But here it doesn’t limit the options during the fight, but merely makes the chosen attack more powerful. Taken from Street Fighter III is the prompt to choose the preferred super move after selecting a character. Special moves have enhanced versions activated by pressing both buttons from the same attack type instead of one, similar to Street Fighter IV. All the typical movement options like high jumps, dashes, quick and delayed getups after a fall are also in place. Combining the buttons allows for throws, an overhead hopping attack and an unblockable but slow strike, which makes the character turn darker for a moment. The basic controls don’t differ much from the classic 2D fighters: Like in The King of Fighters, four buttons are used for quick and strong punches and kicks.

Game designer Ume-zono is mostly known as a high level tournament player of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, but he also has some King of Fighters credits under his belt, as he has worked as a “planner” on the 2002 iteration. This is certainly rooted in part in the game’s pedigree: The graphics are created by Kotani:Tomoyuki, who used to be a sprite artist from KoF ’99 to KoF 2001 under his pseudonym Styleos (more recently, he has done illustrations for a number of Cave shoot-em-ups).

For one, it is one of the few doujin fighters that abstain from shameless pandering to the moe audience and go for a more “mature” anime style design, not unlike SNK’s The King of Fighters series. That alone might be enough to put some people off, but Yatagarasu is different.

Yatagarasu shimo