SNK Playmore has been mashing up their classic characters into other genres like tower defense and shooters. The Rhythm of Fighters takes the roster from The King of Fighters and brings them into a music game. Siliconera asked SNK Playmore why they wanted to make a rhythm game and about the Easter Eggs for NeoGeo fans.

Why did you want to create a music game with the King of Fighters characters?

Our company’s IPs such as The King of Fighters and Fatal Fury have been enjoying resounding success worldwide for many years for their gameplay, characters, story and, of course, their music. We then thought it would be interesting to create a new game genre by mixing fighting and music game genres together, leading to the development of The Rhythm of Fighters. Of course, this idea came to us because of our love for music and for SNK games.

It’s been a couple weeks after launch, how has the game sold so far in comparison to SNK’s expectations? What music packs are the most played? What user feedback did you get that surprised you?

Despite the massive number or free-to-play apps, this game, The Rhythm of Fighters was released at $0.99 and had great success immediately after its release in many regions of the world such as Japan, USA, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The Fatal Fury Special and Metal Slug Defense DLC music packs were among the most popular additional music packs.

We were definitely surprised by the number of requests to release NeoGeo original tracks in ROF. We had some expectations, but we were really impressed by the passion of the SNK fans worldwide.

Why did you change The Rhythm of Fighters into a free to play game?

Metal Slug Defense is currently available as a free-to-play application, and has been downloaded by more than 12,000,000 users. However, we thought that The Rhythm of Fighters would have a good reception worldwide even if released as a paid application. We then realized that paid apps face a lot of issues, such as its cost depending on the country and region of the world.

Therefore, in order to be enjoyed by even more SNK fans, we finally decided to change ROF to a free-to-play app. We hope that our fans will take the opportunity of this pricing change to try out and purchase more DLC music packs.

We are also pleased to inform our dear users who have previously purchased the paid version of ROF, that they will be offered 5 NEOGEO original tracks. We invite owners of the full version of ROF to try these additional tracks full of nostalgia.

Rhythm of Fighters seems to pay homage to SNK’s history with Athena as a support character and packs of Metal Slug songs. What is the most obscure reference in The Rhythm of Fighters?

Not only with the numerous support characters originating from many SNK games, but The Rhythm of Fighters is also full of Easter Eggs to please all our fans, even the biggest. I would like to take the “in-game flick commands” for example. There, you will be asked to reproduce the Raging Storm’s command input when playing “Soy Sauce for Geese” or the secret command which allows you to play as Kyo Kusanagi in KOF ’99 when playing “Tears”. Please try them all!

We’ve seen a shmup with King of Fighters characters, Metal Slug tower defense, and now a music game. What other genres would you like to experiment with classic SNK characters?

We have already released numerous mobile applications from the The King of Fighters, Metal Slug, and Samurai Shodown games series, but we still have other popular game content we would like to release as applications.

Moreover, we are thinking of developing applications in the future in line with the characteristics of mobile devices. Please stay tuned to SNK Playmore for more game content to be announced in the months to come! Thank you.