Fighting games with muted / darker color palette?

[Samuray]

I've been thinking about how different the color palette used in "King of Fighters '94" and "King of Fighters '95" is from other fighting games like the "Fatal Fury" series, "World Heroes", "Fight Fever", and of course the brightly colorful "Samurai Shodown".*

Now of course there are bright stages in KOF too, just think italy. But still, the overall tone seems to be decidedly darker.

I love both styles, but the bright one seems to be a lot more proliferated, e.g. in "Kabuki Klash", "Aggressors of Dark Kombat". So my question is - what other fighting games are there on the Neo with a muted color palette? I think the "Last Blades" may qualify, and probably "Mark of the Wolves",but are there more?

Samuray


* Disclaimer: I haven't really played most of the games yet, KOF96 and the others are still to come, for example. Yes. I want to collect and play them chronologically, more or less.

 

[city41]

Is it the darker palette that distinguishes KOF games or the grittier sprites? It seems like in KOF they use more gradients, texturing and dithering than in say Fatal Fury and Samurai Shodown which use more simple "cartoon" style shading.

Garou does seem to have a darker palette overall though.

 

[EllertMichael]

Ninja Master's.

 

[Xian Xi]

Galaxy Fight has a horrible palette.

 

[arcwyvern]

Kizuna encounter and a lot of Double Dragon has a more subdued pallette if memory serves.

 

[Samuray]

I was hopng someone would say "Ninja Master's".....I've never seen it so I have no idea how it looks, and so there was a chance it might "qualify".

"Double Dragon" too? Awesome. I have played "Kizuna's" predecessor, "Savage Reign", a few times, though....and isn't that one more on the brit side, if memory serves?

 

[LoneSage]

I personally don't think there are any. Not on the Neo, at least.

edit: ok. SVC.

 

[SNKorSWM]

SVC.

 

[Punisher5.0]

KOF03 has very dark/muted backgrounds. Going from 03 to 98 is a very dramatic difference. 98 has extremely colorful backgrounds and I often find my self paying more attention to the background to see all the different things going on than the fight.

 

[Samuray]

I personally don't think there are any. Not on the Neo, at least.

edit: ok. SVC.

What did you mean by "there aren't any"? Apart from SVC, what about the games already mentioned above? Do you disagree that they have rather subdued color palettes?

KOF03 has very dark/muted backgrounds. Going from 03 to 98 is a very dramatic difference. 98 has extremely colorful backgrounds and I often find my self paying more attention to the background to see all the different things going on than the fight.

Interesting point about KOF03! Played it only once years ago and cannot remember the look of the game that much. But if it's darker in its visual nature I am looking forward to it that much more!

Ah, but would you happen to know how many backgrounds it has? I think from '97 onward (or was it later?), there were only four stages in every KOF, not counting weather conditons and such.

 

[galfordo]

i instantly thought of ninja master's when i read the thread title

i like the graphical style though, although it is quite dark and dreary

 

[Punisher5.0]

Ah, but would you happen to know how many backgrounds it has? I think from '97 onward (or was it later?), there were only four stages in every KOF, not counting weather conditons and such.

I don't know the exact amount but there is at least 10 different stages. I have most of the KOF series on Neo Geo and they all have more than four different stages.

03 is my favorite in the series. I like the one round style fighting and the character animation is superb. Kim for example has an extremely impressive amount of animations. The move list is excellent as well.