King of Fighters 2003 - Character list
 

SNK Playmore has started to announce their characters for The King of Fighters 2003. As rumored, Falcoon is doing the artwork for the game. He does some nice stuff, and I'm glad he got picked up by SNK Playmore for this. The first team announced is the Garou team. Terry has finally taken to his Mark of the Wolves style of clothes. On top of that it seems that the team contains Terry, Joe, and oddly enough Griffon from Mark of the Wolves. I'm sure they will just be sprite rips, but I hope they bring the other characters up to the same quality as the Mark of the Wolves characters. You can find the artwork here on the offical japanese site, as well as updates. Just as with SNK vs Capcom and Samurai Shodown I would expect weekly updates until all the characters are revealed.

http://www.snkplaymore.jp/official/kof2003/

Wow, looking good! SNK is the best. I like this guy "Falcoon"'s work, what other stuff has he done? Any books of his art?

I dont even know if I have played a KOF game n8. Where should I start to get a feel for the series?

Some of Falcoon's older stuff can be found on his webpage. He's done a lot of fan art of SNK and Capcom characters as well as some original concepts. Nice to see someone pick him up for a decent job. Rumors started going around that he was working on KOF '03 when he posted that his site wouldn't be updated for a while due to a larger project he was working on.

http://falcoon.hp.infoseek.co.jp

I suppose you should probably start with 94. Then again, you wouldn't really think much of it unless you were a fan of Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury, as it was basically SNK's excuse to bring together characters from those two games.

I used to play Fatal Fury on SNES and it was a blast. What system is 94 on?

Neo Geo MVS, AES, and CDZ. I believe it also has Playstation and Saturn versions, but I'm not sure. I know for certain that 95-97 are avaliable on Saturn however. It's a pretty easy find, just search it out. In fact, if you ever invest in a Neo Geo AES or MVS board for an arcade cabinet it's a rather cheap cart to pick up.

How much is the arcade cabinent though?

You can build your own. Arcade cabinets are just wood some microswitches for buttons (mostly, some exceptions on fancy machines), and a monitor really. Arcade cabinets are all pretty much the same, aside from button layout and such. It's just a TV torn down a bit and put into a wooden box with buttons really. Slap in a board and wire it all up and your good to go. Of course there is a bit more work to it then that, but that's the general idea. It's rather economical to make them actually, the expensive part is buying boards and games. The stand alone Jamma board for SNK vs Capcom was like $1,300 on it's release, though it has dropped quite a bit since then. The money for arcade machines is in the games, not the cabinets. Unless it's like DDR in which case you have the pads and stuff.

Bump.

The site has been updated. Yamazaki and Billy Kane have been added on to the roster as two members of the "Outlaw Team." The third person has yet to be revealed. Billy Kane has a updated outfit while Yamazaki seems to be missing his jacket, at least in the artwork.

I would recommend Capcom Vs. SNK to get a feel for KOF style gameplay, Naka. The characters all play like Fei Long in a way do to their limited amount of moves and super attacks.

The music in that game is worth the purchase alone.