For months gamers have been waiting for Soul Edge, 1997's hottest PlayStation import title, to make its way stateside. Even though the intro's psuedo-nudity has been toned down and the name has been changed to Soul Blade for the American audience, the game still remains a 32-bit fighting masterpiece. Like fighting titles before it, this game follows a group of fighters in their battles around the world. The twist: the combatants all wield bladed weapons - a welcome change from the hand-to-hand combat found in most other fighting games.

The storyline of Soul Blade is essentially an excuse for various showdowns over myriad backgrounds. Set in the 16th century, the title features warriors from various clans who are on a quest for the "Soul Edge," a magical sword some believe holds ultimate combat power. The warriors include those looking to use it for good…and evil. The characters include Taki, a female hunter you wouldn't want to tangle with; Cervantes, a wicked looking pirate (you gotta love a fighting game with a pirate); Sophita, an emotional goddess (Namco's description - but how does one become an emotional goddess?); Voldo, hell guadian (we'll just leave it at that); Rock (the token slow-moving, "no one uses him" character); and others. The game also features hidden fighters, multiple endings and numerous costumes for each character, and other hidden surprises that flesh out the game.

Soul Blade is visually astonishing from the moment you turn it on. The cinematic introduction and non-gameplay graphics are THE BEST yet seen on the PlayStation - nothing else even comes close. However, the rest of the game's graphics don't reach that lofty mark: The backgrounds have an amazing look, but the fighters look only as good in action as their Tekken 2 counterparts. The game plays smoothly, but the animation suffers, thanks to the complexity of the backgrounds - that is to say, the game's frame rate slows down considerably. The sound quality, on the other hand, is nearly perfect. I don't usually care about game's soundtrack, but this is possibly the best I've heard - the three impressive orchestral soundtracks truly compliment the rich visuals.

Soul Blade offers a number of options: All the standard fighting game features are present (vs., arcade, team play, and so on), in addition to the very cool Edge Master mode that allows you to play any of the ten standard characters in a sword-quest throughout the world. Over the course of your journey you pick up new weapons (eight in all) and watch the story progress. These storylines, while a bit hokey, are detailed and develop the characters to a near Street Fighter-like level (i.e. you actually learn a bit about why they're fighting). Namco has also included its now signature Practice mode, which is being copied by just about every fighting game. Namco's, however, is the best: You determine how your drone attacks you (choices ranging from a full-on attack to the drone passively standing there and letting you hit him). As you attempt your moves, the depressed buttons display onscreen, making it easier to learn the moves and combos. When you turn on the command menu, almost all of the special moves and combinations are spelled out for you (not like the days of the original Street Fighter 2 - where you had to find your own by accident).

In one-player and two-player mode, Soul Blade presents quite a challenge with its mix of horizontal and vertical attack, block, and sidestep controls. It also provides a very entertaining feature - if both fighters swing at each other, their swords may clash and fly back. The combination moves range from the simplicity of Virtua Fighter's punch-kick combo to the complexity of Killer Instinct's multi-hit attacks. The fighting overall is quite solid and will engross you.

Soul Blade is a great fighting game with its share of flaws. If fast-paced weapon-to-weapon combat sounds like welcome addition to the ass-whooping arena, Soul Blade is just the game for you.

Onimusha Blade Warriors is an unlikely offshoot of what has traditionally been an action adventure series with, above all, very sharp production values. Blade Warriors takes characters from the Onimusha universe and drops them into a basic four-player fighting game in the same vein as Nintendo's successful Super Smash Bros. series. But the simplistic fighting found in Blade Warriors, combined with some bland audiovisual presentation, adds up to a competent but uneventful game.

Like any fighting game, Blade Warriors gives you a number of different characters to choose from. Initially, you'll be able to choose from 12 fighters, including the series' two main characters, Samanosuke and Jubei. You'll also get secondary characters, like Kaede and Kotaro, as well as some demons like the zombie warrior and Three Eyes. Along the way, you'll unlock additional characters. Many of these are charged-up versions of the game's standard cast, but you'll also get the evil boss man Nobunaga, as well as various incarnations of one of Capcom's famous mascots. Each character fights differently from the others, but they all have the same basic moves, like charged-up slashes, upward strokes, and so on, so it's pretty easy to move from one character to the next.

