E3 2009: King of Fighters XII Tournament
Posted by Jeffrey Harris on 06.02.2009
Ignition invited gamers to see who is the true King of Fighters at the club Element in Hollywood. Plus clips from the new King of Fighters live action movie.
KING OF FIGHTERS XII TOURNAMENT AT THE ELEMENT
In a pre-E3 event, Ignition Entertainment and Forty Seven Communications hosted a gaming tournament for the new King of Fighters XII game due out this summer. The PS3-beta version of the game was available for attendees and gamers to play in addition to participating in a tournament to determine the one and only true King of Fighters. The final tournament winner was awarded with an authentic imported Japanese arcade cabinet version of the King of Fighters game.
Throughout the event, MC'ed by Ingition Entertainments New Business Development Director Shane Bettenhausen, fans were also given special King of Fighters collectors' statues, posters, and everyone in attendance received a free goody bag featuring trading cards, coupons, a PS3 lanyard, and a swank Terry Bogard style Fatal Fury baseball cap.
The free for all to play display versions of the King of Fighters XII had the PS3's setup with arcade style joystick controllers, the best controller to use to for fighting games. Despite Street Fighter IV moving into the 3D, CG realm while maintaining 2D style gameplay, King of Fighters XII still keeps the long-running SNK fighting game franchise in the realm of 2D, classic style, hand-drawn/animated, pixilated type of fighter gameplay. Don't let that fool you though, this game is still cool as hell.
In Versus or Arcade mode, you get to pick three fighters to go against the opposition and then you compete in an elimination style matchup. Characters include the Fatal Fury lineup of Terry and Andy Bogard and Joe Higashi. Noticeably absent from the picture though is Mai Shiranui unfortunately. Other playable characters include the likes of Mature, Raiden, Robert Garcia, Kyo Kusanagi, and many more. Personally, Joe Higashi is the strongest and most badass character to use in the game. His Muay Thai kickboxing style combos are sick, and he's overall the strongest, quickest and most powerful character to use in the game. Players can also switch from a normal or simple control style. Simple mode basically allows novice gamers to cheat a little and pull off the special moves and big combos with less button combinations. Hey, a lot simpler than buying a controller to pre-program to do that for you.
The folks at I Am 8-Bit had some special activities set up at the club as well. Attendees could go to the triage, "ANTI-ER" tent where "nurses" could provide them with some bloody fighting makeup with realistic looking cuts, bruises, and battle wounds.
There was also a special photo display setup where fans could pose with babes or in costume to strike a pose and get some pictures developed on the spot in front of a KOF banner:
Intellivision had a clever setup in one corner of the club. Old school systems including the original NES, the Neo-Geo, the Atari, and I think even the old Commodore 64 were setup to play old school games including the original KOF. There was even a little shag carpet rug to add to the decor with the vintage TV units:
Before the final round of the tournament, Shane introduced the lovely and gorgeous Monique Ganderton, who co-stars in the new live action King of Fighters movie due out in 2010. Monique will be portraying the role of Mature from the game in the movie which also stars Sean Faris as Kyo Kusanagi (white guy as a Japanese dude? OK), Maggie Q as Mai Shiranui, and the one and only Ray Park, who will be appearing in GI JOE this year as Snake Eyes, playing Rugal. The first teaser trailer for the movie was also previewed. There wasn't really any dialogue, mostly clips of the fighting and special FX. It looks like Ki and special type of attacks will be included in the movie which was shot in Vancouver. The movie also recently showed at Cannes. With the recent pieces of excrement such as Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, its hard to get behind movies based on video games. But we'll see. The new movie is directed by Gordon Chan who has done some classic martial arts movies with the likes of Jet Li and Stephen Chow, so hopefully they know what they are doing.
Following the event I was able to speak with Ignition's Shane Bettenhausen for a quick interview:
Jeffrey "The Vile One" Harris: This was a hell of a party and a great tournament. So how did you come onto being involved with this game?
Shane Bettenhausen: This game has been in development for four years. I only came on at Ignition four months ago. We have an exclusive contract with Playmore, so the game was pretty much fully formed when I came on. I would've loved to have been there early on so I could make some suggestions, "Hey, where's Yamazaki, my favorite character?" They worked really, really hard. They have a plan, and they know what the fans want, and this is definitely a rebirth of KOF. This is not the last you are going to see. There's more where this game from.
TVO: So the game we were playing today, is that close to the final version of the game?
SB: It's a beta version of PS3, but its feature complete, the loading isn't quite finished. It's a little rough around the edges in the menus, but generally its solid, stable. We thought it was OK to have a competition level tournament.
TVO: Will there be any unlockables or hidden extras for the final version? Like Mai, perhaps?
SB: No comment, but I wouldn't hold my breath for her at launch.
TVO: What about DLC and online play for this game?
SB: Online play is a huge part of this game. It's the first time KOF has ever been online, and between PS3 and XBOX360, there are different exclusive modes for online. PS3 has clan-system. 360 has a true skill ranking board. But in terms of DLC, you know as the gameplay has committed to having some DLC, whether or not it will be new characters, new stages, it'd be really cool, but it would have to have a different room(?).
TVO: In this game you play through with a character until they are eliminated and you switch to the next character like the old-school KOF games. In the Marvel Vs. Capcom style fighting games you can switch around. Is there a mode where you can do something like that in this game?
SB: When the KOF began, it was the way it is now. You stay in until you die, and the next fighter comes in for a new round. And back in KOF, I think it was 2001 or XI, they did switch it to where you could actually jump in like MvC, and everybody hated it. They thought that's what everyone would want, and it kind of broke the game and took away what people like about the game. So its been there done that, back to the classic way. You can still play one-on-one if you just want to focus on one character.
