King of Fighters 12 was in the arcades the last time I was in Japan and I for one am really happy to see a solid arcade release that is still dedicated to high quality 2D art. I'm just curious- as people who like anime and are browsing through a video game forum, how do you feel about more and more games going away from hand drawn to 3D graphics?

It really depends on how their done. I'm just glad that KoF is taking a step forward. For so long it's felt stagnate and I'm really happy with this recent update. Though no Mai makes me angry!

Really, with 3D it all varies. There are certain games that I don't mind, but some I really do. From what I've observed, it's those that start off as 3D titles seem to work the best that way, those that were 2D just never seem to really end up working that well overall (Mortal Kombat (IMO), Street Fighter EX). There are still a plentiful amount of 2D style games, even though the vast amount of current 3D titles. It's rather nice to see in an industry of which everything is getting completely reformed that fighters still maintain their balance. Or at least some do.

SNK really took quite a bit to evolve, graphics wise. In my opinion, they're too late in the high definition party, since other developers have been working with high res. sprites way before them (Arcsystem Works, the guys behind Arcana Heart, etc.). Also, why did they have to waste their efforts in another KOF? That franchise is too worn out, they could have done something better like a Garou 2, a Last Blade 3 or even a new game series, but oh well, I keep forgetting SNK nowadays lacks the creativity it used to have back in the 90s.

KOF XII looks fine in my opinion, though I've heard a lot of really hard critics against the game, most of them related to the gameplay and aesthetics:

-People likes mashing the critical counter button a lot.
-Characters have no close attacks.
-No final boss.
-Arcade mode is just a lame time trial-like thing.
-Small roster... and not a lot of variety either.
-Critical Counter still needs a lot of work.

No final boss? aw, ... whatever, the best years has gone. In my opinion, the KOF 97 is the best, maybe too old for the XBOX, but a classic is a classic

Well, I'm glad they kept King of fighers XII from becoming 3-D even there are king of fighter games that are already 3-d. I didn't mind street fighter IV from becoming 3-D because Capcom did a really on that game. However, I don't think every game should go to 3D because that will take out the 2-D fighting fanbase. Of course, when King of fighters XII was announced 2D, SNK had to make very special since ripping the same sprites from previous king of fighters game would be ridiculous.

I'm actually amazed at the new hand drawn sprites because other previous fighting games used cel shading computer techniques while King of Fighters XII used completely hand drawn sprites. Some of those sprites have anywhere from 300 to 400 frames per character, so you can imagine the amount of hard work it took to make this game. I've read that with a team of 10 people, it would take around 17 to 18 months just to create all the frames for one character. That's why there aren't that many characters in king of fighters XII, which is dissappointing since there are many characters I like to play that got cut off. I think the number of characters was 20 plus 2 console exclusive characters.

I hope companies keep the 2-D graphics alive, although I don't mind 3-D graphics at all. Some RPG's like the Tales series went 3-D which was no problem for me since there were actually better that the 2-D tales games. Don't get me wrong, I will still play 2-D as long as they are good.

I am really hype
for this one. Those handdrawn character models are simply gorgeous and the online mode is really nice if you never had GGPO.
My favourite characters are Iori, Kim, Elizabeth and Kensou.
I really liked Vice and Yashiro... too bad they didn't make it into this game.