The King of Fighters XIII | Team Stories | Move List | Gallery | Soundtrack |
- This game is the last game in the series that was developed and published under the SNK Playmore custody.
- This game is also the last mainline King of Fighters game to use hand-drawing sprites. Starting with The King of Fighters XIV, the mainline series, as well as other SNK-developed series uses 3D graphics as the spin-off series KOF: Maximum Impact, with 2.5D playthrough.
- Unused sound files for an English dub for The King of Fighters XIII were found in the 1.0 Arcade version of the game through datamining. This dub retained the same voice cast from KOF XII, with a few new cast that voiced for a few characters who were not in the previous game, such as Mai for example. These voice clips were taken from KOF Sky Stage. However, the English voices were disabled for the 1.0 Arcade Release and were quietly removed in the 1.1 Arcade version and all home console versions.
- Starting from this game, the old characters' idle poses goes back to the poses of their source game series or to the first entries in the KOF series (n the case of original characters released by the series). This continues in future games of the series (all with 3D graphics).
- KOF XIII also hosts several unused characters. Adelheid Bernstein and Geese Howard were originally planned to be included in the roster, but were cut for unknown reasons, possibly due to the costs of the 2D-HD sprites. This can be reinforced with the fact that Adelheid two pieces of win screen artwork, and that a remix of Geese's Theme, Geese ni Katakori, was made for Geese, but was given to Billy when the music is set to Type-B.
- Additionally, several sprites featuring characters from past games were shown to appear in the final game. These characters include Oswald, Whip, Heidern, Momoko, Shingo, Mukai, Botan, Magaki, Shion, and Shroom, with Malin and Chang being confirmed to have been planned at one point in development. Igniz and potentially Orochi were also planned to appear, but to an unknown extent. These character sprites were used for the official KOF XIII Trading Cards.
- This game is the only without intros between the characters. However, the taunts (provocations) are present.
- This game is a polar opposite of The King of Fighters '97, with the roles between Hero and Rivals are in inverted roles, whereas Ash going a solo character, while Elisabeth's Rivals Team is the hero/protagonist team instead.
- This game and The King of Fighters 2001 are the only games of the mainline series which the life bars don't increase between rounds.
- This game, along with The King of Fighters '98 (and his updated version), The King of Fighters 2003, The King of Fighters XI, The King of Fighters XII and The King of Fighters XV, are the only games of the series in which the character BGM plays after the round announce.
- This game, The King of Fighters XIV and The King of Fighters XV are the only of the series which the characters quotes when selected.
- This game, The King of Fighters XIV and The King of Fighters XV are the only games in the series with selectable character costume colors.
- However, the thirteenth entry of the series is the only which the player can custom some colors for the characters (in five spaces).
- This is the first game of the series (and of the company) to use DLC content (in this case, DLC characters).
- This is also the only game under the SNK Playmore custody with that type of content.
- This game, The King of Fighters XI, The King of Fighters XIV and The King of Fighters XV are the only of the series which the hero/protagonist and a rival/deuteragonist of a saga/story arc are on a same team.