Get into King of Fighters XIII

The Neo Geo World Tour 3 will feature King of Fighters XIII (KOFXIII) which, in a surprise comeback, will be the game's first major tournament circuit in several years. Naturally, this is a great time to get into the game. So this, much like the article on KOF02, will be an introductory primer to KOF XIII. I won't bother repeating a bunch of the KOF fundamentals from that article so you can run back through that if you'd like some more basic information. XIII shares a great deal of its DNA with KOF02 so, like I say with most fighting games, learning one game will help you get better at the other. For more fundamentals on execution (which KOF XIII is infamous for) check out my execution guide.

Sections to review from the execution guide

• Aim for the waist
• Double tap
• Break it down

Sections to review from the KOF02 primer

• King of Fighters is a TEAM game
• Teams in practice

Classic sensibilities in the modern age of fighting games

In an era of simplification and slowing down across the board in fighting games, XIII kind of stood out like an indignant, sore thumb as it almost completely ignored a lot of the trends in fighting games at the time. To put this in perspective, when XIII was released to home consoles, most of the fighting game community was focused on the upcoming release of Street Fighter X Tekken. For newer players that cut their teeth on SFIV or Blazblue, KOF XIII had some design choices that may have seemed senseless to the new breed.

Jump-ins

One of the aspects of XIII to draw the most ire, combo conversions from a jump-in, weren't as easy due to the low hitstun on jump-ins. XIII comes from the "aim for the waist" mentality of a bygone era. Today you won't ever hear this advice, but there was a time when if you wanted to link a move after you hit with a jump-in, you needed to aim the jump-in to hit at your opponent's waist. In today's age of jump-ins generally being +100f on hit or block this may be especially jarring, but it's important to note that this was somewhat common of fighting games before SFIV. The beloved 3rd Strike, for example, has a very similar design to how jump-ins work and how you need to convert those jump-ins into combos. In fact, the turn-of-phrase, "aim for the waist," actually originates from early SFII tutorials. What is different in KOF is your close heavy normals are very quick which means, unlike Ryu's close HP, Kyo's close C will link after a jump-in.

Hyperbolic Debate (HD) meter

One of the most controversial aspects of XIII was the HD meter. Often touted as "gamebreaking," and "an instant win for anyone that could do big combos," widespread misunderstandings of this meter were almost single-handedly responsible for most of the complaints about XIII as both a fighting game and, surprisingly, as how HD meter allegedly made XIII "not a true KOF." None of this is true. HD mode is just MAX mode and it was separated from your usual super meter so that the cost of MAX activations didn't conflict with the cost of EX specials. That's all it is. We will dive into how it works and how even a beginner can do really cool stuff with it! But first, we must have the ToD debate... Why? Because HD mode and 100% combos are all anyone ever talks about when it comes to XIII. It's the elephant in the room and it needs to be addressed.

The Touch of Death Debate

A touch of death combo (ToD) is a combo where, once started, is guaranteed to finish the round. Sometimes they are performed with a glitch or exploit, and sometimes it simply requires a lot of meter. There are some ToD that are character-specific or situation-specific. Despite how notorious XIII's ToD combos were, they're not actually specific to XIII. In fact, a common video topic in the earliest days of YouTube was compilations by skilled players of ToD combos for most or all of the cast of an older KOF game like 98 or 2002. In fact, the term ToD actually has its origins in classic SFII. The KOF community, namely the South American community on YouTube, actually use the term "100%" meaning the combo is capable of doing 100% of the opponent's health. If you follow me on Twitter, it's not terribly uncommon to see me call a ToD a 100% combo more often than not because I picked the lingo up from those YouTube videos of the early 2000's.

So if all of this existed beforehand, why did it become the center of every conversation with XIII? Simply put, what happened was more talking than playing. I'm not trying to be mean, put anyone down, or single anybody out. But the reality is how HD mode is often described seldom represents what HD mode actually is. Discussions around the game quickly became hyperbolic and took on a zero sum game wherein everyone agreed that HD combos were too strong and too hard to perform to be fair so that no one needed to admit that not being able to do them wasn't the cause of their failure. Simply put, the argument was "HD combos aren't fair (because I can't do them)" but that's such a myopic view of what HD meter is in XIII, and ignores the very principle of King of Fighters. One character killed is only 1/3 of the battle. And if you blow all of your resources killing 1/3 of your opponent's team, what's your gameplan for the other 2/3? That's the thing. HD combos aren't free. In fact, they're really expensive. And if you mess up your conversion to an HD combo, the opportunity is gone. Just like any other fighting game, metered big damage combos have a time and place, but are not a one-size-fits-all solution. You cannot just learn some HD combos and expect to be in a top 8. With that put to bed, now it's finally time to talk about what HD meter actually is.