The fighting system in Blade Warriors is pretty basic. You've got an attack button and a kick button, both of which can be modified by holding R1. In the case of the kick button, hitting it at the same time as R1 will let you use a fire, wind, or thunder orb for a special attack. Like in Smash Bros., you'll come across items and weapons as you play. Most of these are pretty standard, such as a long sword or some other appropriate samurai weapon. But you'll also encounter wackier stuff, like a large fan, a baseball bat, or a machine gun. The game has a combo system of sorts, which basically allows you to string together a few different attacks. Since an opponent's guard can be broken with a handful of fast attacks, performing combos like these is useful even on a blocking opponent. Also, kicks are unblockable, which makes them more useful than they would be otherwise. Aside from attacks, there are positional moves to be made, including dashing, changing planes, and slipping behind an enemy.

Plane changes are a big part of player movement in Blade Warriors. While you can normally jump (and double-jump) by hitting the X button, double-tapping up or down will cause you to hop up or down to another spot on the playfield. This manifests itself as moving from the rooftops down to the ground and vice versa, though there are a few spots where it looks as though your character is merely hopping four feet to his or her side, similar to SNK's Fatal Fury. Changing planes has a tactical advantage, since you can usually get in a slash on a player if he follows you to another plane. The game's many different backgrounds offer a lot of different designs for this sort of positioning, so you'll have to learn the stages individually to figure out where, exactly, you can stand.

A big part of the Onimusha games is the ability to absorb souls. Souls essentially acted as power-ups and other help in the previous games, and that's pretty much what they do here, as well. The circle button is devoted to absorbing souls and other floating gems that have an impact on your speed, power, energy, and more. There are also victory souls. In some matches, you'll have to claim a certain number of these to win.

Onimusha Blade Warriors has a story mode, but it's almost as if Capcom wanted you to forget it was there, because the game's menu defaults to the versus mode. But in story mode you'll take any of the game's characters through a multifight process, and you'll occasionally see some very meaningless cutscenes between fights. The main object here is to collect as many souls as possible, since you can use those souls as points to upgrade the game's fighters in three different categories. Aside from the story mode, you can also play a brief tutorial that gives you some time to mess around with your chosen characterss moves.

Versus mode is the bulk of what you'll be doing in Blade Warriors. The game is playable by up to four players via a PS2 multitap, but you can also play alone and fill up the empty slots with computer-controlled opponents. There are a wide variety of options here, so if you don't like certain souls or certain weapons, you can disable them before going into combat. There are two main options in the versus mode--one where you simply eliminate your opponents and one where you must collect a specific number of victory souls to win. The game allows you to play either game in a team mode, as well.

Graphically, Onimusha Blade Warriors is a letdown. The characters still look OK, but they just don't look as good as they do in the other Onimusha games. The animation is smooth, but it tends to lack variety. The game's backgrounds are varied and neatly designed, but even they seem to fall a little flat. And the cutscenes--something the Onimusha series has been famous for--are bland. Even the game's intro is merely a collection of fighting sequences captured using the game's engine. Everything, from the fighting to the menus, has a rough draft sort of feel to it.

On the audio side of things, the game does have a pretty good soundtrack. The music is appropriate and fits with the action. The sounds of actual fighting, too, fit right in. The game's voice work, however, really sticks out. Each character has only a few basic phrases, so you'll hear them repeated quite often at the start and finish of a fight. In story mode, you'll get some cutscenes with a little more voice in them, but this only serves to put a brighter light on how flat most of the voices really are.

When characters get lifted out of their main genre and dropped into another game, the transition can be a little awkward--especially when you consider that the most overused transition puts action game characters into go-karts. While it's nice to see that Capcom's idea for an Onimusha offshoot didn't get turned into some generic wacky racing game, the fighting game that the company has developed isn't really too much better. Extreme Onimusha fans will probably find something to like here, and anyone after a Smash Bros.-like fighter on the PlayStation 2 will have some fun, but in the end, there simply isn't enough to Blade Warriors to keep anyone interested beyond the time span of your average rental period.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe Review

In a way, it feels as if many fighting game characters have stepped right out of the pages of a comic book. They wear bizarre costumes, spend a lot of time punching and kicking other people, and possess inexplicable powers. Pitting fighting game characters against comic book heroes and villains has been done before, and in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, the meshing of Raiden's crew and Superman's posse makes for some pretty exciting action--especially online. But even as the game moves the series back toward the fundamental strengths of Mortal Kombat in some ways, it departs from the series' essence in others. As a result, longtime fans may be left with mixed feelings, and newcomers drawn to the series for the first time by the inclusion of DC characters may find it hard to get a handle on things.

