Fighting game fans have all at least heard of the King of Fighters series, which debuted 10 years ago for SNK's NeoGeo platform and has garnered a new, annual installment ever since. The series introduced a couple of SNK's most popular fighting game characters--Iori Yagami and Kyo Kusanagi--and also introduced the concept of team-based battles that let you play more than one character in a single game. The King of Fighters games also generally did a great job of mixing together characters from SNK's various other franchises all in a single setting. Now the series is finally taking a step into the third dimension with the upcoming King of Fighters: Maximum Impact, which is slated for release in the fall exclusively on the PlayStation 2. We recently had a chance to test-drive the game at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in May, but we've since had a chance to spend some more quality time with Maximum Impact and are here with our latest impressions.

KOF: Maximum Impact takes King of Fighters into the third dimension and will feature many familiar characters, as well as a half-dozen new ones.

Essentially, King of Fighters: Maximum Impact looks like it's shaping up to be a by-the-numbers 3D fighting game that's reminiscent of 3D fighting series like Street Fighter EX and Bloody Roar. The game features a number of instantly recognizable King of Fighters characters, as well as a few completely new faces, and borrows a lot of the series' signature controls and gameplay elements--but with a few options to move in 3D. Characters that get knocked down by powerful attacks can laterally roll as they recover, thereby avoiding pursuit attacks. Since it's now possible to keep whaling on a downed opponent with low kicks and special moves, quickly recovering from knockdowns is going to be an important element of play.

The version of the game we've been playing let us select only a single character at a time, but each of the game's characters seems to have plenty of moves to make him or her complex enough in his or her own right. As in other King of Fighters games, characters can execute light and heavy punches and kicks, regular and long jumps, forward and backward rolls, and knockdown blows, in addition to a variety of special attacks. King of Fighters fans will feel instantly at home with the controls, which already feel pretty responsive, thanks partly to the game's consistently smooth frame rate.

The version we've been playing features 13 selectable characters and seven additional slots denoted with question marks, suggesting hidden characters. Previous reports have indicated that there will be two-dozen characters in all, including six brand-new characters and four unlockable bonus characters. Of the 13 in this build, nine are returning favorites and include guys like Ryo Sakazaki, Terry Bogard, Ralf Jones, and K', as well as Ryo's sister, Yuri. One of the new characters, a female tae kwon do expert named Chae Lim, for some reason replaces SNK's popular Kim Kaphwan, since she has many of Kim's signature moves and basically plays like him. The other new characters include the Meira brothers, Alba and Soiree, who come across rather like they're extras from The Matrix movies, with their fancy outfits and martial arts moves. A new female character, Mignon Beart, is reminiscent of King of Fighters favorite Athena, with her perky personality and magically imbued special moves. There's only one grappler-type character available at the moment, and that's Maxima, the burly Canadian fighter featured in more-recent KOF installments. One benefit of the transition to 3D is that each character has a strikingly different alternate outfit. If you've gotten sick of seeing Iori in the same threads year after year, here's your chance to see what else he's got in his wardrobe.

The action moves fairly quickly and unfolds similarly to the conventions of 2D fighting. Characters can use high- and low-hitting moves to break through their opponents' defenses, and they can string together normal and special moves in sequence to form powerful combination attacks. As they do so, they charge up a meter, which, when full, can be used to pull off especially damaging supermoves. King of Fighters: Maximum Impact basically controls well already, but it also doesn't feel much different from other, similar fighting games out there.

The gameplay captures a lot of the same feel as the King of Fighters series but doesn't seem quite as fast-paced as the latter-day 2D installments.

The look of the game is coming together fairly well, since the classic characters do look quite similar to their 2D counterparts. Still, series diehards will probably argue that the transition to full 3D causes some of their favorites to lose some of their old personality in the process. The game's audio, meanwhile, certainly sounds like that of a Japanese fighting game. Most of the speech clips are in Japanese, and the voice actors who've represented the old characters in the past again reprise their roles here.

Unlike some other fighting games slated for release later this year, King of Fighters: Maximum Impact apparently will not support online play. Hopefully, though, between its story mode, challenge mode, and versus mode, it will still have a good amount of lasting appeal for fighting fans. Stay tuned for more information on the game and its cast of characters as its release draws near.