SNK warms up King of Fighters XIII

Last year, SNK Playmore reinvented its flagship franchise with King of Fighters XII for the arcades, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. Although the game delivered the first graphical overhaul to the series in more than a decade, it was not warmly received by critics, who took issue with a small roster lacking fan favorites and a paucity of play modes.

The publisher will soon have a chance to address those critiques, as today it announced that it is working on The King of Fighters XIII for an arcade release. Unfortunately, SNK didn't reveal any details on the game other than its genre (2D fighting, naturally) and that it would run on the Taito Type X2 arcade board, just like its immediate predecessor.

King of Fighters XIII's release date in arcades hasn't yet been determined, but SNK fans no doubt hope for a shorter wait than they endured for the 12th game in the series. King of Fighters XI arrived in arcades in 2005, with SNK revealing the full revamp plans for King of Fighters XII the following year.

King of Fighters XII didn't arrive for another three years, partly due to a time-consuming development process that saw developers render each character in 3D, take a picture of that model, then use it as a guide for the 2D pixel art. In 2008, King of Fighters XII producer Masaaki Kukino told attendees at the Japanese Amusement Machine Show that each character took more than four times as much work to animate as those in previous installments.