02's not much of a dream match, seriously, there may be 44 characters, but there's not that many old characters added...seriously, where the hell is Eiji? SNK was teasing me when they had him pose with Billy Kane. In fact the only dream match characters I can think of right now are Billy, Mature, Vice..and that's about it. The game itself is tight though, I just need to spend more time with it.
03 is a GREAT KOF, not as great as 96 (nothing is), but very well done nonetheless. Ash Crimson truly is the most adrogynous character ever; I'm serious when I say I thought he was a girl until I heard him speak. Shit, he was kinda hot too
Seriously though, this game is great..a bigger evolution than the addition of Strikers is introduced here as well: Tag-team based gameplay. In Arcade mode, this is the most fluid KOF game I've ever played -- you go from one match to the other as soon as one man goes down.I played the two with the Arranged backgrounds on: For the most part, I can say that the Arranged backgrounds (which are mainly 3D) in 02 sucked..as has been brought up many a time before, 2D mixed with 3D just doesn't work well in fighting games. The Arranged backgrounds in 03 were a lot better though...in one stage, you're on some kind of monorail or something, going throughout the city at a fast speed, it looks wicked. Fighting the Kusanagi clone, you go through a pretty looking background of Egypt. needless to say 03 has the best Arranged backgrounds I've seen in a KOF yet.
Right now I'm not too happy with 02, but 03 is rockin my socks off..sooner or later I'll come around to 02, but after playing KOF with a saturn controller and then playing with a Dual Shock 2, I only wish I could buy that Neo Geo PS2 controller for $20
Hey, I could always pick up that SFAC controller..Anyways, yeah, buy this collection. Do it. DEW IT.
PS -- Ora ora! translates to "C'mon c'mon!" basically..Kyo says it a lot, my favorite catchphrase of the series excluding Terry's "Get serious!" line (pronounced by the Japanese voice actor as "Git serr-y-ass!"
