Broken Bootlegs is a weekly series covering unlicensed games (also known as bootleg games) for mainly 8-bit and 16-bit consoles. This week’s entry brings one of the more well-known fighting game series to the Sega Genesis/MegaDrive: King of Fighters!

While on a neverending quest to find fighting games to play some years back, I eventually started exploring outside of the realm of Capcom and rediscovered SNK since I played Samurai Showdown IV back when it was new. From Art of Fighting, to Fatal Fury, to King of Fighters, I fell in love with the older KOF games, with ’98 being one of my favorites from that group. As I didn’t have regular access to arcade hardware, I looked to seeing what ports were out there at the time, and my only options were to get it for the PS1 or Dreamcast, neither of which I had about a decade ago. Low and behold, I found three games for the Sega Genesis- King of Fighters ’98, King of Fighters ’99, and King of Fighters 2000. While they’re bootlegs, they provide an interesting take on the King of Fighters series as a whole.Read More