Clearly KOF '98 is a fighting game but it's one where everyone is welcome to hang out as long as they like. The leisure experience is further established by the game's full title in Japan of The King of Fighters '98: Dream Match Never Ends. This is made clear right from the cover art: all the characters are enjoying a pool party, dressed in jackets and tuxes to varying degrees of formality but none of them wearing their usual clothes. Which brings us to KOF '98, a plotless romp that exists just so players can enjoy the sheer spectacle of all these characters hanging out together. KOF 98 cover art by Shinkiro (source: SNK Entertainment's official Twitter) By the time The King of Fighters '97 was released, the heroes were engaged in battle not against a human but an ancient evil drawn from Japanese mythology. Fathers, daughters, and sworn rivals would appear and new villains (each stronger than the last) would take over the KOF tournament, all to further the illusion that all these disparate video games somehow coexist on a linear timeline with its own plot. Each year would see slight changes to the roster, bringing in new guests from other games while also introducing relatives to established characters. KOF became an annual franchise, eventually eclipsing the games which spawned it. The King of Fighters '94 not only brought together the stars of Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Psycho Soldier, and Ikari Warriors, but introduced new characters as part of a cohesive storyline about a fighting tournament masterminded by a supervillain living on his own personal aircraft carrier. From its beginning in 1994, KOF served as the ultimate confirmation that all my favorite SNK characters not only lived in a shared universe but they totally hung out together and would occasionally beat each other up for fun. I've made no secret of my passion for the Neo Geo and The King of Fighters series is a big part of that fandom. Despite two decades of technological innovation and several dramatic shifts in the video game landscape, I still consider KOF '98 the best fighting game of all time as well as my personal favorite game, period. That means that twenty years ago today I stopped having to contemplate how to respond to the loaded question "what's your favorite video game?" because here we are in 2018 and the answer hasn't changed. Twenty years ago today, The King of Fighters '98 was released for the Neo Geo console.
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