Extra Mode

Extra Mode is one of 2 Modes in The King of Fighters '97 and The King of Fighters '98 (3 Modes in The King of Fighters '98 Ultimate Match).

Description
The fighter strikes a pose (often in a stance focusing their energies), while blue energy is surrounding them. Doing this will charge up their Special Meter Gauge. When full, a timer appears above the Special Meter Gauge, indicating how long MAX Mode will last. The player can pull off Super Special Moves during the gauge depletion period, and if their health is low during this period, MAX Super Special Moves will be used instead. When the timer is depleted, the attributes revert to normal. This makes it function like the Super Gauge in The King of Fighters '94 through The King of Fighters '96.

The length of the gauge in Extra Mode depends on how many fighters you currently have left. The less members you have on your team, the shorter the gauge will be, allowing you to reach MAX Mode quicker.

In KOF'98 UM, a manual activation for the Max Mode command is required before any Desperation Moves can be performed. In exchange of being unable to be empowered right after charging, this presents extra offensive opportunities as the Max Mode command can be mixed within combos. In addition, DMs are no longer spammable as a cooldown period is added before another DM can be performed, preventing situations of baiting a missed DM with another DM or even SDM.

In some games, the enemy taunting can deplete the energy in their Special Meter Gauge being charged, a feature first seen in Art of Fighting. There is a limit as the charging will eventually top off the meter no matter how many taunts were done by the enemy.

Trivia

 * While not overly obvious, this charging gesture appears to be inspired by the Dragon Ball series where fighters need to charge their energies before being capable of attacking with their own powers. This is most obvious in Dragon Ball Z: Super Butoden, the franchise's first-ever fighting game, released for the SNES in 1993 by Bandai Namco (then known as simply Bandai).