The King of Fighters 94: SNK’s strategy that put Brazil in the game

In mid-1992, members of the SNK started a brainstorm to start the development of a new game. One of the first ideas was to work on a project similar to the classic Final Fightyes Capcomreleased in 1989.

This project, headed by Masanori Kuwasashiwho had already worked on the development of Last Resortwas initially a beat ‘em up side-scrolling feature called Dirty Knuckle, and then Survivor. But the idea would quickly change completely.

Kuwasashi saw before his eyes all the clamor regarding fighting games. Titles like Street Fighter, Fatal Fury e Art of Fightingthese last two from SNK, became widely popular. There was a clear change in the industry, in which fighting games were gaining more and more fans.

When asking his supervisor if he could change the beat ’em up project to a fighting game, Kuwasashi was warned that it was quite challenging to develop a game in this style. But the challenge was accepted. The beat ’em up idea was discarded and the project would now be a fighting game with a clear change in relation to its competitors.

Instead of choosing just one fighter, you could choose a team of three, and your team would face other trios in a tournament: the tournament King of Fighters.

The core of the project included Kuwasashi, Toyoshi Tanabe and Toshio Shimizu. But the team grew quickly. At the end of development, there were more than 60 devs, young people aged 20 to 25, with little experience in the industry. SNK was a great trainer of people for the market.

The admission tests were also very creative, with questions to test candidates’ knowledge of games. At the time when Dragon Quest was at its peak, one of the questions was: “Why do you think Dragon Quest is so popular? What do you consider to be the secret to your success?”

The result of all the hard work gave rise to The King of Fighters 94released on August 25, 1994 on NEO GEO MVSarcade system from SNK. And, on October 1st, he came out for the domestic NEO GEO, the AES.

The developers managed to put together a 3 x 3 fighting game made up of 24 characters, some of them transported directly from other SNK games. Of the 24 characters, 12 were from other games.

Art of Fighting

• Ryo
• Robert Garcia
• Yuri
• Takuma
• King

Fatal Fury

• Terry
• Andy
• Joe
• Mai Shiranui
• Kim Kaphwan

Psycho Soldiers

• Athena Assamese
• Sie Kensou

Ikari Warriors

These characters would occupy the space alongside new creations from the SNK team. One of them, initially called internally Sko Kirishima, He would be a 19-year-old student, lazy, but with a natural talent for fighting. He would become one of the best-known faces in the world of fighting games. You know him as Kyo Kusanagi.

The teams of fighters were divided by nationalities. The tournament King of Fighters It had representatives from Japan, Mexico, Italy, China, the United States, England, South Korea and Brazil.

On the Brazil team, the trio was made up of Ralf Jones, Clark Steel and a new character: the enigmatic Heidern. But how did this idea of ​​including a Brazilian team in the game come about?

Brazil in KOF ’94

Well, I don’t want to disappoint you, but there is nothing so grand or elaborate in the history of the inclusion of a team that represents Brazil in KOF. In fact, there is nothing very surprising about any of the other teams either.

The idea of ​​including team flags in the character selection was purely an SNK marketing strategy.

As Tanabe recalled, in a statement to the book “The King of Fighters: The Ultimate History”published by Bitmap Books, SNK wanted to target certain foreign markets, a strategy that was also adopted in Street Fighter.

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Brazil was in that list of countries that were strategic for the expansion that SNK was planning. Therefore, the characters were not designed, in terms of characteristics, to really correspond to nationality. The Brazil team was based on the Americans Ralf and Clark. There was one character missing for the trio to be created.

Kuwasashi recalls that, initially, the idea was to develop a character along the lines of Ralph and Clark, but they came to the conclusion that it would be more interesting to bring in an officer, someone with a rank above Ralph and Clark. This character is Heidern.

In an interview published at the time of the game’s launch, the development team explains that Heidern was originally conceived as a “cold-blooded killing machine”, but, at the same time, it included elements in its story capable of generating empathy in the public.

The frightening Rugal Bernstein was responsible for the death of what Heidern loved most, his wife Sandra and daughter Clara. And he was also the man who took out his right eye, in addition to being the great organizer of the KOF tournament.

In terms of a reference that is actually more consistent with Brazil, it only happened during the fighting stage that represented the team.

Seven months after KOF ’94SNK resolved an issue that was highly criticized in the game: the impossibility of forming your own team. With the new game, KOF ’95the player now has this freedom.