NeoMaster

What i've seen from it, its just like the other Megaman games. But thats good news and bad news, depending on who you are.

This has already been out like a week ago, full version not beta.

Wow, haxor3d versions rock. I can't wait until they change a few costume colours and create kof2005explus limited edition.

I agree with you on this one, the KOF EX games are some of the best fighters on the GBA. Looking through my archives I found one of my old reviews on this game. Check it out to see my full opinion. ===================================================== Game Reviewed: King of Fighters EX 2: Howling Blood, The Platform: Game Boy Advance Publisher: MMV Developer: Sun-Tec, Marvelous Entertainment Inc. Max Players: 2 (single and multi cart compatible) Reviewer: ssjchau Introduction The King of Fighters is back and better than ever on the GBA! After the dismantlement of SNK, Playmore picks up the licenses to the SNK franchises and brings back one of its most popular fighters. The King of Fighters started out with KOF 94’, created about 10 years ago. Since then, SNK/Playmore has been updating and releasing new versions of it annually. If you are a KOF fan, you would’ve played the first King of Fighters called Neoblood, which was released a year or so earlier on the GBA prior to Howling Blood. Neoblood didn’t feature the gameplay and sound you would expect from a KOF title. The game featured awful graphics and music, and the combo system wasn’t nearly as intact as KOF 99’ which was the game it was based on. Now we have Howling Blood. Not only does it improve upon the old Neoblood game, it solidifies the engine with better gameplay, a larger roster of characters, and better music and sound. Presentation Howling Blood features a stronger cast of characters. You will notice that now there are a total of 21 playable characters at the start of the game. Most of the faces would be recognizable to KOF fans, and some will be unfamiliar. Moe and Reiji are some of the new characters that have been added as new comers to the tournament. As you would’ve guessed, the KOF games comprise of characters from all sorts of different fighting games. Mai, Kim, and Terry are characters that come from Fatal Fury. Ryo and Takuma rise from Art of Fighting. Characters that are originals to the KOF tournaments would be Kyo, Iori, Ralf, Clark and Leona. Although these characters are a healthy assortment, one cannot deny that many characters are missing. This game is based on KOF 2000, if anyone has played this game, there are about 40 plus characters to choose from. With the obvious shortage of space, Howling Blood takes about half of them away. The most disappointing to see missing would be K’, one of the main characters and most powerful in King of Fighters. Aside from character selection, Howling Blood features the essential options of any fighting game. Story, practice, VS single, and VS team are all available and ready at your disposal. Everything but the character selection is average here. Gameplay If you have ever played a King of Fighters before, you will be able to predict what the gameplay is like. KOF usually focuses on team based battles. In team mode, you will choose three characters. The order of these characters will be important, since your last character will be the striker. Strikers are the characters sitting away from the action and await your call for assistance. If you press the L and B button together, they will jump out and perform their move and then scurry away. The special meter is handled in a similar fashion as Street Fighter. You have one bar of “special” and during battle it increases. When one third of it is filled, you have one special stock, if two thirds are filled; you have 2 stocks and so on. However, if you have it completely filled, you will be able to perform MAX specials, which does double damage as normal ones. You can also run by tapping the forward direction twice. To roll past your enemy and avoid attacks, press Left or Right and then R and B together. What’s great about this system is that you can add plenty of pressure to your opponent which makes gameplay very fast. Talented and skilled players will have a MUCH greater advantage to a button masher. Another fun aspect about this system is finding combos that link. Each character has a distinct variety of moves that can be executed one after the other so that opponent cannot block if the combo is used successfully. This is what separates the pros from the newbies, giving you complete rights to brag after pummelling your opponent. Graphics I was quite impressed with the graphics quality of Howling Blood. This game actually mimics the arcade version of KOF 2000. Most of the stages have been ported from 2000 to Howling Blood, and some that have never been seen have been created specially for the GBA version. Each character has their personal style and distinction, all equipped with a variety of taunts and poses. There are a few problems however with the backgrounds and characters. The sprites themselves have fewer frames per second then the arcade version, which in some cases the characters don’t move as fluidly. Second, the backgrounds are less animated. Take for example the harbour stage, the water stays still and doesn’t splash around. The aquarium stage has a wavy picture to animate water movement which looks odd. It’s not a big deal but it adds a bit more realism if these animations where intact. Sound Now here is a good and bad situation. The good would be that the tunes and tracks are better to listen to than Neoblood. The bad would be the extreme compression used to fit everything in this cartridge. It’s nice to see that the developers had kept the sound bytes and tunes intact from KOF 2000, but heavy compression definitely ruins the great experience. I’ve always loved KOF games for their sound (well any KOF past 97’). What the characters say for moves and taunts give them their unique personalities. I’ve always hated the way Street Fighter games have these cheesy one word samples, but KOF isn’t like that. The character voice actors are great; you can actually feel the intensity when they perform MAX specials. But with all this compression going on, the voices are hardly audible, and lots of sounds and winning taunts have been removed! It would be so like paradise if they could fit all the music tracks and sound effects in their perfect form…but oh well. Value I’m not going to lie to you ladies and gentlemen. The King of Fighters Howling Blood is for fighting fans. If your not really interested in these sorts of games, then you might find that KOF has very little to offer. However, if you love fighting games, the huge library of moves and combos for each character will just make your jaw drop. On the plus side, if you are quite good with this game, you can easily transfer your skills to the arcade versions and future titles of KOF, and vice versa. 21 characters is a good line-up, the multi-player modes will definitely give you the value for your buck, especially if you have hardcore friends which love to get challenged and beaten. So if you like games like Street Fighter and Guilty Gear, this game will definitely entertain you. I strongly recommend a purchase. Scoring System Presentation: 6/10 Gameplay: 9/10 Graphics: 8/10 Sound: 6/10 Value: 8/10 Overall: 7.4 out of 10 Time completed: Who cares? It’s a fighting game. Reviewed By ssjchau Email: ssjchau@hotmail.com =====================================================

