[MAJ]KOF XIII: Les NeoMax de la K’ Team

Tous les amateurs de cuir les attendaient avec impatience, voici les NeoMax de la K’ Team pour le dernier devblog consacré aux équipes du jeu. Que dire à part que ça cogne sacrément fort, qu’ils ont la classe et que Neithan va littéralement craquer son slip en voyant ça. SNK a bien joué son coup pour maintenir la pression sur les fans de cuir puisque c’est aussi la K’ Team qui clôture la série des Technical References demain.

Connaissant l’attente des fans pour ces vidéos, je n’ai pas attendu la traduction. Je mettrai à jour la news quand elle sera disponible, histoire de satisfaire tout le monde.

En attendant, vous pouvez vous procurer 3 nouveaux wallpapers sur le site officiel.

[MAJ] Et voilà, la traduction est disponible. Remerciements à Sonic Tempest une nouvelle fois pour le temps qu’il a passé à traduire l’ensemble des devblogs.

– First off, they open up the last character blog entry by stating that there’s a lot of stuff they haven’t talked about, like special animations for certain moves that only activate a small percentage of the time, taunts and…Mature and Vice’s underwear. Uh, right.

K’
– They designed K’ so that he wouldn’t feel too weird to use. They reluctantly left out his instant Narrow Spike (QcB+K immediately after QcB+K) because they felt it was a little too powerful.
– He’s a character who’s most powerful at long- and mid-range. He plays pretty similarly to his previous versions so K’ fans should have no trouble picking him up.
– They made sure to make his flames have a different, more violent appearance than Kyo’s.
– EX Crow Bites (DP+AC) is basically his KOF2003/XI Heaven’s Drive DM, and it can be used for similar things like interrupting block strings and combos.
– EX Chain Drive (QcF-HcB+AC) has a really cool animation.
– His NeoMAX is ‘Hyper Chain Drive’ (HcBx2+AC), where he creates a giant flame pillar around himself. Good to use for anti-air or combos – feels particularly good to MAX Cancel into it from Heat Drive (QcFx2+P).
– K’ has had a bunch of endings where he removes his red glove at the end of the game, so they wanted to have a move that had his glove as the focal point. They had tons of ideas like having a move that would have his right hand continue to burn after a heat drive and make all his flame moves more powerful, or a move that they saw in the HK comics where K’ lands from the air and punches the ground, causing cracks to appear in his glove, and so on. If you K.O. someone with his NeoMAX you’ll be able to see his glove shatter after he does the move.
– The whole K’ team has a ton of effects on their moves so it caused a lot of problems during development. K’ in particular was a problem, with his Chain Drive animation being something they fussed over a lot. K’ was originally supposed to fight without his sunglasses on like before, but when they were designing his moves, they heard from the original designer of K’ from KOF’99 that the original Chain Drive move didn’t match its source material very well (which was a certain movie). Because of this they had to go back and redesign the move, and because of this they ended up adding sunglasses to K’s sprite. Apparently even the animation where the sunglasses rebound off the opponent was a picky point for them.
– Apparently K’ has a color scheme that they haven’t shown off yet, too.

MAXIMA
– Unlike K’ and Kula, Maxima has changed a fair bit in this instalment. Because there were a bunch of other grapplers in the game they decided to make Maxima into a character that uses his autoguard to bulldoze the opponent into submission. This is also why his animations and effects look more mecha-like.
– They made Douple Vapor Cannon (QcFx2+P) a juggle anywhere move ONLY when it’s super cancelled from Vapor Cannon (QcB+P) because of how good it looked (lol).
– He’s supposed to be the foremost power character in the game, with relatively few combos but very satisfying single hits.
– EX Blitz Cannon (DP+BD) has autoguard from startup and will continue to execute if someone tries to hit him during the autoguard frames. Also unlike the regular version, there’s a hitbox on his knee, so this will connect against grounded opponents as well.
– EX mid-air Vapor Cannon (QcB+AC in mid-air) preserves Maxima’s jump trajectory and does 3 hits. If you manage to land it just before Maxima lands you have enough frame advantage to throw out another attack.
– His NeoMAX is ‘Maxima Laser’ (HcBx2+AC). It goes full screen, is pretty much impossible to jump over and will do a fair amount of tick damage even if it’s blocked. It’s the ultimate move to stop the opponent in his tracks.
– Apparently the effects on his laser were so large that the programmers had trouble dealing with it (rofl).
– They purposely tried to make him look more ‘high-tech’ – even his face was redrawn to look like the cranium of an android from various science fiction sources. He was the character whose sprites gave the artists the most headaches.

KULA
– Kula is pretty close to her previous versions – even the designer who worked on her is the same one who originally drew her back in KOF2000.
– They added a lot of little details to her sprite like her flexing her fingers, yawning, blinking and so on.
– EX Diamond Breath (QcF+AC) puts the opponent in an extended stun animation during which Kula can do followup attacks (how is this any different from the C version?)
– EX Lay Spin (QcB+BD) has invincibility all the way up until the attack comes out, making it a good move to use to avoid an opponent’s attack and smack them one.
– Her NeoMAX is ‘Neo Freeze Execution’ (HcBx2+BD). It’s used the same way as her regular Freeze Execution but Foxy and Diana come out during the attack. Apparently the butterfly and bee effects that appear in the move were drawn by Yamaguchi himself.
– They wanted the move to have the appearance of an aurora, which is why it’s so colourful.