalance of certain characters without removing any move. In the end, creators of the series noted that the Art of Fighting characters were the strongest ones in the game. Nevertheless, other characters such as Terry and Andy Bogard became the ones who got the designers' utmost attention and were given new moves.
Read more about this topic: The King Of Fighters '94
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