Yeah I hear ya. 2D games aren't getting enough slack these days. I would really wish that SNK would really give a great bonus, instead of small incentives. Take SvC Chaos for ps2, they just added a few transparencies with the attack...they didn't even add new characters or 3v3 mode! They should make the kof package online compatible, that would be godly.

Yeah, I just read that on IGN today. Its !@$%ing time they decide to bring it over here. There's one small problem....the Kof Package is going to be released Winter 2004, which means about 6 more months to wait. By that time, the newer and better fighting games are going to be released and I just might forget about this bundle.

Too bad they won't make a special version of kof2k2, man I love that game. I'm not really looking forward to SSV Special, but it wouldn't hurt to add it to the collection.

Whats new in this super special version?

You can only get them in the Dreamcast version of Kof2k2. In my opinion, they really aren't that special as secret characters. Unlocking Jae Hoon and Rock Howard...now thats something.

I don't really play that much pinball in machine form. All those machines themed with movies and such scare me away. Im more into pinball for the handheld systems like Pinball of the Dead and Pokemon Pinball Advance.

Alright! Im amazing! Well, if you don't like pinball, its not something you would make a brand new topic on.

Okay GBA fans, you might know a little thing called the E-Reader. Its a device for the GBA which allows you to upload certain E-Cards to be played on your GBA. There has been a dump for the rom a while back but there wasn't really any use for it since there was no games were dumped. Well, I've just found out that they are well availiable but only for the "133t" people. But don't worry, leave it to Neomaster to let you in on the goods that the fat cats don't want you to have. Just follow my simple tutorial and you will be on your way! ====================================================================== *Step 1* First off, you will need an emulator. My personal favourite is Visualboy Advance. Get yourself a copy and move on to Step 2. *Step 2* You will need the E-Reader Rom. This rom is really rare, since GBA download sites are being shut down all over the place and its pretty old too. But here is the direct link. http://www.extreemu.co.uk/roms/publicdomai...%5b!%5d.zip (USA Version) If you want the Jap Version, use this link. http://www.extreemu.co.uk/roms/publicdomai...eader%20(J).zip Now that you have the E-Reader rom, lets get some games shall we? *Step 3* Now that you have the rom, you need to games to play. Get your butt over to http://ereader.vze.com/ to download the games pack. Or use this link. http://ereader.kiczek.com/E-Reader_Saves_(01-26-04)(29).tar *Step 4* Here is what to do to get them to play in Visualboy. Find the E-Card game you wish to play and rename it to "chosengame.sav" Load up your "E-Reader.gba" rom file that you downloaded in step 2. Now there are some important notes you should keep in mind if you don't want the E-Reader to screw up. Make sure your GBA save settings are set to either Automatic or Flash. To change it, go to Options->Emulator->Save Type and then choose it from the list there. Also, you have to set it to Flash 128k, or the E reader will have memory problems. When you boot up your E-Reader rom, you notice that you can format the memory. Press A if you wish to do so (this is not necessary). After that, load up your desired game. Here is how to do it. Go to file->import->Battery File then select your sav file. Finally, you should enter the E-Reader Menu where you have several options. Choose the last one that says "Access Saved Data" and your on your way to playing your game. PS! Do not patch any of the files with the ELoader that comes with the archive. Use it only if you have the flash hardware! If you need any clarification or help, reply here.

