Rugal/Orochi Saga
The King of Fighters '94 | The King of Fighters '95 | The King of Fighters '96 | The King of Fighters '97 | The King of Fighters '98
NESTS Chronicles
The King of Fighters '99 | The King of Fighters 2000 | The King of Fighters 2001 | The King of Fighters 2002
Tales of Ash Saga
The King of Fighters 2003 | The King of Fighters XI | The King of Fighters XII | The King of Fighters XIII
Shun'ei Saga
The King of Fighters XIV | The King of Fighters XV
- Awesome Music: Has its own page.
- Gameplay Derailment: In KOF '96, Practical Taunt depletes the Power Gauge much faster than manually charging it, as you can cancel the taunt and do it again in quick succession. This technique technically worked in KOF '94 and '95, but their cooldown of canceling taunts was about equal to charging the Power Gauge, whereas '96 makes the taunt's cooldown much shorter. Thus, charging the Power Gauge in KOF '96 is entirely pointless as your opponent can immediately set it back to zero as soon as they start the taunts.
- Growing the Beard: KOF '94 and '95 were critically successful, but it was KOF '96 that the series truly hit its stride, setting a stage for eventually usurping Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting, SNK's originally more popular franchises. KOF '96 replaces quick step with running and evasion dodge with evasion roll, both contributing to the aggressive metagame that the series would be known for. '96 is also when the series makes a serious attempt to establish its own continuity by releasing the games on a Story Arc basis, expanded by secondary adaptations like mangas and Drama CDs. Even the series' reputation for its excellent music all started with KOF '96, being the first appearance of "Esaka?" and "Stormy Saxophone 2", among many other great tracks. While the game might be a buggy mess, KOF '96 invigorated the series in a way that it never lost its relevance in fighting game industry even after decades.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- This game sees the debut of fan favorite character Leona Heidern, replacing her adoptive father on the Ikari Warriors team. While she's not exactly a central character to the plot, she's remained a highly beloved series staple ever since, missing only a single entry since her debut. Yasuyuki Oda even cites her as his favorite female character in the franchise.
- Goenitz makes his sole canonical appearance in this game, but has remained one of SNK's most popular antagonists. Many fans wish for him to become a fully playable, non-boss character just as Rugal did. This popularity led to him becoming playable in SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos, home ports of The King of Fighters 2002 (as well as Unlimited Match) and The King of Fighters XV.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: Geese Howard makes his first appearance in a KOF game... the same year he was killed off in his canon series by falling off a building at the end of Real Bout Fatal Fury. This caused confusion for those who didn't know KOF and Fatal Fury run in different continuities and might be a major factor in spreading the joke about how Geese can continue to fall and come back alive.
- Older Than They Think: The "Unblockable Ground Pound" glitch that made Daimon notoriously powerful in The King of Fighters '98 was first discovered in this game.
- Sophomore Slump: As a complete restructure of the series, KOF '96 introduced a lot of mechanics that would later become staples of the series, like rolls and SDMs. However, all of the innovation came at a price: this game is incredibly buggy and unbalanced, even by KOF standards. It's common in a match where a player can spam an insanely overpowered attack (like Mature's Blow Back that comes out at lightning speed) and still win because there's very little way to counter them. Thankfully, SNK learned its lesson from this game and would continue to release more polished games than '96.
