The King of Fighters '96

King of Fighters '96
King of Fighters '96's Title Screen
Publisher	NT (was going to be published by JY Company)
Developer	Hummer Team
Console	Famicom
Date	1998
Engine	Street Fighter II Engine
Sound engine	Someri Sound Engine

King of Fighters '96 is a pirated port of the fighting game of the same name, created sometime in the mid-to-late 90's (likely 1998) by Hummer Team.

Overview

King of Fighters 96's Gameplay

This is a fighting game based off KoF '96 by SNK, and includes 7 different characters. It appears to be based off Street Fighter Zero 2 '97, (or possibly the other way round) having several of the same issues that it has such as garbled sprites on the top of the screen during fights, two repeats of each character (this is the same case in SFZ2'97) as well as having numerous sound effects reused from it. Both games also use the same VS screen music. Unlike that game though, this has a difficulty setting, and retains the team mode that the original KoF96 had. There are only 7 characters in this game, much fewer than the original game's roster. There's no POW bar in this game, unlike the original, making it play more like Street Fighter II. The ending is a cutscene of Goenitz being defeated.

The graphics and music are mostly from the original game, but the much of the music bears little resemblance to that of the original's. The intro is copied accurately from the original game, aside from a couple of typos at the start. In the Japan stage, the SNK logo in the background was altered to read "STC" which presumably doesn't stand for anything to do with Hummer Team or JY Company.

Trivia

The JY Company logo as it appears in this game

• One of the songs in the NSF file of this game is the ending theme from Street Fighter II (Famicom) which suggests that this game was made after Street Fighter Zero 2 '97. This is unused though, as the ending to this game uses the intro music. However, both games use the same VS screen theme.
• Like in Street Fighter Zero 2 '97 and several other Hummer Team pirates, the stages cycle in a preset order.
• Despite being in the background of the Japan level, Athena isn't a playable character in this version but her name does appear in the ROM.
• Many other characters who appear in the intro are also omitted.
• The ending includes the text "King of Fighters 98," suggesting that the game was created in 1998.
• Iori from this pirate appears on the front page of this Wiki.
• A glitched version of the JY Company logo is hidden in this game. It can be accessed on the title screen by pressing:

Down, Down, Left, Up, Right, Left, Up, Down

• The names of 20 characters' names appear in the ROM but 13 of them were cut out from this game. This may indicate that another version exists with more characters, or more characters were planned but were not included due to time/space constraints.

Gallery

Sunma12345-img600x450-1268840829waydsc10959.jpg

The King of Fighters 96 cartridge.