The King of Fighters series is having something of a midlife crisis. For a long time, it never got over the fact that it peaked sometime in the late 90s, and that nobody really cared, as interest in 2D fighters was at its nadir at that point. The surprisingly complex (if somewhat concealed) story degenerated into a confusing and uninteresting clone saga, and each new refinement or new character felt sloppy and desperate. When KoF 2001 limped into arcades and SNK fell into a new set of bankruptcy troubles, it seemed like the long-running fighting series might just be down for the count.

After Playmore breathed some new life into SNK, the King of Fighters series was back, and this two-game, two-disc package offers two games from this transition period, one looking firmly backwards, one forward-looking. King of Fighters 2002/2003, because of this dual nature, is on one hand an attempt to rekindle long-time fan interest, and on the other an attempt to revitalize a long-stagnant fighting game.

King of Fighters 2002 is a "Dream Match" installation in the KoF series. This means it doesn't fit into the usual story arcs; instead, it's a compilation of characters, some long-dead, some not yet even grown up. Newcomers might be a tad confused, and even long-time SNK fighter fans might wonder why grown-up Andy Bogard is a selectable character, while Andy-as-a-kid jumps out to pose with his big brother Terry in one of the latter's victory poses. While not all of the KoF characters are here, if you liked a character (or really liked a Fatal Fury or Art of Fighting character), it's probably in here.

Yet, the game is strangely conservative. For a game that includes everyone from a fanboy schoolkid (Shingo) to a human bioweapon and Kaneda ripoff (K9999), nearly everyone looks and plays basically the same. Save for a handful of oddballs (K9999, Vanessa, Whip, and Choi and Chang come to mind), a player of middling skill can switch characters with ease after relearning the special moves and varying speed and reach. For someone not familiar with the long-running KoF series' cast, characters can easily blur together, making the 40-plus-character cast seem smaller than it really is. There certainly isn't the differentiation one would find in the original Street Fighter II titles, or Capcom's Marvel and Vs. series titles, let alone the dramatic differences between the Guilty Gear characters.

Despite being labelled the 2002 edition of the series, it feels in some ways like a step back from 2001, back to the late 90s. Gone are the strikers, quick one-time attacks from a backup team member. Gone are most (but not all) of the little vignettes between certain characters before a fight. (For example, Shingo will still swoon over Athena, but Yamazaki doesn't seem to do anything even with his long-time rivals.) Still here, though, is the punishing difficulty in single-player, especially the absolutely unfair version of Rugal filling the role of final boss.

It even looks and sounds old. Low-resolution character sprites, some of which are years old, are fighting in front of drab backgrounds heavy in greys, greens, and browns. There are little bits of visual spice in the background, like smoothly billowing flags or cameos from SNK characters, but they're largely drowned out by the drab. The music, too, is loopy, synth-y forgettable garbage, and the voices are the same Japanese-heavy kiais and attack calls that the series has been using for years. Visually, KoF 2002 is trapped in 1997, and aurally, in 1994.

Without a story or any sort of unique gameplay hook, KoF 2002 seems to just mope around, dwelling in its irrelevance. It's the epitome of why the King of Fighters series had failed to excite even the shrinking Neo-Geo hardcore, as the few 2D fighter faithful had moved on to better-looking, better-playing it was on the Neo-Geo, competing with contemporaries like Capcom Vs. SNK 2 or Guilty Gear X, and it's not much to notice now.

King of Fighters 2003, on the other hand, is a valiant attempt to get your attention again. The old man of a series has worked on his paunch a little bit and picked up a shiny new sportscar, and, while it might not turn heads, it beats the hell out of dwelling in desperation.

KoF 2003 takes some chances. The cast has been pared down to only(!) 20 base characters, with many fan-favorites left behind, including quite a few of the more outrageous characters from the last saga. (Kof games are broken into three-game sagas, each saga telling a complete story. KoF 2003 begins a new saga.) Athena, now a singer, has a pair of fangirls backing her up. A new Kyo lookalike, Kusunagi, has a pair of fellow conspirators. Kyo and Iori don't even have teams of their own, any more. All in all, the cast seems to have been pared down and refined, and feels much tighter than previous titles, with each character (save for the inevitably-similar Kyo and Kusunagi) feeling different from each other.

Chances have been taken on the battlefield, too. The player can switch between members of his team of three characters on the fly, similar to Marvel Vs. Capcom, instead of having to stick with a character for the entire round. The ridiculousness of combo supers and such, as in Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, never rears its head, but it is possible to use a super bar to have a character come flying in with a handy kick in a pinch.

KoF 2003 has also left behind the drab, dense menu screens and mostly-static backgrounds for much shinier superficial look, and has new-looking versions of some of the oldest characters and fan-favorites. (My personal favorites are Terry in his cheesy 80s bomber jacket and Athena's makeover as an idol singer.) Even when it plays like the older games, it feels somehow newer, as if someone washed off a layer of dust and grime.

It feels faster and newer, too. New animations and new characters are accompanied with a faster, tighter pace. Moves come out faster and combos (known as rushes in KoF are simpler and smoother, making KoF 2003 feel more like a Capcom fighter than an SNK game. On one hand, this makes '03 less of an arduous exercise in perfect timing, but also makes it less technical, in that it's easier to accidentally do the wrong thing or mash your way to victory. It's a change for the better, but KoF 2003 is hardly perfect, and doesn't quite feel new, just much less old.

As a repackaging of two older arcade games, King of Fighters 2002/2003 is merely average. Load times are mercifully absent, but these games are otherwise identical to their Neo-Geo MVS (home system) counterparts. They're still using low-resolution sprites, making for obvious "jaggies," and online play is inexplicably absent. Given that Majesco (Guilty Gear X2#reload) and Capcom (Street Fighter Anniversary Collection for the Xbox) can offer online play in even budget fighting titles, why can't SNK?

King of Fighters 2002/2003 is an interesting study of a series in transition, but ultimately not a compelling purchase. KoF 2002 is a failed attempt to recall KoF '98 Dream Match, and 2003 is, while more accessible to new fans, lacks the eye-candy if not necessarily the depth of newer games like Guilty Gear X2. Give this one a spin for the merits of King of Fighters 2003 if at all, but not before the more-robust alternatives.