🎮 Play King of Fighters, The – Heat of Battle (Europe) Online (Game Boy)

The King of Fighters: Heat of Battle is Gaibrain’s 1998 Game Boy conversion of SNK’s The King of Fighters ’96, published in Europe by Laguna (a Japanese release, titled Nettou The King of Fighters ’96, had come out the year before through SNK and Takara). It’s a three-on-three team fighting game: pick a squad of three characters from the King of Fighters cast, send them into a series of one-on-one rounds, and try to knock out the whole opposing team before yours falls. Almost everything from the KOF ’96 arcade original made the trip to the small screen, right down to each fighter keeping their own stage and team-specific ending — only the arcade’s Team Assistance mechanic was left out.

How to Play

Win each round by draining the opposing fighter’s health bar before your own runs out, then do it again for the next two members of their team. Controls: Arrow Keys to move and block, Z and X for your attack buttons, Enter to start/pause, and Shift for the menu. Attacks chain into special moves and desperation moves with directional inputs, and every character can roll to dodge through an incoming hit rather than just blocking it.

Tips

• Open Team Edit before a match to build your own three-character squad instead of using the preset story teams — with dozens of fighters available, there are thousands of possible combinations, and some pairings change the ending you get.
• Mr. Karate, Orochi Iori and Orochi Leona are unlockable hidden characters rather than starting roster picks, just like in the arcade version — don’t expect to find them in Team Edit until you’ve unlocked them.
• Rolling has brief invincibility frames, so against fast strikers on the Game Boy’s small screen it’s often more reliable than trying to block on reaction.