PS1

The King of Fighters '97

FightingArcade

Time to beat: about 6 hours

Overview

The King of Fighters '97, often shortened as KOF '97, is a 1997 fighting video game developed and published by SNK for the Neo Geo arcade and home platforms. It is the fourth game in The King of Fighters (KOF) series. The game was ported to the Neo Geo CD console and released worldwide; it was also ported to the PlayStation and Sega Saturn consoles in Japan. KOF '97 is the last game in the "Orochi Saga" storyline, which began in The King of Fighters '95. The new tournament focuses on the servants of the demon Yamata no Orochi, also known as the "Will of Gaia", who plan to revive their master by gathering energy and sacrifices from the fighters in the KOF tournament.

KOF '97 is the first game in the series to be directed by its battle system designer Toyohisa Tanabe. The original director is credited to Masanori Kuwasashi, who stopped working on the series after The King of Fighters '96. The creation of the game's characters primarily focused on creating bosses, especially Orochi, to properly tell the game's story in an appealing fashion. Among its several ports, SNK developed a version of KOF '97 subtitled Global Match that has online features.

Upon its release, game designers praised KOF '97 for the handling of its narrative, though critics were divided on whether the controls and balance were better than those of previous installments. The game sold well and was followed by The King of Fighters '98, which includes most of the Orochi arc cast, who fight in a non-canonical tournament. Yumekobo also created a visual novel with role-playing game elements titled The King of Fighters: Kyo, which retells the events of The King of Fighters '97 but primarily focuses on Kyo's life. The first handheld-based game in the series, King of Fighters R-1, was released in 1998 based on The King of Fighters '97. A spin-off light novel titled The King of Fantasy was released in 2019. The combined ports sold together over 336,000 copies in Japan.