Published: Monday, 2nd November, 2009 1:46pm

King of Fighters XII

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With Street Fighter IV lighting up the summer, it's fair to say that 2009's been a good year for people with a love of button mashing fighting games. But while the Street Fighter franchise is the mainstream hero, KoF has cult status that makes its fans love it with a rabid ferocity.

It's a proper old school 2D arcade classic, and to know it is to love it. If you don't know it, maybe now's the time to say hi.

The martial arts showdown, based on three on three fights, has undergone a complete graphical overhaul with beautifully rendered high res characters fighting fluidly across some stunning hand-drawn backgrounds. It looks stunning and the game play is still as fun as ever - with the usual balance of combos worth investing the time into getting to grips with and button mashing for the more casual players.

The one blip is that the game is so short. Just six levels and 22 characters means that for replay value this is much more fun online than as a single player. But despite that, while King of Fighters might have plenty of pretenders to its crown, but it's still a worthy leader of the genre.

Three stars

* King of Fighters XII is out now on XBox 360 and Playstation 3.