Games worth discovering

King of Fighters’ Anticipated Mod Finally Updated After Years of Silence

6K View2022-10-20

Earlier this month, many Chinese fans of The King of Fighters were surprised to find that a famous mod series has released a new version WingEx1.2 after several years of silence.

For them, The King of Fighters is a part of their childhood memories, and the mod release is surely exciting. The developer behind the mod, Dream Traveler, made three videos explaining the history of his efforts in the past 15 years, and players said they finally know who he is.

Indie dev Time Traveler’s page on Bilibili

The King of Fighters came out in 1994, popular on arcades and simulators. But for some Chinese players, it was KOF Wing which made them fall in love with the game.

The Wing series were developed on Flash but had delicate UI, reasonable combos, and more importantly, an easier control system.

Since 2014, however, due to the decline of Flash and SNK’s more presence in China, the indie dev of Wing has stopped launching new versions.

A Flash football game inspired indie dev Dream Traveler

Back to 2001, as a freshman majoring in computer science, the dev Dream Traveler saw a Flash game about football on the computer and since then, became interested in Flash games.

He didn’t know anything about using Flash to make game, but learned it by himself. In his senior year, when other students did internships, he was immersed in the excitement of developing his own game.

A screenshot of KOF mod development in Dream Traveler’s video

In 2005, he released the first mod The King of Fighters in Wild Dance and posted it on a flash forum Flash8.net.

The King of Fighters mod was released on flash forum Flash8.net.It didn’t see a warm response, because flash games were considered to have little commercial value at that time.

After graduation, Dream Traveler resigned multiple times to have more time for development but faced economic burdens. Despite this, he went on to make many subsequent versions, including The King of Fighters Fantasy Battle.

The passion cultivated in forming a studio named AT studio with three friends. They integrated the old mods into the Wing series and it eventually paid off.

A screenshot of The King of Fighters Wing 1.6

The Wing series became popular after being reposted by games sites

Flash game sites like 4399 and 7k7k reposted their games, as part of a Flash game boom. From 2010 to 2013, the largest number of visits to the Wing series reached 4 million times a day.

Fans loved the mods and they also joined Dream Traveler’s game blog and the mod community.

There were details described in the videos and one of them has received 50,000 views on Bilibili. After watching the videos, players left messages one after another.

A player told a touching story of playing with his father.