The story that explains just how these two distinct sets of outlandishly attired, superpowered beings clash is such pure, unabashed comic book silliness that you'll have a hard time not being won over. Simultaneous mishaps involving Darkseid in the DC universe and Shao Kahn in the MK universe result in these two evil beings merging into the exponentially evil Dark Kahn. Dark Kahn's power causes the two universes to begin fusing, and the heroes and villains on each side of the universal divide mistakenly blame the weirdos from the other side for invading their land. This merging of universes also causes severe imbalances in the powers of some characters, and serves as a convenient excuse for how the Joker can go toe-to-toe with Superman and have a fighting chance. As you play through the game's two story mode offerings, the flimsy excuses that cause the unlikely matchups almost become something of a running joke, and help make these modes fun for the few hours that they last.

Unless you've somehow managed to avoid playing a fighting game for your entire life, you'll immediately grasp the basic concept of MK vs. DC: punch, kick, throw, and otherwise bludgeon your opponent into submission before they do the same to you. While some Mortal Kombat games have offered two or three fighting styles per character, MK vs. DC does away with that, creating a back-to-basics feel that switches the emphasis back to the special moves that really differentiate the characters. And while the action takes place in 3D and you can move left and right in the environment as well as back and forth, sidestepping is slow and only occasionally useful. The majority of the action takes place on a 2D plane, which also contributes to the game feeling very much like a solid return to the roots of the Mortal Kombat series. The action is fast-paced, controls tightly, and is just a lot of fun.

With a total of 22 playable characters, the roster may be a bit short compared to what fans of the series have come to expect, but it makes up for that by making each character play very differently from the others. The 11 Mortal Kombat warriors on hand are all top-shelf, and while one or two of the DC characters may seem like odd choices the majority of them mesh surprisingly well with the MK crowd. While the powers of some DC characters have been toned down a bit as a result of that darn universe-merging fluctuation of energies, the characters themselves have been created here with a great deal of loyalty to the source material. Their personalities are intact, and the arsenals of special attacks at their disposal are impressive.

While the core gameplay is largely a return to the feel of the early Mortal Kombat games, there are some elements here that are pretty minor when taken individually, but add up to make MK vs. DC distinctly different from its predecessors. There are a few minigames that pop up when certain circumstances occur, and they all blend in to the action seamlessly. For example, if you're close to your opponent, you can attempt to grab him or her and initiate Klose Kombat. If you're successful, the camera will pull in, and for a short time, you can perform a variety of painful-looking moves by pressing one of the four face buttons. There's a great risk-versus-reward dynamic at play: your button presses are displayed onscreen, and if your opponents match them, they'll counter your attack with powerful blows of their own and escape from Klose Kombat in the process. It's a cool system that gives the attacker a decent advantage but still offers the defender a pretty good chance of turning the tables.

A very similar minigame is initiated any time one player knocks another to a lower level of the arena. As in Klose Kombat, the attacker can pummel the defender by pushing face buttons, and the defender can turn the tables by matching the attacker's inputs. In Free Fall Kombat, the attacker is able, after a damage meter has been filled to a certain point with standard attacks, to execute a special move that sends the opponent flying into the ground below in a particularly painful, damaging way. Like Klose Kombat, there's a good risk-versus-reward principle at work here, and the fact that these fisticuffs are taking place while the characters dramatically plummet through the air gives the action a larger-than-life, comic book feel.

Last and least among the minigames is Test Your Might, which occurs in certain areas when one combatant lands a powerful attack on the other and sends the opponent flying back against a wall. The initiator then charges at the defender and propels the latter through the walls of the office building or dungeon. Both parties then pound on the buttons as furiously as they can. If the attacker out-pounds the defender, more damage will be done, while the defender pounds buttons in the hopes of reducing the amount of damage he or she suffers. The simplicity of this minigame makes it less compelling than the other two, and only three of the game's 14 arenas have the horizontal arrangement for it, so it occurs far less frequently.

