General
What is KOF95 Special 2017?
The rom hack known as The King of Fighters 95 Special 2017 is a rom hack that adds new features and other quality of life improvements to KOF95 to balance out the experience and provide a different way to play KOF95. While the balance itself remains almost identically the same, the added changes make for a more beginner friendly KOF95 experience, as well as a slightly slower paced one, too. Thanks to the fact there is a combo counter and that combos and tech still work almost identically to the vanilla game, it also makes the ROM hack a good training mode option.
Here is a general list of changes made to the game:
- General bug fixes
- Health values increased 1.3x (so damage nerf in a way)
- Combo counter display
- Displays Max meter countdown
- Stun! text is displayed letting you know when it happens
- ADV jump style selectable (essentially post 96 jump/hop and super jumps/hyper hops)
- Kyo's double kicks infinite disabled (attempting this will result in an instant KD on the second rep)
- Order select is hidden for fairness
- The smog in Iori's stage is removed
Technical
What game versions are there?
- The standard for offline and online play is the original Neo Geo MVS release.
- The Playstation 1 version is notoriously bad, with massive load times, compressed audio, weaker graphics, and a lot of jank not present in the arcade version.
- Also of interest is the Special 2017 romhack (kof95sp.zip), which contains quality of life improvements such as a combo counter and hidden team order, slightly tweaked graphics, as well as an entire optional game mode with '96 style hops. Would be interesting to see a proper change list for this.
What does the tier list look like?
S+:
- Kyo
S:
- Rugal, Iori
A+:
- Mai, Heidern
A:
- Ryo, Kensou, Kim, Eiji
B:
- Terry, Robert, Benimaru, Ralf, Clark
C:
- Daimon, Andy, Yuri, Takuma
D:
- King, Athena, Saisyu, Joe, Chin
E:
- Chang, Billy, Choi
S:
- Kyo, Rugal
A:
- Iori, Heidern, Mai, Joe, Daimon, Robert, Eiji
B:
- Terry, Athena, Kensou, Ryo, Yuri
C:
- Ralf, Clark, Kim, Andy
D:
- Saisyu, King, Takuma, Benimaru, Chin
E:
- Choi, Billy, Chang
Are bosses legal/fair?
- Obviously it's up to the individual players and tournament organizers, but on paper there's not much reason to treat them any differently from the rest. Saisyu is considered low tier and Rugal, while extremely strong, is usually considered inferior to at least one normal roster character. Neither are technically broken in any particular way and are both selectable in all versions of the game.
How do I select the bosses?
(To play as them)
- Get to the character select screen and when says 'TEAM EDIT?', select YES.
- Now press and hold the START button, and do the following commands:
- - Hold UP, press LK
- - Hold RIGHT, press HP
- - Hold LEFT, press LP
- - Hold DOWN, press HK
- When you release the buttons their icons will appear. If it doesn't, press START.
- As mentioned above, this even works for the MVS arcade version.
Miscellaneous
Are there any useful community links I can use?
- GM Arcade : An other alternative to Fightcade and RedGGPO with better emulation than Fightcade and RedGGPO. This online platform is useful for players who don't live in Asia
- GM Arcade's mail : [email protected] . Useful if want GM Arcade to add video games, remove bugs, fix connections problems etc
- YzKof : The chinese version of GM Arcade. This online platform is especially useful for players who live in Asia
- RedGGPO : A newer alternative to Fightcade with better emulation than Fightcade
- Discord RedGGPO : Official RedGGPO discord for matchmaking and platform discussion
- FightCade : An online plateform for arcade gaming, where people gather to play online and chat about the game
