The King of Fighters XV revealed another character trailer this week, announcing Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia are obviously back in KOF 15 - the surprise though, is that they're paired up with King to form the Art of Fighting team.

• KOF XV - First reveal and character design drafts

What's Art of Fighting?

As you already know, Art of Fighting, Ryuuko no Ken in Japanese, is one of the flagship SNK IPs, created by Hiroshi Matsumoto after leaving Capcom and his position as one of the core developers of the first Street Fighter game with Takashi Nishiyama.

Ryo and Robert are the main characters of Art of Fighting, and are regular playable characters in KOF. Each KOF game's story has the characters teamed up in teams canonically / storywise. Usually, the Art of Fighting team is made of Ryo, Robert, and Ryo's sister and best girl Yuri Sakazaki (Every SNK girl is best girl).

Why are SNK fans hyped for the Art of Fighting team in KOF 15?

However, in a few KOF games, Yuri is replaced by their father Takuma Sakazaki. Or by King, another Art of Fighting character, and this is what's happening with KOF 15, for the first time since KOF 2000, released in 2000. So it's been literally 21 years.

Overall, KOF 15 is heavily appealing for old time fans as myself, bringing back characters like Chizuru and the Orochi team, and reforming old teams like the Ryo Robert King Art of Fighting team.

However, it's still very early to know how the game will fare overall. In particular, SNK has yet to fully detail on paper the game's mechanics. While we had tons of trailers for KOF 15 these past months, they're all typical social media geared trailers, very short, only made for building up hype.

It's worth noting the trailers have gone a long way since the first Shun'ei trailer and its infamous cuts everywhere. The Ryo and Robert trailer shows plenty of uncut gameplay.

The King Of Fighters XV was first announced in December 2018, for a 2020 release. The game was furthermore teased at EVO 2019 in August, with only a logo. However, the game was delayed with the Covid-19 pandemic. SNK fully revealed KOF 15 in January 2021.

The game is planned for a 2021 release. With Melty Blood: Type Lumina and Guilty Gear Strive in tow, 2021 is looking like a promising year for fighting games.