I have been playing a bit of King of Fighters 99 recently. it's expected that they have improved graphics or artwork for a new game. Certainly, KOF 99 does look better than 98. I like the in-game characters sprites and animation as usual(it's not too much improvement from 98 though) But one other thing I really like about the game is the artwork for characters. I'm not talking about the in-game animation, but the character artwork you see before each battle start(the who vs. who screen). I think this time, the characters artwork(include the after win screen) look very nice. The thing I like is their facial expression, looks very sharp. I like the Todo Kasumi one and the Blue Mary one. The Kasumi one almost look like a guy, that's what I like the most.( okay, I'm not gay, it's not that I like manly looking woman). It's just that I thought both Kasumi and Blue Mary look very serious and 'cool'. I think instead of having the usual cute looking anime type character artwork, they drew something more masculine for their facial expression, it's just make the game seem more serious. (By the way, don't you guys think Kasumi on the vs. screen totally looks like a guy.)

Okay, enough KOF talk, now back to SS. Well, nowadays, SNK have made quite a few 3D games. But they always have 2D artwork to promote their game. At least I think they use 2D artwork in order to promote their SS64 games. I think it's obvious that since they don't have good enough 3D images to promote a game, they used 2D artwork to make the game seem nicer(on the other hand, Namco actually uses computer rendered character images to promote their Soul Calibur and Tekken games, since they look good enough.)

I strongly feels that SNK has the best characters designers around, all the characters' artworks in SS, Last Blade and KOF look the best(well, not for the older KOFs). But I just hate to see that SNK wasted so much of the Character Designers' time and effort. They have to draw a lot of nice looking 2D artwork and the game turn out to be 3D. At least in SS64 games, some 2D artwork were actually used in the game(the super and fatal slash), that's not so bad.

Now, they are making this new SS game for the playstation. At first I was so HAPPY to see all the nice looking character designs. But I was greatly dissapointed to realize that the game is a 3D fighting game. It's not that I demand good looking 3D game, but it's just sad to see that all the fine looking 2D character designs are actually just meant for promoting a 3D game, I mean they really have wasted the character designer's time and effort. The good 2D character designs could have been easily used for creating a 2D game, but they don't want to. I guess it's understandable that Playstation can't handle 2D game that wel, they have to make this new SS game on the PS in 3D.( Playstation handling a 2D game is as bad as SNK making a 3D game)

Maybe I'm a bit too harsh on SNK. I just wanted to see a new SS game that has 2D artwork and 2D gameplay, if it's going to be 3D gameplay, stick with 3D artwork then.