The King of Fighters games are about as old-school as you can get without going all the way back to the first Street Fighter. The franchise has kept its classic appeal throughout the years thanks mostly in part to its graphics. The 2D characters of SNK’s fighting games are almost instantly recognizable. These old time animated characters now move fluidly along the foreground of either 2D or 3D backgrounds on the PS2. Both look good, and while one will appeal to 2D aficionados, the 3D backgrounds give the game a more modern feel.

The music in The King of Fighters 2003 and The King of Fighters 2002 is good enough to supplement the intense fighting without overpowering the game at all. You’ll hardly ever remember acknowledging the tunes, but without them these KOF games just wouldn’t have the same feel. What will get your attention are the sharp sounds of combat that resonate as you connect throws and combos with your opponent. These effects are great and really give a powerful feel to the fights.

The King of Fighters 2003/The King of Fighters 2002 are both straightforward 2D fighting games. KOF 2002 has 44 characters to choose from, all of which are collected from the SNK games that were released between 1996 and 2001. There are also a few unlockable characters that you are granted once you defeat the Arcade and Challenge modes.

KOF 2002 lets you play with a single character or in three-man teams. For the Team mode, you pick the order you want your fighters to appear in. When one is knocked out, the next one in line jumps into the ring and continues fighting.

Apart from the standard Arcade mode is a Challenge mode that allows you to fight in either the single- or three-man style in a couple of different challenges. A Survival mode is offered where you are faced with a continuous stream of enemies and must defeat as many as possible before you are beaten. The other is your standard Time Attack where you must beat as many opponents as you can in a set amount of time.

KOF 2003 varies only slightly from its year older counterpart. Besides looking a bit better, it offers slightly fewer fighters; only 35 plus unlockables. Most of the same characters from KOF 2002 are included, so you won’t really be playing this one for the new moves. What really separates KOF 2003 is its three-player multi-shift system. Instead of waiting for one fighter to die before the other comes out, you can switch them on the fly. This works great for linking multi-character combos together and adds a whole new layer to the game.

The difficulty in The King of Fighter games is a dynamic one. Depending on your grasp of the moves and all the different characters, you may or may not have a hard time in the beginning. Either way, towards the end of the Arcade mode, the pace ramps up dramatically. Bosses are tough and they have few easily read moves. Fortunately, the developers took pity on those who hate to lose. After you are defeated, you have several options that can tip the scales in your favor. You can either reduce the difficulty of your opponent, cut their life down to a third of what it normally is, or make it so your health gauge recharges. These options are not mandatory and you can continue to fight the same way over and over again, but they open up new avenues that allow many gamers to enjoy these great fighting games.

The King of Fighters 2002 and The King of Fighters 2003 aren’t the deepest fighting games out there. Compared to the likes of Virtua Fighter and Tekken, the characters in the KOF series seem ill-equipped to deal with the competition. Don’t let the shallow amount of moves for each fighter fool you though. What KOF lacks in depth, it makes up for in breadth. The range in fighting styles is immense. Kickboxing, wrestling, martial arts, weapons, and various other types of weird means are employed by the multitude of characters to kick the crap out of each other. Instead of learning a single person’s style, you learn a certain type of style that many different characters use, although each use is slightly different than the other.

The execution of moves for each character are generally similar, so though there are lots of people, there are few actions you must take to perform everybody’s moves. Once you master a single character, you are more than well on your way to mastering almost half of the other characters in the game.

Last but not least are the power meter moves. Both games utilize a power meter that increases as you execute moves. When the meter is full, you can perform your character’s power move that will, theoretically, create a dramatic finish to the fight, granted that it reduces your opponent’s health bar to zero. These moves have always been over-the-top and flashy, and things are no different in these KOF games.

KOF 2003 and KOF 2002 are definitely titles that any fan of fighting games will want to check out, especially since they are both bundled in a single pack for the price of one game. The amount of nostalgia packed into these titles is alone worth the purchase, as some of the characters go as far back as Fatal Fury. In fact, this is a compilation that no PS2 owner should be without.