The King of Fighters 2002 / YMMV

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KOF 2002

Awesome Music: Has its own page.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The KOF franchise is very well loved in Mexico, but words can't describe how MASSIVE of an influence 2002 has had on how KOF is seen through the country. The game been a staple of video-game arcades for at least two decades (however rare they may be nowadays), most of KOF-derived memes in Mexico are based on it, and Angel and Ramon's popularity among Latin-Americans may be easily traced to this game. What back then was the archetypical kid wasting the "tortillas" money on las "maquinitas" has now evolved into a growing competitive scene for KOF, starting with XIV.
Growing the Beard: After the formula set by '98 has gone through experimental systems during the NESTS games, KOF 2002 made many changes in the gameplay that would impact future installments the biggest. This is the first game to implement the Free Cancel system to the MAX Mode, inspired by Super Cancel mechanics in the previous NESTS games, which allowed the player to chain different moves by spending the MAX Mode directly, creating combos not possible before. This created even more aggressive metagame than before that many players found a welcome addition. While the system in 2002 was quite shaky and unbalanced, it helped revitalizing the series once more when SNK in general was struggling to keep itself relevant in 2000s.
Pandering to the Base: KOF 2002 features many Orochi Saga characters that weren't in the NESTS Chronicles arc, including the ever-popular New Faces Team, giving off this reaction. This invoked some ire from NESTS fans because some major NESTS characters like Lin are missing.
Replacement Scrappy: King does not appear in this game, with her usual role on the Women's team taken by May Lee. While May Lee has become a somewhat beloved character in her own right, this was a very controversial decision at the time and earned May Lee some resentment from King's fans.
Surprisingly Improved Sequel: After a huge disappointment and condemnation toward 2001, KOF 2002 was met with better reception. 2002 removes the increasingly controversial Striker system (whose rot peaked in 2001), sets everything back to where KOF '98 was, and integrates better received gameplay elements from the NESTS games. Thanks to its new systems like Free Cancel blending well with the MAX Mode mechanics, KOF 2002 has dedicated player base that still exists to this day. 2002 still received much criticism, like its poor music (much of the soundtrack is remixes from previous games, but they sound worse than their original) and a lot of balance issues (that took a remake to fix), but one thing was agreed for sure: this game is a step in the right direction after 2001.
Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Orochi Chris's neutral pose in 2002 is strange. He crouches his head and back slightly and his arms are also positioned in similarly awkward ways, like he was about to lunge forward but perpetually frozen in his place. His body doesn't flinch at all, which might be intended to make him look badass like in '98, but instead it looks like he has problems with his joints. This got enough complaints that Unlimited Match gave him a completely new animation that looks significantly less cheesy.
Win Back the Crowd: After the entire NESTS arc experimented with a variety of unusual mechanics, 2002 uses a gameplay system much closer to that of 98, the previous dream match title. This was a welcome change for fans who felt burned by the unusual direction the NESTS games had taken.

Unlimited Match

Base-Breaking Character: Nameless. To some fans, he is a much more distinct character than his predecessor, being a unique design and concept with a tragic storyline. To his detractors, he is simply far too removed from what they liked about K9999.
Broken Base: While many fans consider Unlimited Match to be a massive step up from the original game, this isn't a unanimous belief. Vanilla 2002 still maintains a dedicated following to this day, mostly from players who are simply too accustomed to it to bother with Unlimited Match. It also doesn't help that the vanilla game was much more accessible, appearing in many Latin American arcades and being very easy to emulate.
Low-Tier Letdown: May Lee is at both the lowest in the metagame and the least played characters in non-tournament plays. Her problem is that her Stance System is seriously gutted from the original 2002. A lot of her moves are no longer switchable to Hero Mode (including Blow Back Guard Cancel) and you also cannot perform Emergency Evasion in Hero Mode. Since Hero Mode doesn't let her block by normal means, this changes make her vulnerable to any form of offense. She does retain decent damage via Hero Mode, but she has to risk and struggle a lot to achieve something others can do with much less effort. Even when other low-tiers like Maxima and Orochi Yashiro have demands due to situational advantage or being accessible Skill Gate Characters, May Lee just fails to find her niche; she's too difficult to be played casually and there are better stance characters like Jhun, who has much higher returns.
Polished Port: The PC version of the game features not only smooth rollback netcode, but many other quality of life features such as flexible online lobbies that allow multiple matches to be played and spectated at the same time.
Remade and Improved: The original KOF 2002 might be better than 2001, but it still had many issues that showed SNK's production troubles at the time. Unlimited Match, developed by more financially stable SNK, polishes everything in 2002 to make its potentials fully realized. It brings back everyone from '99 to 2002 to make up a whopping 66 characters in the roster (the only exception is K9999, but there's his replacement, Nameless, who plays almost like him), has much better balance than the original 2002 (tier lists exist, but generally more than half of the roster is seen viable even in a professional tournament), improves on its MAX Mode and Free Cancel for better combo expression, has a great soundtrack that does wonders for SNK's name... For longtime fans, this game is the definite KOF (although some pick '98 UM or XI, depending on their preference); for newbies, this is recommended as a great installment to start in, since the Windows version is frequently on sale and has active online playerbase following the rollback netcode update in 2020.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The music. Unlike the original 2002, Unlimited Match's has few remixes from the NESTS games. "KD-0079+" is a remix of K' Team's theme from '99 and Krizalid's "Cutting Edge" also has some parts from his theme in '99, but other songs are either from the Orochi Saga or completely new made for Unlimited Match. That's not to say it's bad, as the Unlimited Match soundtrack is highly regarded (to the point it's featured in Terry DLC for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate), but some fans still hoped they did a remix of more music from '99 and 2000.

YMMV / The King of Fighters 2002

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