The King of Fighters '97 Review
Price: $3.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 5, iPad Mini Retina
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SNK Playmore and DotEmu have brought King of Fighters '97, one of the early entries in the long-running fighting game series, to iOS. This isn't like a sports game where an early version can feel outdated; this is like playing Street Fighter 2 instead of 4. And its iOS port holds up incredibly well!
On the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini Retina the game runs perfectly, and even the scaled pixel art still looks great. There are plenty of options for aspect ratio, filtering, and scanlines. Control-wise, this is seemingly the first fighting game on iOS that supports MFi gamepads, and I highly recommend giving this game a shot for the early adopters. There's also iCade support!
This game is a meat grinder. The game mercifully defaults to "1" from a difficulty level of 8. I say mercifully, because after a few matches the game gets pretty brutal no matter what. This requires a lot of practice, which will have to come in trial by fire as there's no training mode. This is pretty much a straight port of the Neo Geo original, albiet with touchscreen character selection.
It's challenging, but thanks to the solid control options King of Fighters '97 comes recommended for the gamer ready for a challenge - and especially for those looking for games they can play with controllers.