The King of Fighters 2006

The title on the American box is a small act of misdirection. What you are loading is KOF: Maximum Impact 2, the second entry in SNK Playmore's polygonal side-series, renamed for a Western audience that might not have known the first one existed. Calling it 2006 implies it sits in the main annual line. It does not, and anyone expecting the 2D team battles of the numbered games will spend the first ten minutes recalibrating.

What the Maximum Impact games actually offer is a 3D fighter that keeps KOF's motion inputs and rhythms while adding a proper sidestep on the shoulder buttons. Fights are three-on-three with sequential knockouts rather than tag switching mid-round, and the combo engine leans hard on launchers, air juggles and wall bounces. It looks like a KOF match and it does not quite feel like one. Movement has weight the sprites never had, and the sidestep introduces a spacing problem the 2D games solved with a single hop. Whether that trade was worth making was the argument at the time, and the series never entirely won it.

The roster is where this one justifies itself. Alba and Soiree Meira return from the first Maximum Impact alongside Luise Meyrink and the Beart sisters, but SNK also opened the door to the wider vault: Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting regulars, Kula, Ash Crimson, and Fio Germi from Metal Slug as a hidden pick, grenades and all. Costume parts unlock steadily, and swapping them around is a more compelling reward loop than it has any right to be.

Story mode carries the plot forward with Jivatma as the antagonist, delivered through cutscenes that are more enthusiastic than coherent. The English dub is the sort of thing people quote to each other. Mission and challenge modes are the real single-player meat, and they do the useful work of teaching the juggle system by forcing you to execute it.

It sold poorly enough that the series wound down not long after, which is a shame, because there is a genuinely distinct fighting game buried under the branding confusion. Approach it as an SNK experiment rather than a mainline KOF and it holds together better than its reputation suggests. The Meira brothers deserved a longer run than they got.