Hyperdrive (HD) meter

Most fighting games have very specific routes through which you can cancel or link moves and, generally speaking, are combo routes designed and intended by the game developers. There's usually some license to experiment, but a launcher is a launcher and a chain combo is unilateral by design. What hyperdrive allowed you to do was to take a point that is usually quite rigid, the cooldown of a special move, and deviate from the intended combo path. Generally specials might combo into supers but not much else. Hyperdrive allowed you to combo a special into another special. Let's look at an example in KOF XIII.

Kyo (NESTS) has a 2-in-1 with c.5C > 6B, but if you try to cancel and launch with 236D, the second kick might whiff. Kyo has a plan though because he knows if he cancels c.5C > 6B to 236C instead, then performs the 236D, he'll cancel his punch into his launcher and be able to convert to much more damage! This is called an HD cancel and costs half of your HD meter. While it seems like a paltry use of HD meter when a full bar could net you that coveted ToD combo, it's actually a great use of meter mid screen as after the launcher, Kyo can use his rekkas to carry straight to the corner. And said combo just did 30% damage! That's a big deal considering you never had to use super meter. Your opponent also has 100% of their health once per round. You probably don't even need to do 100% to finish off their character.

So when do you actually pop HD mode? Well, there's a couple of answers. One scenario might be to take advantage of another of HD mode's attributes which is that being in HD mode allows you to perform HD cancels on block. Normally you wouldn't be able to HD cancel on block, but by activating HD mode you can perform guaranteed guard crush strings to force an opening. Your opponent can, of course, guard cancel blowback (universal instant reversal) but that is assuming they have a meter to do so. If they just spent all of their meter doing a ToD combo on your previous character, they'll need some time to recover their meter and if you've been more conservative with your resources, you can take advantage of that.

Another way you can use the HD mode is, of course, the HD combo. For a lot of characters, the BnB HD combo is not going to kill without some super meter as well. That said, you most likely don't need to do all 100% as your opponent probably isn't at full health anyways. Easy HD combo loops like Kim's 214D > 2... 8B or Ralf's 236C > 4... 6A are great places to start because they're all the damage most players will need when they get the opportunity to perform an HD combo.

The final point about HD would be HD cancel combos. If you've read my KOF 2002 article, this is extremely similar to MAX cancel combos. The big difference is when you HD cancel you will immediately begin auto-running so you don't need to buffer a run anymore. The game does it for you. That means you can focus on just linking your next normal. I personally recommend taking someone really easy like Kyo (NESTS) and just starting by doing c.5C > 6B xx HD cancel, c5C > 6B. Once you get that down, try cancelling to 236C and then cancelling that 236C to 236D. We'll break out the building blocks so you can walk into training mode and pick this up in an afternoon.

• Start by practicing 236C xx 236D (make sure you have enough HD meter)
• Then do c.5C > 6B xx HD cancel, c.5C (make sure you have full HD meter)
• Next add that last chain cancel, c.5C > 6B xx HD cancel, c.5C > 6B
• Finally do it all. c.5C > 6B xx HD cancel, c.5C > 6B xx 236C xx 236D

These are the building blocks to picking up HD combos and being able to do them yourselves. It's no different than any other cancel and anyone can absolutely do it.

What if I just don't want to learn HD combos?

Then don't! They're just one part of the game. And even though they've dominated this piece, it's mostly due to how much discussions about HD mode dominated the discourse around this game. Outside of this one meter, the rest is just KOF. If you want to just do c.5C > 6B xx super, you can. And it does a lot of damage. In fact, this ancient combo does almost the same amount of damage as it did 20 years ago. These screenshots are from the iOS ports, but it's what I had on hand. The PC is still packed from the move. My point is these kinds of simple combos didn't go away and neither did KOF's fundamentals.


I touched on it briefly at the top, but KOF XIII is one of the few fighting games of its time that didn't succumb to the trends of its generation. KOF didn't get slower, they didn't overly simplify it, and probably the most obvious, they stuck to 2D which was a dying art in fighters.

Primed

And with that, I've kept my word. I've created what will hopefully be a jumping off point for some people. I'm sure it won't sit with everyone, but who it does hook, I hope you waste a ton of time jumping into the fighting games that I personally hold as the greatest of all time. Have fun out there and I look forward to yelling about the NGWT3 on Twitter with you.

Primers on 02UM and XIII coming soon.

My goal isn't to compete in the NGWT, but to get people excited/interested in these games and to understand enough to be able to tune in and enjoy them! (or play them)

— Logan 🏳️‍🌈 needs to play more KOF (@Play_More_KOF) September 26, 2019