One final, important addition to the action here is the rage meter, which fills up as you take damage or are blocked by your opponent. Your build-up of rage can be used for one of two things. If the meter is halfway full or more, you can spend one full segment of it on a combo breaker, immediately putting a stop to the flurry of attacks your opponent is unleashing. If both sections are full, you can opt to spend the whole thing to enter rage mode, which allows you to pummel your opponent uninterrupted by his or her attacks and fight your way through his or her blocks, though you'll still take damage from any blows he or she lands. Either of these can turn the tables in a fight if used well, and since using rage for one purpose sacrifices your ability to use it for the other, this seemingly simple feature calls for some significant and often split-second decision-making.

It's unclear what's so "extreme" about The King of Fighters Extreme for the N-Gage, which is a translation of the excellent King of Fighters EX2: Howling Blood for the Game Boy Advance, originally released in late 2003. In turn, it's hard to imagine any of this game's prospective players not being familiar with the popular, long-running NeoGeo 2D fighting game series that inspired this portable version. KOF fans will find in King of Fighters Extreme a competent port of the familiar, tried-and-true gameplay they love, and this version touts a wireless two-player mode for good measure. Given that, and considering the controls are surprisingly responsive and the graphics look sharp on the N-Gage's small screen, The King of Fighters Extreme has all the makings of a great portable fighting game. Unfortunately, a consistently sluggish frame rate seriously hurts the experience.

The King of Fighters Extreme is set up just like its numerous predecessors. There's a story mode, in which a few brief cutscenes are used to justify round after round of martial arts combat, culminating in a battle against an overpowered boss; there's a survivor mode, where you fight one opponent after another until you finally lose; there's a practice mode; and there's the wireless two-player mode. As has been the case in most King of Fighters games, the twist to the gameplay here is that you pick three different fighters (from a roster of about 20) instead of just one. You then battle other teams of three, taking on one fighter after another until one of the sides is wiped out. The King of Fighters Extreme features the "striker" system found in the more recent King of Fighters games, so even though this is essentially a one-on-one fighting game, it's possible to summon the next character you have in line, which will jump onto the screen and perform a quick assist attack. Strikers can get you out of a pinch or set up some massive combos, as the case may be, and each fighter has a slightly different move when used as a striker.

Most of the cast consists of familiar faces: old favorites like Terry Bogard, Iori Yagami, Athena Asamiya, and Kim Kaphwan are all here, along with several newer characters that aren't as interesting or memorable. Each fighter has a large variety of different attacks, including multiple special moves and desperation moves, and since this is a King of Fighters game, the fighters are highly mobile, too. They can dash, perform forward and backward rolls, escape from the opponent's throw attempts, and more. The King of Fighters Extreme does a fine job of translating the series' sophisticated gameplay down to Nokia's diminutive platform, and the controls work quite well on the N-Gage QD, which we used for testing. Even some of the more complex controller motions, like for desperation moves like Terry's Power Geyser, register just fine.

King of Fighters games use a four-button control scheme, allowing players to execute weak or strong punches and kicks on command, and this is fully intact on the N-Gage. However, some moves traditionally require simultaneous button presses, and these, thankfully, are mapped to their own keys on the N-Gage. So for instance, it's possible to execute a roll maneuver at the touch of a button, instead of pressing the weak punch and kick buttons at the same time. This helps ensure that the game is fully playable on the portable device. Since there are so many face buttons to work with on the N-Gage, the controls are arguably better here than on the Game Boy Advance, with its two face buttons and two shoulder buttons.

The King of Fighters series has been around for more than 10 years, thanks to its endearing characters and depth of play, and these elements also translate fairly well to the N-Gage. Though the characters have been shrunken to fit the small screen, you can still make out their facial expressions, and most of the animation from the NeoGeo games has not been changed in the process of bringing it over. From a gameplay standpoint, it's possible to pull off some pretty impressive combos, thanks to the game's complex fighting system, and the character roster features a good range of different types of fighters.

But then there's the frame rate problem. The game runs at about 15 frames per second, resulting in a decidedly choppy, fairly sluggish feel to the action. The frame rate is at least consistent (even when playing over a Bluetooth connection), but fans accustomed to the smooth performance found in the NeoGeo versions of these games are going to be disappointed by the compromise. It's not something that ruins the game, but any fan of 2D fighting games would be quick to acknowledge that smooth gameplay is very important. So this is kind of a case of having all the necessary ingredients, except for the secret sauce.

