Characters don't leave the screen after they're knocked out. Instead, they rest while the next fighters take turns.
Besides the revamped striker system, King of Fighters EX2 improves upon its predecessor in a number of other ways. The most visible of these fixes includes the fact that fallen characters now appear hunched over or collapsed in the background once the next fighter takes over. This may sound like a frivolous feature, but it has been a part of every KOF game--with the exception of EX: Neo Blood. Attacks also don't glitch out and pass through characters like they used to, and the controls have been made more responsive, which, along with a greatly expanded selection of moves, makes this KOF game feel more like one of its arcade counterparts and less like a ramshackle port. The roster includes 22 different characters who are mainly holdovers from the KOF arcade games, like Terry, Mai, Iori, K', and Kyo, among others. Three new characters, named Jun, Miu, and Reiji, are exclusive to this latest game. Jun and Miu aren't particularly interesting, but Reiji fits right in with the usual cast, thanks to his pretty-boy good looks and the mysterious cameos that his young female companion makes during his prematch warm-ups. Play options include the usual assortment of modes you'd expect to find in a one-on-one fighting game, like story, two-player team, two-player single, and practice.
Bigger is usually better in fighting games, and Chang and Reiji are easily two of the largest characters to appear in a GBA game.
If you've played any of the previous KOF games in the arcade or at home on the Neo Geo AES console, you'll be happy to know that EX2: Howling Blood on the GBA looks, sounds, and feels like a King of Fighters game ought to. The characters are large, the variety of sound effects is superb--and includes speech clips for special moves and round call-outs--and the backgrounds make use of the kinds of daylight and weather-related special effects that you don't often see in a GBA game. As far as the overall presentation is concerned, EX2 is a class act all the way--from the fiery menus and Japanese animation-style character portraits to the conversations that take place between matches and at the end of the game. The only place where the game noticeably comes up short is in its music, which, while upbeat and reminiscent of classic KOF tunes, doesn't quite live up to the standards set by some of the system's more recent games.
King of Fighters EX2: Howling Blood has positioned itself as the standard that subsequent fighting games published for the Game Boy Advance must meet or beat. It compromises nothing in delivering the arcade KOF experience to the palm of your hand.
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