The King of Fighters 2001

The King of Fighters 2001 is the eighth game in The King of Fighters series. It is the first of two KOF games published by Korean company Eolith after Aruze put SNK into bankruptcy. This game also is the final chapter of the "NESTS CHORNICLES" story arc, started in The King of Fighters '99.

King of Fighters 2001 kept the Striker assist system from the previous two KoF games, but added a new twist to it - the ability to adjust how many Strikers a team could have. While teams in 1999 and 2000 were limited to selecting one teammate as an assist, now teams could have up to 3 assist characters, or none at all.

This game was given a remade intro for the PS2 port.

Story
The official story given by Eolith is as follows:

"An entire city was wiped off the globe with the use of the satellite weapon, Zero Cannon, during King of Fighters 2000.

This incident was reported to be the result of an artificial satellite crashing to earth, and adorned the front pages to various newspapers of countries all over the world.

A legion of individuals called for the end to the KOF tournament which always invited some sort of accident, but ironically this fighting tournament with a bad history once again regained considerable popularity.

The interest in the tournament rivaled that of the '97 contest, nay, exceeded perhaps exceeded it.

But for this tournament carried out on the international stage, an astonishing fact came to light.

A team from NESTS has entered the tournament!

What are the true objectives of the event's sponsor? There's no guarantee that even with this tournament, tragedy will not repeat itself....

The third title in the King of Fighters: The NESTS Chronicles. At last, this tournament will end it all!"

The NESTS cartel decides to host the 2001 KOF tournament so that they can use it as a method to eliminate their enemies and enter their own team into the ranks.

In the tournament finals, the Hero Team boards a special blimp that is soon revealed to be a spaceship. There they meet Original Zero, whose clone decimated the cartels' secrecy with his scheme in the previous year. He congratulates them for reaching the finals and states that they're headed for NESTS's real headquarters. He decides to entertain his passengers with a match and is backed up by his pet black lion Glugan, Ron, and Krizalid. Despite the oppressive force of his group, he is defeated moments before the ship docks at NESTS's space satellite. He stays on board the exploding ship and urges the Hero team to proceed forward.

Once inside NESTS's satellite, they face the NESTS leader, Nests. He expresses wishes for his renegade agents to return to the organization and is soon afterward killed by Igniz, who claims ownership of the cartel. Igniz also reveals that K', Kula, Krizalid, K9999 and Whip are guinea pigs/creations made for his own personal entertainment. Kula, who was separated from the rest of her team and present at the time, also heard her origin as an artificial life form. Declaring himself a god, he assaults the team as his first act of "divine retribution" and defeats them. As soon as he's about to kill K', other fighters came to intervene and help in the fight including all team leaders, Kyo and Iori. When he's defeated, he proclaims that he is fallen god and names himself a "demon" instead. He plunges the satellite through earth's atmosphere in an attempt to demolish his competition.

Thankfully, the satellite crashes into the ocean and the fighters aboard were somehow saved from the explosion, presumably thanks to Ron. K' saves Kula from drowning; in gratitude, she and her guardian, Diana, ally themselves with K' and company. K9999 and Angel are presumably still alive though their exact whereabouts are unknown. Foxy is also stabbed by them though her apparent on screen death is later revealed to be false.

TACTICAL ORDER SELECT SYSTEM
In this game, the Striker System has been given another huge overhaul. After assembling your team of four, you can segregate your team which will be the Fighter characters and which will be the Strikers characters for every match. The number of assigned Strikers has a great impact on your Fighter characters' battle strategies, from offense and defense capabilities and the amount of Power Gauge stocks that can be stored at one time. Instead of Strike Bombs, Power Gauge stocks are used to summon Strikers.

Your team can consist of 4 Fighters and no Strikers, 3 Fighters and 1 Striker, 2 Fighters and 2 Strikers, or 1 Fighter and 3 Strikers. The number of Fighters on your team is inversely proportional to the maximum amount of stocks you can have at hand. No Strikers can only have 1 stock, while 3 Strikers can store as much as 4 stocks. Furthermore, a 1-Fighter team has higher attack/defense power and recovers more life between matches than a 4-Fighter team. Don't worry, you can reset the order of your team between matches. It's all in strategy!

