The King of Fighters ’98: Ultimate Match

KOF ’98 was remade under the title of The King of Fighters ’98: Ultimate Match in 2008, ten years after the original game’s release. It was released in Japan as an arcade game for the Taito Type X hardware on March 2008, with the PlayStation 2 port released the same year.

Ultimate Match includes additional characters not featured in the original version of the game, such as Eiji Kisaragi from KOF ’95, along with Kasumi Todoh and the Boss Team (composed of Geese Howard, Wolfgang Krauser, and Mr. Big) from KOF ’96, as well as the boss characters Goenitz and Orochi, essentially including all the characters featured in the KOF series prior to KOF ’98. New moves were added to the USA Sports Team to improve their playability, and EX versions of certain characters not featured in the original version were added, including King with her Art of Fighting 2 moveset, and Ryuji Yamazaki, Blue Mary and Geese Howard with their Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 moveset. The Orochi versions of Leona and Iori Yagami are also playable, and both also appear as mid-bosses in the Arcade Mode. New stages were added to the game such as China and Hong Kong to show appreciation for KOF’s high popularity in such regions; it is also the only fighting game to feature an accurate representation of Saudi Arabia in one stage, as the country was a major market for the NEO GEO line in the early 1990s. A third fighting style is also introduced in addition to Advance and Extra, dubbed “Ultimate” mode. Ultimate mode is a customizable style that allows the player to choose between features from Advance or Extra mode, such as which kind of Power Gauge to use. It also includes a ‘Neo Geo’ mode, which is a direct port of the original Neo Geo console version.