King Of Fighters Is Coming To The Sega Master System

...in an unofficial capacity, of course

by Damien McFerran Thu 19th Jan 2023

SNK's King of Fighters series has been thrilling fans since 1994 when it made its debut on the Neo Geo system. Since then, we've had a series of yearly updates which have, more recently, slowed somewhat – but the franchise remains popular with its hardcore audience, who had long held the view that it's more technically demanding than its close rival, Street Fighter.

King of Fighters titles have been ported to a wide range of systems over the years, including the PlayStation, Saturn and even the humble Game Boy – but Sega's Master System came too late to be in with a shot of hosting the famous tournament. However, that's about to change thanks to PsychoMaster, the author of the 'Master Fight Engine'.

This engine is designed to allow developers to create one-on-one fighting games for Sega's 8-bit system, and, as a proof of concept, PsychoMaster has created a version of King of Fighters for the machine.

The visuals are based on the aforementioned Game Boy instalments, but PsychoMaster has added some colour to make them more appealing. The results are pretty decent, and we'll be keeping our eyes on this project for sure.

[source smspower.org]

Damien has been writing professionally about tech and video games since 2007 and oversees all of Hookshot Media's sites from an editorial perspective. He's also the editor of Time Extension, the network's newest site, which – paradoxically – is all about gaming's past glories.

1
sdelfin
Thu 19th Jan 2023

They're so tiny!!! Though that might be a good approach for such a project for smooth play and minimal flicker. And the Game Boy sprites they're using are not bad at all. The Neo Geo Pocket sprites might be tricky to use for this. This reminds me a bit of a recent similar project for the C64. I'd like to see this in motion, but perhaps it's too early for that to show much in terms of how it plays. I did briefly go through the forum posts linked here to get a bit more insight into some of the choices made.

2
rob7979
Fri 20th Jan 2023

I’m loving this! Mortal Kombat shows that the SMS has the raw power to make this happen.

3
Migoshuro
Sat 21st Jan 2023

Played "The King of Fighters - Heat of Battle" (a port of '96) to death on my Game Boy. That is a phenomenal version for the system. The sprites are tiny, but well animated and it is fast as hell. It has a impressive amount of fighters and special moves and plays excellently. The developers somehow managed to bring a relatively complex control scheme onto the limited input possibilities of the handheld. Best fighting game on the system.

4
TheWingedAvenger
Sun 22nd Jan 2023

Looks great so far! And it's promising that the best fighting game for an 8-bit home system is Masters Of Combat for the Sega Master System.

5
Serpenterror
Wed 14th Feb 2024

Meh it's just a colorized version of KOF95 for Game Boy with way smaller sprites. I would expect they would had a better roster. I can tell this would be terrible already. How are we suppose to unlock the 3 hidden characters (Saisyu, Rugal, and Nakoruru) when the Sega Master System doesn't even had a SELECT button? If I remember correctly we need to press SELECT 3 times at the dev logo to unlock Saisyu and Rugal and 17 more times to unlock Nakoruru in the Game Boy version. SMS doesn't had a SELECT button (it had a START button which is the 1 button) so players of this game won't get to access those three characters. Should had made them available from the get-go.

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