A Striker can be called by pressing both the BC buttons at the same time at the cost of a stock. If you have assigned more than 1 Striker, you can call on the others using the same buttons and a joystick movement relative to the Striker's order of assignment (see above figure for details). You can also cancel special and Slayer Moves into Striker summons, but not DOA Drubbings and throws. Furthermore, you can even call your Strikers in quick succession as long as you hit your opponent when a Striker is still on-screen and watch the mayhem unfold!

WIRE WHIP SYSTEM
The newest fighting strategy in The King of Fighters 2001 is the Wire Whip System. Certain characters have Slayer Moves that inflict either of 2 Wire Whip effects: the Critical Wire and the Counter Wire. Upon landing a hit at certain circumstances, such attacks have the main feature of sending the victim flying against the side of the screen and boomerang towards the mercy of his attacker, enabling him to finish the catastrophic combo with another Slayer Move or DOA Drubbing.

Slayer Moves that are labeled in italics bear the Critical Wire property. On successful contact, these moves "naturally" rebound your opponent against the wall. Critical Wires also guard crush an opponent who manages to block them, on the specific hit which has the Critical Wire property. Slayer Moves with a star beside it bear the Counter Wire property. As the name implies, these moves will rebound your opponent against the wall only if the specified attack lands on a counter hit.

Critical Reception
In Japan, Game Machine listed The King of Fighters 2001 on their December 15, 2001 issue as being the second most-successful arcade game of the year. According to Famitsu, the AES version sold over 6,126 copies in its first week on the market.

The PS2 port of the game sold 39,022 units in Japan. GameSpot gave the NeoGeo port of the game an 8.7 out of 10, praising the balance with the cast and the Striker system but criticized the high difficulty of the boss Igniz.

Characters
The new characters added to the roster (all originals) are:
 * May Lee Jinju, the new member of Korea Justice Team, is Kim Kaphwan's student and a huge fan of him. She replaces Jhun Hoon after he has an accident, that left him with a broken arm;


 * Foxy, a loyal agent of NESTS who was ordered with her colleague, Diana, to supervise Kula Diamond, the Anti-K' project;


 * K9999, an agent of NESTS, is the "perfected" 9999th clone of Kyo Kusanagi. His main purpose was to dispatch the rogue creations that had escaped from NESTS' grasp;


 * Angel, other agent of NESTS, who is assigned to keep an eye on K9999, whose purpose is to hunt down traitorous experiments that had left the cartel;


 * Zero, the sub-boss of the game, is an agent extremely loyal to the NESTS syndicate and was disgusted to learn of his clone's attempted coup d'état. He was resting in NESTS's main headquarters during the events of the past tournament and was unaware of his clone's actions until later. He was ordered by the leader of NESTS to resume their primary plan of world conquest;


 * Igniz, the final boss of the game and the host of this KOF tournament. He wants to become a new god, deciding to test his new found power against the finalists and his own father, who died at his hands.


 * Note 1: The new formations of the teams are the following:


 * Whip leaves the Ikari Warriors Team to help her brother K' to destroy NESTS, along with Lin, who continues to hunt Ron, the traitor to his clan;


 * Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami, after two tournaments alone (Iori enters alone since the '97 tournament, and Kyo, since the beginning of the saga), re-join with their old teams. The first joins with his old friends, Benimaru Nikaido and Goro Daimon (this one back to KOF after two tournaments off), in addition to his huge fan Shingo Yabuki, reforming the Japan Team. The second, on the other hand, joins with the mercenaries Vanessa, Seth and Ramon, reforming the Yagami Team;


 * Yuri Sakazaki goes back to Art of Fighting Team, along with her brother Ryo, her friend Robert and her father Takuma, and King goes back to the leadership of Women Fighters Team, along with the ninja Mai Shiranui, the sumo student Hinako Shijou and the waitress and Li Xiangfei, who returns to the tournament after a year off, and replacing Kasumi Todoh;


 * Heidern takes Whip's place on the Ikari Warriors Team, after four tournaments behind the scenes, along with his trusty soldiers Leona Heidern, Ralf Jones and Clark Still;


 * Kula Diamond teams up with Foxy, one of her mentors, and two NESTS agents hired to watch them, K9999 and Angel, forming the NESTS Team.


