The King of Fighters 2000

While the gameplay system is inherited from '99, this game employs the "Active Striker System," allowing strikers to be summoned almost anywhere and at any time, as long as they are stocked and not being hit, greatly increasing the flexibility of combos. However, the system's use led to the discovery of easy "traps" and "instant-kill combos" by combining certain characters with strikers, which actually had a negative impact on the game's balance. Perhaps due to SNK's financial crisis at the time of production, and uncertainty over whether a sequel could be made, instead of all new characters being original KOF characters, many characters from previous SNK games were used as "Another Strikers" (some characters also have a third "Maniac Striker"; the PS2 version also features an additional Maniac Striker as a hidden striker). Since Mori Kirou, who had been responsible for character illustrations up to this point, moved to Capcom the following year, this is the final game in which characters drawn by his hand can be seen.