Derek Lairmore December 29th, 2024 - 10:19 PM
One last fighting game Christmas present before the year is over? Well it looks like SNK is looking to oblige! After the release of Vice and Mature for King of Fighters XV earlier this month, as well as the World Tour Teaser for Mai Shiranui in Street Fighter 6, not to mention the highly anticipated release of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves next year, there appears to be one more surprise in the tank before 2025 with the release of King of Fighter XIII: Global Match on Steam coming February 20th.
[KOF XIII GM]
THE KING OF FIGHTERS XIII GLOBAL MATCHis set to bring 2D fighting action to Steam on February 20, 2025!
Wishlist now!> KOF XIII GM Steam Store Pagehttps://t.co/sYtUJ3iIZY#KOF13 #KOFXIII #KOFXIIIGM pic.twitter.com/RzdMp8SE7v
— SNK GLOBAL (@SNKPofficial) December 19, 2024
King of Fighters XIII is often cited as the best looking sprite fighting game ever made, even surpassing some arcade classics like Street Fighter 3rd Strike, with every character infamously taking a painstaking 16-17 months to fully animate. That’s not to take away from the gameplay, which has provided probably some of the most classic EVO moments from any SNK franchise with some absolutely absurd touch of death combos (as well as dropped touch of death combos where the opponent is able to come back from a pixel of health and touch of death the opponent right back). During the era of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 the fighting game crowds absolutely loved that sort of stuff.
Of course, this rerelease has one very important feature that has been added to practically every fighting game since KoFXIII’s release: rollback. The rollback netcode actually makes fighting games consistently playable, almost as good as if you were sitting right next to your opponent, and SNK were generous enough to give a massive discount to Steam accounts that already have the previous version of King of Fighters XIII.
Those who already own the STEAM version can buy the GM version for $6.99/€6.89https://t.co/23jTEh15dihttps://t.co/bequQBzBYg https://t.co/8v6VxppRst pic.twitter.com/6z2c4WxV8X
— Nura_yagami (@NuraYagami) December 19, 2024
Of course, while these games are really beloved, releases like these also continue the media train to keep everyone talking about SNK until the release of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves next year. But that still doesn’t change the fact that one of the most gorgeously animated and execution heavy fighting games ever made is now available to be readily played on rollback netcode next year.
