The King of Fighters: Heat of Battle

The King of Fighters: Heat of Battle is a Game Boy port of The King of Fighters '96, featuring guest appearances from Orochi Iori, Orochi Leona, and Mr. Karate(!?). Curiously, this game did not have a US release like the last game had.

DIP Switches#

file:King of Fighters 96 SGB Title Sound Test DIP 70.png

As this game shares mostly the same engine as The King of Fighters '95, the same "DIP SW" flags are accessible here also. All coding and behaviors are mostly the same, apart from some different effects that are described in the table below. To set any of these flags, at the TAKARA logo enter a particular button combination from the table below to get a corresponding effect. Every time one of the flags are set, the corresponding sound will be heard. To see what DIP switches are enabled, go to the options screen. At the bottom of the screen there will be string "DIPSW-XX", where XX is a hexadecimal sum of all enabled DIP switch bits.

• Hold A + B, then press Select 1 time (bits 5 and 3, HEX 28) - Allows the option to choose duplicate characters in a team. Additionally, this makes the super meter regenerate for both players at all times in-game.
• Press Select 3 times (bit 6, HEX 40) - Unlocks Goenitz, which normally requires the game being completed on Normal mode.
• Press Select 20 times (bit 7, HEX 80) - Unlocks Mr. Karate, Orochi Iori, Orochi Leona, and the boss form of Chizuru (labeled in-game as "Kagura"), which normally requires the game being completed on Hard mode. Additionally, this changes the default SGB border to a different one, with a changed palette.
• Hold A + B + Left, then press Select 30 times (bits 2 and 4, HEX 14) - Enables the SGB Sound test mode in the options menu. This DIP switch also turns Select + B or Select + A into shortcut commands for supers during gameplay.

Note, that because of how specific the code input and check method is, all button presses are counted at the same time, so if you enter one of the codes, you are already entering all the others. So if you just quickly press Select at least 20 times, two codes will be enabled at once. To enable all flags at once, first, hold A + B, press Select once, while still holding those buttons, hold additionally Left, then press Select very quickly 30 times. When you hear a final explosion sound, that means all codes are activated.

Regional Differences#

Title Screen#

Nettou The King of Fighters '96	The King of Fighters: Heat of Battle

The title screen has some subtle changes to compensate for the smaller logo, raising the scrolling cloud graphics and button prompt (which is changed to "PRESS START"), and adding more copyright information. Additionally, aside from the obvious changes to the logo, the SGB border features a slightly-tweaked palette that increases the contrast, making the blue background darker and Kyo and Iori brighter.

Extra SGB Borders#

The palette for the SGB border changes when you enable the DIP switch that unlocks all characters; While the border in Nettou The King of Fighters '96 turns a muted grey, and makes Kyo and Iori monochrome with red eyes, Heat of Battle instead simply makes the border a vibrant pink.