The King of Fighters 2000 / ザ・キング・オブ・ファイターズ 2000 / Za Kingu Obu Faitāzu 2000

The King of Fighters 2000[a] (KOF 2000, or KOF '00) is a fighting video game that was produced by SNK for the Neo Geo arcade and home consoles in 2000. It is the seventh installment in The King of Fighters series for the Neo Geo and the final game in the series SNK produced before the original company's bankruptcy. The game was ported to the Dreamcast (in Japan only) and the PlayStation 2 in 2002. The game's story, a sequel to The King of Fighters '99 and the second part of the "NESTS Chronicles" story arc, focuses on a new tournament held by the commander of the Ikari Warriors, Heidern, who seeks to capture and interrogate former NESTS agents K' and Maxima into revealing crucial and critical information about the NESTS cartel. The gameplay retains the Striker system of the previous games in the series, but the assisting character can also cooperate with the playable character to generate combos.

SNK entered into bankruptcy while The King of Fighters 2000 was still in development, resulting in glitches and bugs remaining in the game because staff members—most notably producer Takashi Nishiyama—left the company before the game was complete. SNK attempted to add further depth to the NESTS cast with K''s new enemy Kula Diamond; other new characters like Vanessa and Seth were intended to attract different audiences. The PlayStation 2 version of the game was released in North America and in Europe in a two-in-one bundle with its immediate sequel, The King of Fighters 2001, as the first two games to be published by SNK Playmore USA. In Europe, the bundle was published by Ignition Entertainment.

Critical reception to the game's fighting system and characters has been mostly positive due to the improvements SNK brought to the franchise. There were mixed reactions to the company's handling of the graphics and backgrounds, which divided reviewers opinions about its status as one of the best games of the series. Two novelizations and an audio drama have also been published in Japan.

Gameplay

The gameplay in The King of Fighters 2000 is based on that of The King of Fighters '99; it expands on the "Striker Match" format introduced in its predecessor. The game has an Active Striker System, which allows the player to summon a Striker member in any situation, whether the player is attacking or being attacked by the opponent, allowing the player to use his or her strikers in combos. The player can also replenish Strike Bombs by either losing rounds or taunting the opponent.

The player now has two choices after selecting the Striker member of the team; he or she can choose to use the regular character or an alternate character officially known as Another Striker, a character used exclusively for striker attacks. These alternative Strikers are characters from previous KOF games and other SNK titles such as Fio Germi from Metal Slug 2, King Lion from Savage Reign, Kim Kaphwan's grandson Kim Sue Il from Kizuna Encounter, Gai Tendo from Buriki One, Kaede from The Last Blade, Rocky from Robo Army, Duke Edwards from Burning Fight and Kim Kaphwan's son Kim Dong-Hwan and Kim Jae-Hoon from Garou: Mark of the Wolves, as well as alternative versions of in-game characters such as K', Iori Yagami and Robert Garcia. There is another set of alternative Striker characters known as Maniac Strikers, which are selected in the arcade version by entering codes for notable characters only. The console versions includes additional Maniac Strikers by completing a certain number of matches in the "Party Mode".

Plot and characters
Main article: List of The King of Fighters characters
After an incident at the previous tournament, the commander of the Ikari Warriors Team, Heidern, is determined to investigate the objective of the NESTS cartel and stop it from achieving its ruthless ambition. Ling, a fellow commander and long-time friend of Heidern, tells him that K′ and Maxima were once NESTS operatives and that they may hold the key to locating the whereabouts of the mysterious organization. Using this information, Heidern decides to focus his efforts into using the next KOF tournament to lure both K′ and Maxima out of hiding so that they can be captured and interrogated by him for crucial and critical information about the NESTS cartel.

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Developer(s) SNK
Playmore (DC/PS2)
Dotemu (PC)
Publisher(s)
SNK
Producer(s) Y. Inui
Designer(s) Chikara Yamasaki
Tomoyuki Hosokawa
Programmer(s) Kohji Mannami
Souta Ichino
Artist(s) Toshiaki Mori
Composer(s) Hideki Asanaka
Hiroshi Yamazoe
Yasuo Yamate
Series The King of Fighters
Platform(s)
Arcade
Release
2000
Genre(s) Fighting
Mode(s)
Single-playerMultiplayer
Arcade system Neo Geo MVS

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