Apart from the frame rate, The King of Fighters Extreme looks quite nice. You'll instantly recognize all your favorite fighters and their signature moves, and the background graphics are bright and colorful. The audio isn't quite as good, but it features authentic and fairly clear speech samples from all the fighters, along with music that loops harmlessly in the background. There are a few glitches with the graphics and sound, such as how the sound will spontaneously cut out at times, or how Iori's telltale purple flame effects are actually orange here (just like his rival, Kyo's), but these flaws certainly aren't a big deal.

The King of Fighters Extreme is a good game that noticeably could have been better. If you've got an N-Gage and enjoy the King of Fighters series, or if you've ever liked 2D fighting games in the past and you want to have such a game in your pocket, then The King of Fighters Extreme is worthwhile.

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior Review

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is the game that started it all, the fighting game that begat 2D fighting games as we know them and the launching pad for one of the greatest franchises in gaming history. Now it's available for the Wii's Virtual Console--the 1992 Super Nintendo Entertainment System port of it, that is, not the arcade original. Still, as arcade ports went in those days, the SNES port of SF II was excellent all around. The visuals were scaled back a bit, and the audio wasn't quite the same as in the arcade version, but the fantastic fighting translated remarkably well to the old SNES controller, and it still holds up well today as a downloadable Wii game.

World Warrior marked the debut of the core eight fighters that are synonymous nowadays with the words "Street Fighter." You pick your chosen fighter and take on the remaining brawlers in a series of fights until you've bested them all, and then you move on to the four frightening boss fighters. If you don't know how Street Fighter II plays, then you don't know anything about 2D fighters, since the majority of other 2D fighters have borrowed at least something from this game. For all intents and purposes, this is an exact port of the SNES version. For the reasons mentioned previously, it's not as great a game as the arcade original, but the controls are surprisingly tight, and the gameplay still pops, even all these years later. You will need a classic controller to play the game, and the good news is that the controls on the D pad feel great. You could also use a GameCube controller to play the game, but that's not ideal. The button layout on the GameCube controller isn't conducive to an enjoyable experience with this game's control scheme, and the teensy D pad makes it difficult to pull off certain moves.

The one drawback about World Warrior's release on the Virtual Console is that it's actually the least enjoyable version of Street Fighter II ever released on the SNES. Capcom later released ports of Street Fighter II Turbo and Super Street Fighter II on the system, and those ports trumped the original World Warrior release soundly (more characters, better game speed, improved gameplay balance, and more). A cynic could surmise that Capcom put World Warrior out first on the Virtual Console so that it can continue to milk Street Fighter fans with later releases of the other, improved versions. Still, it's not certain what the future holds for Street Fighter games on the Virtual Console, and strictly judged on its own merits, World Warrior is still a true classic of the fighting game genre and is one of the best multiplayer games you'll find on the Virtual Console. At 800 Wii points ($8), it's not a bad deal in the slightest. But with all that said, here's to hoping that Turbo and Super find their way to the Virtual Console sometime in the near future.

Cyberbots (Import) Review

Cyberbots, a game taken off Capcom's US arcade and console release schedules after a depressing stateside test run, recently surfaced in Japan on the Saturn. Although it's not Capcom's best work, it's a near perfect translation of the Japanese arcade version, sure to satisfy die-hard genre fans.

Cyberbots occasionally feels way too much like other Capcom titles. This time, you fight as a robot instead of a human warrior, mutant, or monster. In a new twist, however, the character selection process now has two-steps - first you select a pilot, then a robot. Each pilot has his own storyline, which plays out over the course of the game. The initial twelve robots are varied, ranging from your basic mech to a many-legged crawling robot. As you might imagine, there are also a few hidden robots, including the boss bot Warlock, and Z-Gouki (a robotic version of Akuma from the Street Fighter series). In another deviation from 2-D fighting standard, Capcom has scaled down the six-button configuration to an easier-to-follow four. Of these four, two are for attacking, one allows your bot to dash about and hover in midair, and the fourth fires a projectile weapon. Purists need not worry, though - dragon punches, fireballs, and hurricane-kick style motions remain the basis for special moves, so you won't need to alter your strategy much.

Visually, Cyberbots is a masterpiece - if Capcom has perfected anything through its many endeavors, it's the sharp look of their games. Cyberbots takes full advantage of the Saturn's superior sprite-handling skills, delivers a sharp display, and has great animation. It also sports interactive backgrounds where buildings and other structures can be pummeled as each fight progresses. By comparison though, the soundtrack is merely good - not spectacular.