 * The Fatal Fury and Psycho Soldier Teams remain with the same formations.


 * Note 2: This game is the only of the series which one of the bosses has strikers.

Official Team Roster=

Hero Team

 * K'
 * Maxima
 * Whip
 * Lin

Japan Team

 * Kyo Kusanagi
 * Benimaru Nikaido
 * Goro Daimon
 * Shingo Yabuki

Yagami Team

 * Iori Yagami
 * Vanessa
 * Seth
 * Ramon

Fatal Fury Team

 * Terry Bogard
 * Andy Bogard
 * Joe Higashi
 * Blue Mary

Art of Fighting Team

 * Ryo Sakazaki
 * Robert Garcia
 * Yuri Sakazaki
 * Takuma Sakazaki

Ikari Warriors Team

 * Leona Heidern
 * Ralf Jones
 * Clark Still
 * Heidern

Psycho Soldier Team

 * Athena Asamiya
 * Sie Kensou
 * Chin Gentsai
 * Bao

Women Fighters Team

 * King
 * Mai Shiranui
 * Hinako Shijou
 * Li Xiangfei

Korea Justice Team

 * Kim Kaphwan
 * Chang Koehan
 * Choi Bounge
 * May Lee Jinju

NESTS Team

 * Kula Diamond
 * Foxy
 * K9999
 * Angel
 * -|NPC Characters=
 * Kogoro Daimon
 * Rock Howard
 * Luan, Chat and Sai
 * Diana


 * -|Sub-Bosses=

Zero Team

 * Zero (Original)
 * Krizalid (Striker Only)
 * Ron (Striker Only)
 * Glugan (Striker Only)


 * -|Boss=
 * Igniz


 * -|Special Edit Teams=

K' and Kula Team

 * K'
 * Kula Diamond
 * Any characters

Other NESTS Team

 * Either 2 or 3 members of the NESTS Team
 * K' and/or Maxima

Stages

 * Note 1: The PS2 and Xbox versions contain, in addition to the stages from the arcade version, two alternate versions of each stage, including Zero's and Igniz's stages, called Original A and Original B. In Original B, the stages look similar to Original A, except that the weather is different or they take place at a different time of the day. The Boss stages also appear in KOF 2002 Unlimited Match, with updated graphics.


 * Note 2: In arcade mode, the stages are randomly chosen by the game. However, in the console versions' versus mode, the stages can be selected by the player. In the PS2 and Xbox versions, it is also possible to use the original stages by accessing the game's option menu.


 * Warning: The sight of some stages can cause epilepsy.

Normal Stages=


 * The Cloister of Judgment: A porch next to staircases in the palace-like interior of NESTS' spaceship. Curtains on both sides and yellow clouds in the window can be seen in the background. In Original B, the clouds are black, like a thunderstorm. Associated with Zero.
 * Note: In KOF 2002: Unlimited Match, the stage earns archer and medieval knight statues and the clouds are yellow, like a sunset.
 * The Fortress: A blue palace in space. Features a red carpet in the center of the stage surrounded by statues of women and mythological creatures and by stone steles. The Earth can be seen behind the windows in the background. In Original B, the stage lights are golden. Associated with Igniz.
 * Note: In KOF 2002: Unlimited Match, the background is different, being semi-circular and featuring a series of pillars, and in addition to the Earth, the moon can also be seen behind the windows. The fight also takes place further away from the center.