The King of Fighters Fighting Evolution 10th - Art Book - A Quick Look

I've been meaning to write about this for quite some time now, although quite an old book (5 years or so i believe) it's not very easy to get ahold of SNKP related books in the UK so i tried to win this when i saw it up for auction.

It ended up costing me about £18 or so including delivery, not that expensive i think, but in my opinion it was worth every penny.

First thing i noticed when i received and something eBay photos would probably not prepare you for is how thick this book is. At slightly over 250 pages, it is not much thinner than the side of a cigarette packet.

Filled to the brim with artworks spanning from KOF94 up until 03, the book covers all of the KOF artists over the years though of course most prominently feature is Shinkiro who was the one of the main artists for SNK up until their bankruptcy.

All artists are featured (that i can tell), even Wing Yan and King Tung, who are the artists for the Hong Kong KOF man hua/comic.

Although when i was a bit younger i never really tended to appreciate Shinkiro's drawing style, after looking through this book i got a real feeling of how much love he puts into his work and appreciated it alot more.

The above image of Chang is probably one of my favorite Shinkiro pieces, although he is designed to be a comical character anyway the realistic look of him smiling really does make me laugh.

Like the newer Character Encyclopedia i previously wrote about, this one also features some character profiles and character images through out the years. Although maybe not as well presented as the Character Encyclopedia it probably does rival it in term of information.
(Though i can't read Japanese so i'm not really able to say for sure.)

Also above you can check out the character's 'relation' chart. I do remember spotting something that was left out, though it may very well just have been something that's happened in the story since '03, but can't remember exactly what it was right at this moment.

Not much unlike the lay out Neo Geo Freaks Magazine used to use (or at least it reminds me of it) they have a rundown of each KOF game up until 03.
(At some point i probably should learn some more Japanese so i can actually read this stuff...)

Geese Howard and Athena Asamiya also have a whole page dedicated to them, in the case of Geese i believe it is a brief history of his character and the Athena page being dedicated to her costume changes over the years.

One thing i actually didn't expect was that this book not only features KOF but also some of the other major (or not so major) SNK fighting game titles. Last Blade, Buriki One, Samurai Shodown all have small sections dedicated to them. Not in a great deal, but it was nice that they were included too.

And of course you couldn't really have a SNK book about King of Fighters without the two games it was spun off from. The Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury series are also covered in this book in alot more detail than the other games i just mentioned, with artwork from the games throughout the years.

In the closing sections of the book it also features special illustrations from SNK, the one i found most interesting was the comic book panels drawn by Shinkiro. I'm not sure whether a comic book was ever made, if it was artwork created for instruction manuals, or an unused concept.

I'll have to have a flick through a few of the AES manuals for the games i own to have a check later tonight.

So in closing, as i mentioned i felt this book was worth buying though given that it is quite old now i wouldn't be able to recommend where to buy it other than eBay, but if you manage to find it around £18/20 or so i would recommend getting ahold of it to all fans.

Next write up i will be looking at the All About SNK Fighting Games 91-00, hopefully i'll try to do that as soon as i can. Thanks for reading!