Dear Nintendo Power

Dear Future Publishing,

In Volume 222 (December 2007) of Nintendo Power, on page 17, the "News" section reported  that The King of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga for the Wii would contain KoF '95, '96, and '97.  As a long-time fan of SNK's historically underappreciated fighting games, I was certainly pleased to hear this, especially since, as your well-researched story noted, '96 and '97 had never been released on North American consoles outside of the prohibitively expensive Neo Geo.

I was disappointed, however, at the glaring error of the accompanying screenshot.  The featured shot is not of any of the titles comprising The King of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga.  Rather, it is a picture of the first Fatal Fury, one of the Neo Geo's earliest titles, which is four years older than the oldest title in the collection.

You can tell by the archaic graphic of Terry Bogard's "Power Wave" attack, the very same sprite that appears on page 24 in a screenshot for the Virtual Console release of, you guessed it, the original Fatal Fury.  Even more telling is the fact that Terry's opponent on page 17 is Richard Meyer, one of SNK's lesser-lights, whose only other playable appearance was as a bonus character in the recent The King of Fighters 2006.

Although the titles in The Orochi Saga are themselves plenty old now, they represent the prime of the Neo Geo hardware's life, and this erroneous screenshot is misrepresentative in an unflattering way.  While I am glad to see any mention of SNK in my favorite gaming publication, it was unfortunate that it had to be accompanied by such an obvious mistake.  Hopefully, upcoming releases on the Wii will give SNK some deserved exposure that will help to prevent such oversights in the future.

Sincerely yours,

Henry