What people are seeing in Mark of the Wolves is this highly tool driven slickness that is also seen in Rage of Dragons, Real Bout 2 and other games...more pre-rendered CG gradients, etc. Technically it’s not doing all that much other than using a lot of well drawn animation and well drawn animation isn’t something you need anything technical to do, you don’t even need the high frame count. With half its animation gone this would still look better than most 2D fighting games. Most of what’s great about this game isn’t in the code anywhere, it’s in Photoshop, good taste and raw human talent.
As nice as these late period things are though there are sacrifices. By the time you get to KOF2003 (which is very impressive) we had already sacrificed scaling backgrounds, objects, destructible barriers, mini games, the ability to KO someone’s ass right into a subway car and watch them ride away in the distance pissed as hell, etc. The characters don’t change as the match goes on (ie: loosing an item or getting beat up like in Fighters History or Art of Fighting.). The entirety of KOF 2003 is designed around the CPU limit of one of the boss stages and specifically because of the music. I can’t remember the details but I remember reading this from a dev when the game was new. They didn’t want a Fernandeath situation...