The King Of Fighters Extreme was a huge hit on the Neo Geo so I was intrigued to find out what it could do on the N-Gage. Borrowing ever so slightly from all those much loved fighting games of recent years (Street Fighter for example), The King Of Fighters Extreme attempts to bring a top notch fun 2D tag team fight game to the N-Gage and it does this to a pretty high standard.

The overall premise of KOFE is that you can choose from over 20 characters to build teams which then compete against other teams controlled by either the AI or via blutooth by one of your friends. You compete against a variety of backgrounds with your fighters, aiming to take on and beat as many teams as you can to be crowned the ultimate king of fighters. You do this by the eternally infamous tag team approach and the controls of the game are very responsive and really do make you feel in charge of the game. They’re fairly easy to master and with numerous special moves and attacks, you’ll soon be whooping it up with delight as you throw a huge hulking man over your head sending him crashing onto the floor.

The graphics on this title are pretty good. It borrows heavily from the GBA release and it holds up very well on the N-Gage. At times the framerate can be a little bit sluggish and that might make the action feel slightly slow but it certainly doesn’t ruin the game by any means. The colours are very sharp and the characters moves are very well animated. Overall it delivers well graphically and certainly makes for an interesting fighting game.

The sound is also pretty decent and the sounds of the characters are what you’d expect from a 2D fight game. The usual moans, groans and ouches apply here and there’s the typical japanese sounding background music. It can be a little irritating at times but it isn’t too annoying that you’d always want to switch it off. This game is suitable for deaf gamers as all the action is physical really and theres no real reason for dialogue. There are subtitles onscreen helping you make the choices you need to.

For the female gamer, this title is pretty good fun. There are tons of female characters to choose from and they’re not all the usual corset wearing fighters who seem to favour next to no clothes even though they’re being swung at by swords and god knows what else. Don’t get me wrong, those females are there too but they’re sufficiently outnumbered by some wearing sensible clothing for a change. It is a good fighting game whether you’re male or female so by all means check it out.

Overall, a very good little fighting game which can keep you busy for hours. There are numerous modes in which you can play this title including story mode, battle, practice, time attack and survival. Each of them offer something different making for a game which has plenty of depth and certainly won’t be completed in a short amount of time. You can also challenge your friends via bluetooth which is brilliant fun because you can then take great glee in seeing them panic as they try to manically tag their other team mate in time before their life runs out. This is definitely worth having if you enjoy fighting games however, be warned, its a lot of the same button bashing and unless thats something you enjoy you most likely wont love this title. Had the frame rate been sorted out a little then it would have been an even better release, still, not too bad and pretty good fun.