This year marks the 30th anniversary of The King of Fighters, which is certainly cause for celebration though this is a bit of an odd way to go about it.
During Tokyo Game Show 2024, Netmarble revealed a brand new title called The King of Fighters AFK just months after they announced plans to shut down their current game.
According to the official press release, KOF AFK is set to be a collectible mobile RPG featuring characters from across the iconic fighting game franchise.
Perhaps the coolest thing about the upcoming project is the teaser trailer shows the game using pixel art graphics similar to those found on the NeoGeo Pocket Color like The King of Fighters R-2, so we should get to see some newer characters in that style as well.
There’s not much really to go on, however, from just the brief teaser trailer since it doesn’t include any gameplay or release window though it’ll presumably be based around gacha mechanics.
It probably comes as little surprise as well that initial fan reaction appears largely negative from what we’ve seen given the circumstances.
Netmarble is the same company that runs The King of Fighters Allstar, which announced it’ll be shutting down service back in June.
After launching initially in 2018 and then 2019 in the West, KOF Allstar is slated to close up shop on October 30, 2024.
This came as quite a surprise to SNK fans because the game held a pretty solid reputation with fun fanservice, and though it wasn’t a fighting game, the unique beat ’em up structure and content kept people entertained (though apparently not enough of them).
Allstar also enjoyed a slew of big crossovers including Street Fighter 6 just last year, Guilty Gear, Soul Calibur, Samurai Shodown, Tekken, Gintama and even the WWE among others.
It doesn’t appear there’s been any updates to provide an offline version of KOF Allstar, so once the servers go down, players are more than likely going to lose all of the progress they’ve made (and money spent) after like five years.
Comments from English, Spanish, Japanese and Korean speaking fans on the official trailer video and social pages understandably don’t sound too happy about the move to another KOF game already.
“You got to be kidding me, kofas had to die just for this trash?” reads one YouTube comment.
“Netmarble again… I guess they still have the rights from SNK. I’d really like them to protect the KOFAS data, seriously,” reads another in Japanese.
All hope may not be lost since we did previously see Capcom release an offline version of Mega Man X-Dive after that title was similarly shuttered though we’re not setting our hopes too high on that front yet.
Obviously the other big news to come out of SNK from TGS was the announcement that Street Fighter’s Ken and Chun-Li are coming to Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves as DLC characters next year.
On top of that, they also shared some more teases for Vice and Mature’s inclusion in The King of Fighters 15 as what will likely be that game’s final DLC.
You can check out the reveal teaser trailer for King of Fighters AFK below.