King of Fighters, in this country at least, is a fan's series. It doesn't get wide distribution in arcades, and the press doesn't cover it as heavily as Capcom's more popular 2D fighters, but I have met some downright rabid King of Fighters players in my time. They are a long- suffering lot. They hunt for arcades that might carry the games in functional cabinets, or suffer through the many KOF home conversions that all have some sort of major drawback: the absurd price of the Neo Geo cartridge versions, the diabolical load times of the Neo CD versions, or the graphical mediocrity and slightly-less-diabolical-but-still-pretty-nasty load times of the Playstation and Saturn ports.

Relief has arrived in the form of King of Fighters Dream Match 1999 for the Sega Dreamcast. All around, it is the best home conversion of a KOF game yet, with near-perfect character graphics, short load times (no more than two or three seconds at the worst of times), a sweet anime intro movie, and partially-3D backgrounds that look surprisingly good, considering SNK's checkered history when it comes to polygons.

Calling this game "1999" is a bit of a misnomer. In fact, it is a conversion of the Neo Geo King of Fighters '98. It includes all 38 selectable characters from that latest iteration of the series, plus hidden characters and alternate versions with different special moves. Returning are all of the old standbys; the Japan Heroes Team, the Hungry Wolf Team from Fatal Fury, the Sakazaki family from Art of Fighting, '97's versions of Team Brazil and Team Britain, the Psycho Soldiers from deep in the SNK archives, and Team Korea (in their matching outfits from '97). There are also teams that haven't been seen in a little while, or haven't quite established themselves yet; the New Faces and Real Bout teams from '97 are back (with their excellent music), Iori has reunited with the Deadly Secretaries from '96, the USA Sports Heroes return after a long hiatus, and there's a new team consisting of characters who are all getting along in years. Heidern (last seen in '95), Takuma Sakazaki (also MIA since then), and Saisyu Kusanagi (Kyo's father, the sub-boss in '95) are now Team Middle Age. Two independents are also in the tournament: Rugal Bernstein, cheap as ever, and Kyo's pupil Shingo Yabuki. That's everyone who has ever appeared in a KOF game, save Kasumi from '96 and Eiji from '95.

Graphically, the game is not quite arcade perfect, which I find a bit odd considering how much memory the DC packs. There are a few missing frames of animation, mostly in poses and standing animations. Also, the characters look a bit smaller than they did in the arcade. I'm not entirely certain why that is, but I gather from discussion on Usenet that it results from the conversion from display on an arcade monitor to a TV, due to differences in resolution. Despite this, though, the game still looks great. There is an amazing wealth of visual detail to be discovered throughout the game. All the characters have a wide array of attacks, dodges taunts, win poses, introductory comments, and other actions. As in '96 and '97, some characters react to each other in their introductions, but old exchanges have changed and many new ones have been added. I particularly like Chizuru's reaction to the various Orochi-blooded characters, and Andy's new thumbs-up when meeting Blue Mary.

The polygonal backgrounds, which were the subject of some discussion prior to the game's release, have turned out quite well. The backgrounds are as detailed as they were in the arcade version, as far as I can see, and the use of obviously 3D objects in certain areas has added some new touches. In the China stage, for example, the long boat that makes up the playing field rocks back and forth. In Korea, polygonal boats float up and down while moored and polygonal seagulls fly to the left and right, and also away and towards your point of view, smoothly changing size according to their position. The best background, though you'll probably be too frustrated to enjoy it, is the final battle in Rugal's sunken aircraft carrier. Weird Gigerian machinery fills most of it, but there are windows that look out into the ocean, where 3D sharks and other sea creatures swim about.

Gameplay is exactly what you would expect from a King of Fighters game. As always, you pick a team of three fighters and fight best-of-five matches against other teams. As in '97, you can choose between the "extra" and "advanced" power gauge modes, which affects your ability to perform desperation moves, the way you dodge, and a few other actions. The length of your extra-mode bar, or the number of stocks you can store in advanced mode, now changes depending on your progression in each best-of-five match, although you can turn that off if you wish. Another new feature I'd never turn off is a holdover from the arcade, which allows you to handicap your opponents after losing and continuing. I couldn't have beaten Rugal without it. The fighting system proper works perfectly. It ought to, considering that SNK's been refining it through five games. The characters all have a wide variety of moves and different fighting styles, allowing for plenty of replay value if you try to master more than a few, and endless competition if you have friends to take on in the versus mode. The DC pad, as you might expect, doesn't work all that well. Playing with a pad, I had a hard time pulling out desperation moves that I could do in my sleep with an arcade joystick. The DC joystick works much better, though, and in fact feels very much like the second-generation Neo Geo sticks, the smaller ones that were packed in with the Neo CD.