Promotional footage is so 1998. These days, all the cool publishers are offering up videos that also serve as tutorials for upcoming fighters.
Let’s say you’re a twentysomething gamer. As a child you spent your days in the local arcade, pumping quarters into the Fatal Fury cabinet, and hoping against hope that you could somehow beat the game without having to actually face its totally unfair boss.
Time passed, arcades died off, the Fatal Fury series joined other SNK games, Voltron-style, to form the King of Fighters series, and you eventually lost touch with Terry Bogard. Then, one day, you’re typing away at your lucrative, creatively fulfilling job — for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re a beloved gaming journalist — and you receive an email from the fine PR wizards at Atlus USA announcing the imminent release of King of Fighters XIII for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Overjoyed, you pull down the brim of your Fatal Fury trucker cap, and rush out the door to tell everyone you know, only … something stops you dead in your tracks. A sense of existential dread. What if you no longer know how to throw a Burn Knuckle?
Luckily kids, Atlus has us covered. The latest media blast from the company comes in the form of a series of YouTube videos, each of which both shows off the gorgeous fighter, and offers a primer on the characters therein. Admittedly, this isn’t exactly high level game theory, but for those of you who haven’t played a KoF game since the Orochi Saga, it offers a nice refresher course.
Plus, the animation in this thing is just gorgeous. The level of care and attention to detail that the animators poured into each fighter is blatantly obvious, and in watching KoFXIII in motion, I can definitely sympathize with those fighting game purists who shun anything 3D.
The King of Fighters XIII is scheduled to hit both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on October 25. As with all Atlus releases, pre-ordering the game will score you some sweet swag; in this case, putting down early cash will net you a 4-CD soundtrack compilation covering the series’ entire history.
In the meantime, you can spend the immediate future boning up on your King of Fighters basics, by visiting this YouTube playlist. I embedded Mai’s video above to appease all you creepy otaku folk, but don’t let that fool you; the game is far more than ninja boobs.
(It’s just that ninja boobs generate massive pageviews. We have shareholders to appease here, guys.)
