The King of Fighters '96

King of Fighters '96
King of Fighters '96's Title Screen
Publisher	KaSheng (was going to be published by JY Company)
Developer	Hummer Team
Cart ID(s)	NT6101
Console	Famicom
Date	July-August 1998
Engine	Street Fighter II Engine
Sound engine	Hummer 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, 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 actual King of Fighters games have. 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, however it is in Engrish, with one of the lines (FIGHTER KING OF FIGHTERS 98 I'M BACK TO TRAINING EVERY DAY AND I'M KICKING BUTT) randomly taken from the Fatal Fury Team's ending from the original game.

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, with one of the tracks being an edited version of Shisen Mahjong 2'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 J.Y. Company (however, there are some unused tiles for the stage that do read "SNK").

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) but with different percussion. This is unused though, as the ending to this game uses the intro music. Given how this game came after Street Fighter Zero 2 '97 which actually uses this track, it's likely this game was built off of it. Both games also 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 (see below).
• The ending includes the text "King of Fighters 98," suggesting that the game was created in 1998. Also, Iori's team's stage uses the Art of Fighting Team's theme from KOF '98 (the real one, not the Megadrive bootleg.)
• Iori from this pirate appears on the front page of this Wiki.
• Due to a glitch, in some of Goenitz's frames his clothes will turn into the same color as his hair.
• 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 game was supposed to have cutscenes but only two remain functional (not counting graphics) through hacking. The text for some of the removed cutscenes can still be found in the ROM. To access the two cutscenes, at address 0040, set the value to 0C (cutscene before fighting Chizuru) or 0E. (cutscene before fighting Goenitz).
• In the ROM, there seems to be a total of 20 characters in the game but 13 of them were cut out. The characters that were cut out still have their code in the game and do function correctly but the graphics are glitched. It's a possibility that there the original version out there with these characters but it's unknown if it was ever on cartridge form. They were probably cut to make room for the cartridge the game was going to be put on. (If these characters did have graphics, the game would probably be around 1.25 MB. The ROM that can be found is 768 KB.) Despite their graphics being cut, their icons for the HUD still remain. They can be accessed under address 00B9 with these values:
  • 00 - Kyu (Kyo)
  • 01 - Benimary (Benimaru)
  • 03 - Terry
  • 04 - Andy
  • 05 - Joe
  • 06 - Ryo
  • 07 - Kim
  • 0A - Ralf
  • 0B - Athena
  • 0C - Kasumi
  • 0E - Mai
  • 0F - Geese
  • 10 - Wolfgang
• The VS screen features the character stancing in front of their name, suggesting the game is a port of the 32-bit versions.
• The (unused) 10th track in the NSF file is a cover of Esaka from the original game.

Gallery

Original cartridge