TVO: With SFIV, was there any argument or discussion on making this game CG, or did they always want to keep it in the classic animated/pixilated gaming style?
SB: I think SNK/Playmore already tried that with KOF: Maximum Impact. They were decent but the response wasn't quite there . . . but now that SF went 3D, most other fighting games, Tekken, Soul Caliber are all 3D. The true 2D, hand-drawn games are very few. There's a few out there, and that's the legacy. So they wanted to focus on that, but they couldn't just re-use the old sprites that they'd been using for so long. So they had to go back and start from scratch, and there's tons of work. Each character, so much hand-drawn animation, they're spending 18 man-months on each character. And I saw them literally drawing each frame of animation. You think about how fluid the animation is for each character, it's a crazy amount of work. It's very old-fashioned . . . And this is the 15 year anniversary [of KOF], a lot of young players, they weren't around for that. So, they don't really understand what's so great about a 2D game. There's a certain feel, you know all the possibilities that are going to happen, and you're just working within those. It's very different than a 3D game, but you play this, you sense the purity of a 2D.
TVO: Will there be any portable versions in the future?
SB: Not announced now, but I would love to see it come to the PSP.
TVO: What about Nintendo DS?
SB: I'm afraid if they tried to do it for DS, it might be something more like their witch finding . . . SNK has a series in Japan where if you tap the screen to find out if a girl is a witch or not, its kind of like a popular, dating game thing. So I'm afraid they would maybe try to do a KOF version like that before they did the real one.
TVO: Do you think the live action movie will be better than Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li?
SB: It wouldn't be hard. From the trailer, I actually think it looks pretty good. They've got some good people in there, and there's a good director, so fingers crossed. I might get to see an early version in a few months.
TVO: Do you think it will be released theatrically?
SB:. Yeah, they actually just had it at Cannes, last week was the first time. And they actually have a lot of interest in studios, so I would expect a theatrical release.
I also spoke with stunt woman/actress, Monique Ganderton, who will be playing the role of Mature in the live action KOF movie:
TVO: When did you wrap shooting on the movie?
Monique Ganderton: We wrapped in the middle of January?
TVO: Did you have to train a lot for the movie?
MG: Hell yeah! We trained our bottoms off before the movie started.
TVO: What style of fighting does your character use?
MG: My character is just a hard-hitting -- like the hits that hurt . . a brawler, yep, big time. Her [Mature] and Vice (Bernice Liu), we have moves together. All of our fights, we fight together in unison. She's more delicate, martial art-y. I'm like hard-hitting with my combos.
TVO: So like she's the sizzle and you're the steak?
MG: Oh yeah *laughs*. I'm much taller, so I come in after.
TVO: Do you do much regular martial arts training before you started working on KOF?
MG: Yes. I've been a stunt woman for 8 years up in Canada.
TVO: Do you have any scenes with Ray Park?
MG: Yes! So many scenes with Ray Park. He's fantastic. The three of us have become obsessed with Orochi.
TVO: Did you do much research for your character? Besides playing the game?
MG: I did. I found the game in an arcade which is fantastic and actually played it, and then researched it from what I found online. Her costumes and character, obviously blonde. And for the costume we had to change them up a bit for a wider range of movement in real life.
TVO: Did you have any input on how Mature would fight, or did you generally follow the direction of a choreographer?
MG: Both. We came to the conclusion because I'm so tall that I would be a stronger hitter because I have the tonfas, my strikes would be more solid.
TVO: Do ever get to fight Ray Park in like a sparring match or play fight? He's like a really accomplished martial artist.
MG: I actually got to fight Ray Park, yes. And he is phenomenal. He's a wushu artist, and I love working with actors that have that action in their background because that's my aspiration.
TVO: Who won?
MG: He won, and then we were on the same team.
TVO: Do you like to play KOF XII?
MG: Its so much fun. Its so old school. I haven't played that many video games recently, so I to play arcade games. They remind me of growing up. Its cool to be old school. I love this game. I think it's fantastic.
TVO: Your character uses tonfas, those are like fighting sticks?
MG: Its a stick with a handle. Mine actually has two which is a Thai-tonfa, but it has two handles.
TVO: Did you ever like hit yourself with it or are you pretty good?
MG: I think in training maybe, but I was lucky to have training foam tonfas before we used a real one.
TVO: So Ray Park never came at you with a sword, and he was like, "I'm going to cut you with this sword!"
MG: No. He kicked me really hard though, right there *points to her midsections and laughs*.
TVO: He's not one to mess with, right?
MG: No. Ray Park is badass.
TVO: He must've been all big in his britches, walking around going, "I'm Darth Maul AND Snake Eyes!"
MG: Oh hell no. He's so cool. He's just like, "How's it going guys?" Dude, you're Snake Eyes!
TVO: He doesn't go around going, "I'm Darth Maul, so you better respect me!"
MG: No way! No, no, the opposite. He's a beautiful person, he's great.
TVO: I think he should be like that because is Snake Eyes and Darth Maul.
MG: You know what? The nicest people are the ones that know they can kick your ass because they don't have to worry about anything, right?
TVO: And where did you shoot the movie and for how long?
MG: Vancouver . . . we shot for about two months.
TVO: Thank you very much.
MG: Thank you.
King of Fighters XII will be released by Ignition Entertainment on July 16 on PS3 and Xbox 360. The King of Fighters movie featuring Monique Ganderton by Convergence Entertainment is tentatively set for a domestic release in 2010 and a US distributor is pending.
