King of Fighters Neowave [Best]

From Atomiswave coin-op hardware to humble home console, Playmore's latest game in the ever evolving (and sometimes devolving) King of Fighters franchise reaches the PS2 in fine shape. All 43 fighters from the arcade version are present along with five secret characters exclusive to the PS2 and Xbox home conversions. The PS2 version of the game also adds the ability to edit the default colors for each combatant.

KOF Neowave follows traditional KOF gameplay conventions where teams of three challengers bout it out against other teams. What isn't traditional KOF however is the control scheme which now uses 5 buttons instead of 4 - the fifth button is used to turn on "Heat Mode" which is essentially a berserker toggle which allows a fighter to impact more damage than normal on an opponent but also lowers defense and health. For gamers who are hankering for some versus action against a human player (but no one else is in the room), the network mode hooks fighters up for online bouts.

The Best version of King of Fighters Neowave is a lower-priced re-release of the game. Nothing's been changed except the game packaging insert.