Rugal/Orochi Saga
The King of Fighters '94 | The King of Fighters '95 | The King of Fighters '96 | The King of Fighters '97 | The King of Fighters '98
NESTS Chronicles
The King of Fighters '99 | The King of Fighters 2000 | The King of Fighters 2001 | The King of Fighters 2002
Tales of Ash Saga
The King of Fighters 2003 | The King of Fighters XI | The King of Fighters XII | The King of Fighters XIII
Shun'ei Saga
The King of Fighters XIV | The King of Fighters XV
- Bizarro Episode: KOF XI stands out from the rest of the series for how unconventional its characters are in many aspects. It is a much further departure from 2003 and breaks decade-long traditional team compositions (Kim and Duck King in the Fatal Fury team?). A lot of long-standing characters like Leona and Andy are missing, and even Mai and Robert had to wait for the PS2 version to be added back. XI includes newcomers from Fu'un Series and Buriki One, two series that was never represented before and after this game as of XV. Even the final boss, Magaki, is quite unusual for his shoot 'em up pattern attacks. By The King of Fighters XIII, what's established in this game was sweeped out of the window and the series has rarely acknowledged this again.
- Even Better Sequel: KOF XI fixes nearly every issue people had with 2003 and bolsters the tag battle system, giving Marvel vs. Capcom a run for its money. There is a lot more meta variety in character selection (especially in the PS2 version's Arrange Mode, which even adds more characters from NeoGeo Battle Coliseum), the new Shift system opens the door to an art of combos, and both graphics and music are considered a massive improvement, benefiting from the new Atomiswave arcade board. While it still did not win over traditionalist players (who'll often pick '98 UM or 2002 UM as the definite KOF), KOF XI is still considered a fantastic game in its own right.
- Good Bad Bugs:
- Malin has a few bugs involving her LDM
- It can be Quick Shifted out of if, and only if, you Dream Cancel into it.
- Hitting a downed opponent with it during the last few frames where that can be done causes it to no longer be counted as part of the combo, resetting the damage scaling
.
- Robert's forward walk has 8 frames of complete invulnerabilty for some reason.
- Malin has a few bugs involving her LDM
- Polished Port: The PlayStation 2 version is highly regarded for several reasons. It features an Arrange Mode that balances characters, nerfing a few overpowered characters like Gato to a reasonable state and rescuing many that were looked down as low-tier. This can be toggled off if one wants to play it just like arcade version. Additionally, it ports more characters from NeoGeo Battle Coliseum, with the return of fan-favorties like Robert and welcomed newcomers like Hotaru Futaba. It also features even more music, including the alternative "AST" remixes of stage music and original songs (like Shingo's "Still Green"), making an already good soundtrack one of the series' best.
- Scrappy Mechanic: The arcade version requires running the game for a certain amount of time to unlock the mid-bosses as playable characters, which ranges from 720 (Adelheid) to 1440 hours (Hayate). At the time, this was an incentive to keep coming back to the game for new contents, but now it's a roadblock that prevents the player from using them when the arcade owners install the game years later. Thankfully, this is easily overcome by hacking in save data.
- Unexpected Character: Sho Hayate and Jyazu join the cast from Kizuna Encounter (of Fu'un Series), which was at best a sleeper hit. More surprising addition are Gai Tendo and Silber from Buriki One, SNK's black sheep (much like its arcade board Hyper Neo Geo 64) and not making any real impact on other games save for Gai's Striker cameo in KOF 2000.
- WTH, Costuming Department?: Elizabeth debuts in this game in what resembles equestrian clothing, except with a Cleavage Window that exposes her well-endowed breasts in their full glory. Many saw this as less sex appeal and more fashion victim hilarity. It becomes ridiculous during a scene of the Rivals Team ending, where she swears to put an end to Ash's plan, but it's hard to take this drama seriously when she wears something like this◊. It's probably the reason her later appearances remove the window completelynote , as it wouldn't fit at all in XIII's surprisingly dark story.