If you loved Darkstalkers, Marvel Super Heroes, and the rest of Capcom's fighting games, Cyberbots is a must-have for your library. Although it's not a big-name fighter, it's a welcome variation sure to please any die-hard fan picking it up on import.

While the thought of having your favorite fighting game characters with you at all times is definitely appealing, there isn't a clear-cut way to translate the sophisticated controls of such games to a mobile device. That didn't stop The King of Fighters M2 from trying. This mobile rendition of SNK's popular and long-running fighting game series features a few recognizable characters from the series and attempts to simplify the gameplay to make it easier to manage on a portable phone. But the result is a head-shaking shame, since The King of Fighters M2 is pitifully easy and packs none of the depth or action the series is known for. It barely even deserves credit for trying something different.

The King of Fighters series has featured many dozens of great characters over the years, including many fighters from SNK's other game series. A large cast of playable characters would have been a great place for this game to start from, but instead, KOF M2 merely includes four fighters: Terry Bogard in his signature denim and red trucker hat; the shapely ninja mistress Mai Shiranui; tae kwon do prodigy Kim Kaphwan; and Leona the soldier. Ironically, three out of four of these characters originally hail from SNK's Fatal Fury series, which is meaningful only because so many home-grown King of Fighters favorites (like Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami) are missing from this roster. Regardless, if these four were reasonably fleshed-out characters, the game could have been decent, but the real problems lie with the gameplay itself.

This is strictly a one-player game. Your fighter starts off every round on the left side of the screen. You can then walk or jump forward or backwards, but you might as well walk or jump forward, closer to your opponent. Then when you're close enough, you just jam on the 6 key to attack. You'll automatically alternate between punches and kicks, and if you're dexterous enough to press the button a few times per second, basically you're going to beat your opponent every time. That's all the fighting in this game boils down to.

For what it's worth, you do have a few more options as you fight. Most notably, by striking the opponent five times in succession, you'll initiate what's called a "stylish move." This abruptly pauses the action and puts you into a character-specific timing-based minigame of some sort. For instance, as Terry you'll need to rhythmically press the attack button as little dots move across the screen. As Kim, you'll need to dial in a string of numbers as they're highlighted onscreen. If you succeed in the allotted period of time, you'll pull off a special attack that'll take off a good chunk of the opponent's health. If you fail, it doesn't really matter because you can just keep on whaling away at the attack button and still win the round. There's still an incentive to nail down the timing of the stylish moves, if only so that you can finish each round as quickly as possible. As you play, you'll find yourself spending more time watching the stylish move sequences and the awkward between-battle dialogue play out than actually fighting against your opponents.

You can defend against incoming attacks and taunt your opponent, but you never have to. You can also use super moves and desperation moves, but you never need those either. All four of the characters play identically, apart from the slight differences in how their stylish moves are performed. The game does have a few different modes of play, at least. The main mode is story-driven, though that's putting it generously. Basically you'll fight through every combination of battles as each character, as each of them attempts to qualify for the King of Fighters tournament finals. Just when you think you're about to face off against some powerful boss opponent, the game ends and dumps you back to the title screen. You can then attempt the battle mode, where you can choose from any of the four characters to start with; and there's also survival mode, which pits you against an endless sequence of foes until your health runs out. Because it's so easy to win, you'll probably end up quitting out of survival mode before you actually lose.

Probably the best thing to be said for KOF M2 is that it rips the character graphics straight out of the NeoGeo fighting games it's based on. SSo even though Terry, Mai, Kim, and Leona appear very small onscreen (at least on our Sony Ericsson S710a handset), they look unmistakably similar to the real thing. The handful of different backdrops for the fights and some of the stylish moves and desperation moves also look halfway decent, but the game's choppy animation and really sparse audio defangs the action. The game's sound boils down to just a sharp snap for whenever somebody gets hit, and a little bass riff whenever you win a match, plus a longer version for the title screen. None of the characters' speech quips made it in, unfortunately.

King of Fighters fans excited by the prospect of having a portable version to play on the go should curb their enthusiasm, because KOF M2 is simply a bad game that's similar to its namesake only in the most superficial ways. You could maybe milk a shallow hour or 90 minutes of half-witted entertainment from this game, but you'd hate yourself for paying for it.