N-Tactix

Adelheid could be interesting. V+M could probably be like "we know about your father" things go from there. In canon, they've been freed from their curse and are training with Kim and Tung. There's also the fact that the two are extremely unpopular.

I feel like Yamazaki is highly likely, what's up in the air is who he'll pair up with this time around. He's likely burned all bridges with Billy/Geese after repeatedly not getting paid enough and he hasn't got anybody else he's on good terms with. Vice and Mature could be a possibility considering their similarities but that's shattering expectations way too hard. Regardless, it's going to be interesting to see how the revived CYS and possibly Goenitz will react towards him after what happened in 97.

Alternatively, they bring back Bao. That would really shatter expectations. I notice that there's alot of little throwbacks to 2000; Mainly the AOF team, Iori's outfit resembling his alt striker looks and now Athena going back to the Chinese inspired looks. I wonder if that's because since SNK returned back to their original name, they're acting XIV like a soft reset after what Ash did. It's unlikely but I would like them to finally wrap up the Hizoku subplot that's been left hanging for 21 years now.

That depiction of a large spiralling tower is usually associated with The Towel Of Babel in Japan due to a manga named Babel II, that render is a near copy of the image used for the Tower in the manga. The manga was very influential in general, being the inspiration for the Jojo series and especially for KOF where Rugal's panther was named after Babel's panther. It's worth noting that Gill's stage in New Generation appears to be off the coast of Libya, which is known for its ancient ruins from the Greek+Roman periods but the liner notes and soundtrack listing for NG state the stage as Greece. Basically the SF version of the Illuminati is a hodgepodge of various elements of ancient cultures in and around the Mediterranean. Two days off my birthday. Nice

A ongoing thread about behind the scenes info throughout SNK's history.

For the people here who are into KOF's lore.

Interesting thread on KOF: Kyo and basically the closest thing to a full plot synopsis in English. It misses out the other endings as well as the Daimon subplot, the latter of which is actually canon, considering it tells of how Daimon met his wife.

Sakura's story. It's more of a personal reason and I know I wasn't the only one who had similar reasons given the reactions I read in several social media sites/youtube comments. That whole thing about Sakura coming to a head with her past carefree days and trying to make a future for herself resonated alot with me since I was a law student at the time she was released to SFV. I also particularly liked how it portrayed even simple dreams like parenthood as equally as tough to achieve and worthy as the other motivations characters in SF usually have. In a way, it's like we as the players have grown alongside Sakura. I think her MvSF theme did a good job about showing the bittersweet feeling of childhood innocence gradually coming to an end.

CVS art by Akiko Nishizawa (not Hideki Ishikawa as the tweet states, maybe the "Brazilian" Megaman cameo on Chun-Li's cup made the tweet author think that? ). Can anybody spot Morrigan 🤫?

I think my favourite credits theme has to be the one used for certain characters in New Generation/2nd Impact: Fits best for Necro finally getting a taste of freedom.

They are rough drafts, so I get why they look bad, but Ryu does look more better in the original screenshots than the giraffe neck he in the final, his face in the early draft is terrible. Might just be that I really despise Daigo Ikeno's artwork after the mid 90's where he changed his style a lot influencing my opinion.

I forgot about the fateful battle thing from XIV. KOF itself was always a dream match anyway.

That is true. The AOF-FF-Buriki ONE-Garou timeline is its own thing. The AOF cast would be in their 40's by the time KOF94 rolls around and several changes have been made especially regarding Geese (he never fought Ryo and is still alive). It's why they were hesitant on letting Rock join for so long because his entire thing is that he's the son of a dead crime lord.

That's just the way KOF handles most of the FF/AOF characters. Mai and Kim are borderline psychos instead of a cheerful girl and a serious man respectively, Ryo is now some dense himbo when he originally called King pretty in AOF2 (King got flustered when he pointed that out), Kasumi is a seething mess when she makes friends with Sakazakis at the end of AOF3. And it doesn't distract from KOF's story too badly because the focus is on the original characters, expect maybe the Fatal Fury team during NESTS. Imagine calling yourself the "Hero Team", that would be pretentious @YourFavGrandpaSeth, Maxima and Heidern can counter them and be the dilf team, though Maxima is more of a "big brother" and Whip can take his place.

The same way Ryo doesn't notice King's crush. Everyone in KOF is either super smart and one step ahead or very dumb when the story calls for it. But if you want to be serious, her only "public" tournament was XI, the NESTS tournaments were private affairs and she didn't take part in the future ones. Blue Mary was the same person who teamed up with a Yakuza mobster and Geese's right hand man only to be shocked when she discovered that Geese was the one calling the shots for her

I guess this team also confirms that Gang-il and Team Mexico are going to return.

Apparently, Ramon was based off David Bowie

@Lord_VegaThey use "人造人間" (Jinzo-Ningen) which can translate to "artificial/man-made human" in Japanese. So the translation is right, I don't doubt Midgardsorm's skills at all. They are far better than me at this. They cameo already in SFV so we can assume that the the events of the first game has already happened or is close to happening. The story writer of RS said that Sakura's inclusion was non-canon. She is a fitness instructor/PE Teacher in Sakura Ganbaru and SF4 did reference that, we also don't know what course she's taking in Uni either so the best way to tie RS to SF is to have Sakura teach at one of the schools, preferably Taiyo High. We'll see what Akira's story has to offer.

Do you still have the raw text? Worth noting out here that while "改造人間" (Kaizo-Ningen) literally translates to remodelled human, it's usually used as a catch-all phrase for cyborgs/experiments/mutants. They might have used another term for Abel.

Many wiki sites use the term to describe the NESTS characters: https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/クーラ・ダイアモンド Kula is referred to as a "Remodeled Human" here, for example. @ScotiaLooking forward to when you cover the "Tales of Ash" arc.

Likely the latter. Think of how Kula Diamond and K' are referred to as Cyborgs by May Lee and some material as "改造人間" (a remodelled human, the naming comes from the manga Babel II, which, like alot of Mitsuteru Yokoyama's works, was a huge inspiration on SNK's staff with Rodem the Panther, Kyo's story during 1999-2001 is heavily similar to the sequel manga My Name is 101 (その名は101) down to Kyo wearing a more fashionable version of Babel's clothes.) Probably, we'd have to look at whether the Japanese scripts give them a special name.

@Scotiaare you the same "Scotia" that made those KOF lore videos?

So I was going through some things I had on my computer and found this. It was something I made for an old website (probably dead now) a friend had. Some of these sprites like Orochi Leona, Orochi himself and the 99-Striker Kyo were done by me while I recoloured a few others like Kula's and Another Iori's hair, Foxy's skin etc. I think the concept was to make some updated version of 2000 with the missing strikers from 99 added back in, and a few of the strikers switched around to fit certain characters. KOF 2000 is honestly one of my favoruites even with all the broken balance and glitches (that are only noticeable when playing against a human player anyways) Wonder what would happen if we were to give everybody a Maniac Striker 😵

Luong doesn't have that much lore and stuff to talk about anyways compared to the characters revealed so far. I hope Hein, Kukri and Antonov return. They were the only other XIV newcomers I liked beside Luong.