Damn thats too bad man. I think you should just get another. I bet trying to repair it yourself would be too time consuming and probably cost you a bit to buy the parts. PS2's are cheaps these days, I payed 450 for mine and nowadays its only about 200 or so. (Canadian dollars of course)

Good for you, and I don't really like being called a moron. It would be your cause of death if you ever said that to me face to face. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! People like you make me laugh. Hahahahahahaha! *sigh* I won't even bother. Like Agozer said, im going to leave it. No point in arguing with a idiot, he justs takes you down to his level and beats you with experience.

Good for you, and I don't really like being called a moron. It would be your cause of death if you ever said that to me face to face.

Damn, that Mr.G is always one step ahead. If this topic has been done before, plz let some mod delete it to save me some disgrace.

Hey everyone, I just recieved news about a FPS created by a Deutch team that has a Unreal Tournament type look. The beta itself is a death match type game. But the catch is this....its only 96 kb! Yes, I am not joking. It seems that these dudes have used advanced programming techniques to do this. Here are some screens of it. You can download it at http://www.theprodukkt.com/ It seems you need a good and fast computer with a GeForce 4 graphics card to run. I haven't been able to run it because of my crap comp but I hope I can get some reviews from people who try it.

Is this topic one of the evil arts on how to get more posts?

You can't play it because you have to have the microphone that comes with the real game.

So much attention has been given to this rom...where's Pochi and Nyaa dag nabbit!

Agozer also mentioned that handhelds aren't affected by regions. I like to download the (E) or (U) version, it just depends on which version comes out first. I get kinda paranoid about getting (E) games for consoles. 1. Would be that you need a PAL compatible tv and 2. It does run with less frames in PAL. But PAL games also have their advantages, especially if your bilingual.

Hey everyone, I was hoping there would be someone here who would know about or own a CD 64. This device is an add on to the N64 where you can load roms onto it and run them on you N64 hardware. Some questions in mind would be... 1. If you load a (E) game which would naturally be in PAL, could it still work in a NTSC tv/system. 2. Do the games work perfectly or is there slowdown or problems. 3. Is it worth getting one. I hear it goes for a 100 something US. Well, thats all for now. See ya later.

Oh con trair mon frere, I think Last Hero in China or Once Upon a Time in China & America was thee best Jet Li movie. EVAh

Well I guess we do have to wait for final screens. But knowing SNK's history they don't ever put any effort in changing from the norm. For example, all the games they port to the playstation/dreamcast/ps2 always are just direct ports, no new characters, and no updated graphics. ps. I don't think 3d backgrounds are new graphics. (kof2001 ps2) On another note, the portraits of the characters seem to resemble the artwork found in kof99

What screens? You mean the box shot scan? How can you make a proper judgement on a crappy scan?! Wait to see some real pictures and then biatch about it. From what I see on that scan, they have improved the portraits, the bars, and intro screen. But then again, this picture sucks. So wait, and then compare to Guilty Gear. It doesn't take a genious to see that the sprites are low quality, crappy scan or not. And...health bars are not a big deal, its the sprites and effects that count.