King of Fighters 2002 UM hits XBLA early! A Quick Look.

I was informed by Gunsmith (Orochinagi admin) earlier on today that KOF02UM has been released early for XBLA. Although you cannot currently connect to XBL with this game, it is available now for purchase as well as being able to play a trial version.

Have only been able to play it a couple of hours, but thought i'd share my initial thoughts on it.

Firstly compared to NGBC there doesn't seem to be as much spit and polish as that game, which had all new backgrounds, extended screen size, as well as extras like a colour edit mode.
Not really a big deal since this is still a relatively new game in comparison, though it does make you wonder why it took them so long to port it (along with the delays).

From what i can remember, the backgrounds in this game look like the ones from the Arcade version rather than the ones from the original 02um on the ps2. I'm actually not sure whether the Tougeki Version for ps2 had these backgrounds also however. (My copy of the tougeki version is still sealed)

Omega Rugal's stage definitely looks alot better than it does in the original ps2 version.

It seems as though Gallery Mode has been removed from this version, though Endless and Challenge Modes are still in there for those who enjoy the one player experience. In place of Gallery mode though this does add online versus play, which as i mentioned is currently unavailable. Speculation is that XBLA titles which are released earlier than expected are not yet added to the online game servers.

This also does not have the original 2002 packaged into it like the ps2 version does.

As well as the online versus mode, there is also a leaderboards menu (see image below) where you can (not yet) view various rankings as well as some kind of True Skill Ranking. A quick google brings up this information about True Skill ranking.

I'm not sure whether this is actually the Tougeki version (though i would imagine it is) or the original 02um, i haven't actually spent enough time with the Tougeki version to know many of the differences aside from the really obvious glitches which were removed for that version.

It remains to be seen whether this is worth the upgrade from the ps2 version, as we still cannot test the online mode which i'd imagine most players would be looking forward to in this version.
Once i'm able to test out the online i'll post up some reports on that.

For players who may not own any version of 02UM i would recommend this game, i would consider this as one of the best games released by SNKP in the past few years and quite possibly one of the better KOF games overall. Also at a budget price of 800MS (as compared to the £20ish cost of the import ps2 version) it is quite a bargain.

Until they sort out the servers i'll be spending my time trying to get the offline achievements :D