Retro Rumble: The "e;Unlimited"e; Love for King of Fighters 2002
By Jeff Kotuby ·
The KOF2002 community is one of the most die-hard in the FGC. For over 15 years, players from around the world have been competing in their favorite team-based fighting game, and it shows no signs of slowing down. We examine this game and the community that loves it so much.
We’ve done so much coverage on the Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom, Dragon Ball Z, and Tekken series and the communities that surround them, but one series we admittedly haven’t done much with is King of Fighters. That’s not to say we don’t love ourselves some KOF! On the contrary, we adore the King of Fighters series and the players who love it! We’d like to take some time to showcase one of the more popular versions of the game, King of Fighters 2002 and its 2009 update, Unlimited Match, along with the key members of the community.
Like Geese, This Game Won't Die
KOF2002 and KOF2002:UM are still being played globally, despite a number of recent additions to the series, including KOFXIV. The differences between the game are relatively small, but they’re abundant enough to warrant a separate entity in our coverage, especially because certain players prefer only playing one version versus another.
King of Fighters 2002: Unlimited Match was released in 2009 for the Playstation 2 and arcades, then later released for the Xbox 360 (yes, there were PS2/XB360 games!) Other than balance changes, the newer version of the game features updated menus, new teams (made up of different existing characters) and added features to special moves.
"If It's a Fighting Game..."
Like we’ve been saying forever, “if it’s a fighting game, TeamSpooky streams it” and KOF2002 is no different. This time, though, it’s Arturo “TS|Sabin” Sanchez (aka Yung Art) who has immersed himself in the community and streams the game at various events. At the most recent Fuerte Beatdown tournament, a wide variety of KOF2002 players were on scene, including Luis Cha, LDASimba, and PachuKOF, to show support for one of their favorite fighting games. In the end, it was LDASimba proving he was not only the king of the jungle, but the King of Fighters as well.
Take Your Talents Around The World With Fightcade
KOF2002 is also thriving on Fightcade, a free-to-download and free-to-play gaming platform that is similar to the old GGPO network. Players can download the client and the game for free and battle players from around the world. When speaking about the program, GameFAQs user “Will Smith” (probably not the Fresh Prince) said, “Fightcade is quite good once you adapt to it. Playing offline versus a friend will be superior, but [Fightcade] is as good as it gets.” Fans of the Unlimited Match update can still purchase the game on Steam and the XBox Live store, where it is a Backwards Compatible title for the XBox One.
For even more KOF2002 gameplay, check out brooklynvideogames on Twitch, who hosts the game live from the store on 20th Ave., and GAMEacho on YouTube, who shares an assortment of retro fighting game videos, including KOF2002 and KOF2002UM.
Love yourself some retro fighters? So do we! Check out our look back at the Street Fighter EX series and our look forward to Arika’s next project, Fighting EX Layer!