2D Dot Graphics

2D Dot Graphics were a style of sprites used in The King of Fighters series.

Creating Graphics with Soul
After the release of The King of Fighters XI, one major common criticism that SNK received was their use of sprites; or rather their overuse of sprites. For context, KOF XI released in 2005, and SNK had been using sprites since The King of Fighters '96, which released in 1996. With nearly 10 years of their Neo Geo styled sprites, and with the coming of the seventh generation of video game consoles (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii) soon arriving, SNK knew that it was time for them to leap into the HD era, and they would do that with their next title, The King of Fighters XII.

However, there was a bit of a problem that many SNK staff members noticed with the fighting game landscape at the time. Many 2D fighting games were all in 3D, and the ones that weren't did not sell very well. While SNK had made 3D fighters before, like with Buriki One and the KOF Maximum Impact series (which was on-going at the time), the staff at believed that the mainline KOF series should remain 2D sprite based, and were driven to make KOF "the greatest 2D fighter ever made" and "make a game that look and feel that no 3D game could offer".

SNK chose to start from the ground up with new, rotoscoped sprites for this game, giving it a hand-drawn similarly to the BlazBlue series (which at the time, was about to release its first game). Characters were modeled in 3D, and then recreated frame-by-frame with 2D dot sprites. As a result, nearly every character in the game has over 500 frames per character, and took around 16-17 months to make a single complete character.

Forming Cracks
While the new 2D sprites were animated beautifully and were universally praised by anyone who saw them, it slowly became a very costly and time-consuming affair for the development of the game. As mentioned before, a single character took 16-17 months to make, and KOF XII only had around 10 artist on the team (doing the math, KOF XII could only have made around 20 characters if the game's development started in late 2006). Despite the cost in both time and money (which at this point went over budget), SNK higher-ups still mandated that KOF XII must be released in Summer of 2009 to mark the franchise's 15th anniversary. A location test was scheduled in Japan for April 18–20, 2008, but was canceled possibly due to the game's tight time budget.

KOF XII was originally planned to be the finale of the Ash Saga, with The King of Fighters XIII being a Dream Match Game as was series tradition, but due to all of these restraints, KOF XII was released in an "as-is" state, with the game having no Teams, the lowest amount of characters in the series (20 at launch, with 2 more characters added for the console release), and fan favorite characters being left on the cutting room floor (Vice, Hwa Jai, Takuma Sakazaki, Mai Shiranui, King, Yuri Sakazaki, Billy Kane, K', and Oswald). Additionally, the game had no story whatsoever, and was marketed as a Dream Match title; or rather it had to be marketed as a Dream Match title due to the game being released in such a state. KOF XII sold nearly 250,000 copies; while not bad for a game (or a fighting game for that matter), due to the large cost KOF XII needed to get made, it needed much more to make that money back.

KOF XIII would also use 2D Dot Graphics, and while it did much better than KOF XII (KOF XIII sold 660,000 copies as of 2022; 300,000 from the PlayStation 3 version and 330,000 from the Xbox 360 version), it was still underperforming compared to Street Fighter 4, Tekken 6 and BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger.

The End of 2D SNK Sprites
Despite KOF XIII being praised as an improved game from KOF XII, it unfortunately did not make as much money as SNK hoped. KOF XII flopped so hard both critically and financially, and KOF XIII couldn't do much to repair the series' reputation at the time even after its release. Contrary to popular belief, this did NOT cause SNK to become bankrupted again. However, shortly after the release of KOF XIII, SNK would move the company in a different direction, with a heavy focus on the pachinko gaming landscape despite the scene being one of the main reason of the original company's original collapse. Trouble☆Witches Neo! would be the last console game SNK would make for almost 6 years; any game they did make was either collection titles of older games, mobile games and pachinko machines. In 2016, The King of Fighters XIV would be the first console game SNK would release after a long absence; however the game used 3D models. SNK have stated multiple times that they would not be making a 2D sprite based game for the foreseeable future.

Games Used

 * The King of Fighters XII
 * The King of Fighters XIII