SNK announces THE KING OF FIGHTERS: The Ultimate History Book

SPINMASTER X

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https://www.bitmapbooks.com/products/the-king-of-fighters-the-ultimate-history

Pre-orders will launch on May 9th at 5pm BST. Shipping will begin on May 23rd.

Bitmap Books is incredibly proud to present THE KING OF FIGHTERS: The Ultimate History. Put simply, KOF is one of the most important fighting game series of all time, and today, in 2022, it is considered versus fighter royalty. But despite this legacy, the history of this long-running and much beloved gaming series has never been comprehensively told, leaving the story of how it came to be, and the cultural phenomenon it became, largely shrouded in mystery.
 

Takumaji

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Added meself to the announcement list.

Maybe it will be good. KoF is special.

K.O.F. is H.O.T.
 

terry.330

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I'll probably get this, Bitmap's Metal Slug and SNK books were pretty good content and printing quality wise.
 

Tarma

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Probably pick this up... not that I really care for the series post 2k.
 

kernow

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I hope it shows some Dev notes and art instead of just stuff we've already seen
 

Neo Alec

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There's already this thread:

 

Fygee

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Apparently the spiffy edition will have a slipcase cover that plays voices for characters when you touch their pictures. Touch them all at once and you have a battle royale for the ages.

Reminds me of those old Disney kid books from the early 90s where you'd touch Mickey or Goofy and they'd say a word or two.
 

terry.330

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Apparently the spiffy edition will have a slipcase cover that plays voices for characters when you touch their pictures.
More gimmicky bullshit for people with no taste.

Can I just get a goddmaned game, book, record etc. without all the extra crap? Seems like everything now has 3 different collectors editions, limited variants and tons of additional useless tacky garbage.
 
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Fygee

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Book is now available for order. Got the obnoxious one ordered yesterday so I can annoy my wife with KOF sounds all day.
 

Alphabet

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I did the same on Metal Slug just before having sex with my wife... “heavy machine gun”. :D
 

Fygee

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I would have gone with "rawket lawncher". ;)
 

Fygee

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Book came in today and it's freaking awesome. Highly recommend buying it.
 

vincewy

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Personally I'm done with just the first book Neo-Geo A Visual History. Don't get me wrong, I love this book, but anything more is just getting repetitious.

How much longer can they keeping milking their old games/franchises into books, merchandise, and compilations on current platforms? Next thing you know it, Bitmap Books will be publishing Samurai Shodown The Ultimate History Book.

I'm glad I resisted the urge the buy any of the current PS4/NSW games in snap lock cases, look at how many KOFXV variations you need to get for complete collection?
 

Alphabet

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Next thing you know it, Bitmap Books will be publishing Samurai Shodown The Ultimate History Book.
It would be great and quite obvious if they do it.
If you love the book, you should get a copy of them. They are beautiful and the print quality is great with a lot of illustrations. The interviews are very interesting and elaborate. It shows the brain and all the hard work behind those game until their release.
 

Fygee

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I'd be 100% down for a Sam Sho book.

The Neo-Geo Visual History book has a lot of great content, but there's so much more stuff in the KOF book since it gets to focus on just one series.
 

SouthtownKid

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I wish I could just buy the pdf version. I just want to read the history/interview stuff. I don't need a physical copy to take up space.
 

sirlynxalot

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Any interesting previously unknown insights into kof development?
 

yori2004

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The interviews are the most interesting parts of the book. The questions are relevant and the discussions pleasant to read. There are nice anecdotes, but you always have to keep a distance regarding the veracity of certain information.

Nevertheless, we learn that after the KOF98 release, a developer had fun developing Ken and Ryu characters that he integrated into an internal version of the game.

There is an ultra-motivated developer who created a sprite of Mai with dozens of frames of animation, of her breasts and buttocks in particular. The result was a person with a lot of animation, but impossible to integrate into KOF.

There is also the free choice of KOF95 teams which would not be a last minute decision, but a choice that would come from the production period of KOF94. Which is understandable, because of the character balancing issues following this decision.

The book is very unbalanced regarding the information for each KOF. There are a lot for KOF94, then less for the following episodes. Some episodes are not covered at all.

This remains an excellent book at a low price, especially as it benefits from superb quality illustrations. It is provided with its pdf version, but the images are better appreciated on the paper version and in a better resolution.

I hope they will continue to publish books with the same level of quality. I would be interested in Samurai Spirits, but it wouldn't be my first choice, the series is already extremely well documented thanks to the Samurai Spirits Neo Geo Anthology videos and other long interviews. On the other hand, investigations on third-party SNK companies such as ADK or Saurus would interest me much more.
 

sirlynxalot

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Any pictures of prototype versions of the games, not concept art but more something like different looking character sprites or backgrounds than what made it into the final package?

Any insight on why they were considering, but then decided not to have a samurai showdown team in kof94? Did it just strain credulity too much since the rest of the cast plausibly fit into a 1990s time period?
 
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