King of Fighters Moe Degeneration

She looked better in KoF 11

she doesn't really match the style of the rest of the kof cast, ash also falls victim to looking out of place except that he's gay.

THOSE MOTHER FUCKERRRRRRRRRRRRSSSSS.

Nobody seems to have mentioned it, but that design is how Athena originally looked when she first came into existence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_Soldier
Not that it makes the design any more interesting.

wtf?

2001 is superior to them all.

Admiral Ackbar looked at this and said "Its a trap!"

Cute, but....why are you legs so fucking huge?!!!!

If...and it's a very big IF KOF can make it to XIII, I wouldn't be surprise if they turn Athena into a loli next lol

Sure moe sells, but moe LOLI sells EVEN BETTER rofl

99 looks da BEST :3

the only thing that is missing in this is her being a bit mature

That 2 big legs is not FAT,,,
That are MUSCLES guys, MUSCLES !!

hehe well i realy like the new look, for the old school style i would go for 97
still i like more the new look

It's sad that her King of Fighters 97 sprites show more.

And she was one of my favorite characters too...

The new one is cute... but it's inferior to the older designs. They had a personality to them... this is totally generic.

I'm still saving every image on this page though.

It'd be great if they kept the green eyes, though ...

http://www.neogeoforlife.com/forum/attachments/psycho_soldier_flyer.jpg

I wonder if she got an actual movepool to compensate the lack of panty shots (they even put tights last time and it was OK), seriously, I like Athena, but she is not even a flexible character in a matter of gameplay.

WTF at the Thunder Thighs (TM)

I guess nobody likes her because she doesn't show her panties. Not even in jumps or high kicks.

We all know that physic user can control their look, so they can look "forever 17",just look at the fapable
Fujiko Tsubomi from Zettai karen children as an example

this is more like the character that getting younger as year goes on.

Glad I'm not the only one that thinks her new design is shit. She looks fucking 9 years old now.

You're all a bunch of noobs. This isn't a degeneration, it's a return to form: http://yfrog.com/0ypsychosoldierej

I'm guessing they made her legs that thick so they'd cover up where her pantsu would be showing when she lifts her leg...

Favorite designs:

2000, 2001, XII

A moeblob is fine too.

94-2000, 2003 are the only ones I like.

I hate the XII look. It's terrible. Her legs are OFF, hell even Chun Li's arms aren't that damn skinny.

KOF XII IS CRAP !!!

You're complaining about a character that changes greatly between incarnations of the series changing again? I guess that's fine, but I think if anything they were going for a more normal look for her on purpose.

If anything she's less like a magical girl than she was before. I mean fuck, she's always looked like she was ripped straight out of one of those shows or something. I'm not sure what you think good character design is, but I don't think making a character less flashy is necessarily a bad thing. She does have a bit of a cutsey-eyes look going on, but calling that "degradation" is a bit much. It would be nice if these articles could be a bit less biased sometimes.

That said, she does suffer a bit from thunder-thigh syndrome this time around. Oh-fucking-well. Still not as bad as Chun-li.

All she's missing is her usual red&white suit, other than that she still have that that purple-ish (err.. pinkish now) hair and her star headband, i don't see why fighting games need to discard moeness just to make it look Gar (and Gay).

I prefer Hinako, Momoko, Malin and Ninon over her and any of the KOF girls anyway.. :3

If you looked at how Athena looked in her cameo game, Psycho Soldier, then all of this perfectly canon.

well...she's cute in her current moefinication

xboxhueg thighs. she looks awful. I liked her much better in the previous versions.

This is misrepresentation of the reasons for Athena's change in character design. With KOF12 SNK took many characters from over the years and returned them to their more classic designs, with Athena they simply used her original character design from the Psycho Soldier series of games for the NES. You can find the rather terrible box art from the game on its wikipedia page.

Still, it was probably a mistake to do this seeing as how most people's exposure to Athena (and the rest of the cast of Psycho Soldier) came from KOF where they had substantially different character designs. It was probably intended to delight fans, but SNK seems to have not realized just how obscure Psycho Soldier really is and has instead alienated fans. This is probably a good analogy for KOF12 as a whole, being an attempt to return the series to its roots while updating it for a modern generation, but critical missteps in the implementation caused it to backfire. What a shame.

Her KoF12 sprite is great. Especially for retro gaming fans. Also Anime chicks in the 80s had some meat on their legs and damn it, some of us liked it that way!

And apparently not many people here played Psycho Soldier back in the day. That is pretty much the whole point with all the classic characters and their outfits.

Also...
Athena has always been a generic magical school girl if not a magical bikini clad swordfighter.

I imagine if Athena showed some panties once in a while, most people would be fine with her KoF12 sprite.

She gained weight.
Dyed her hair.
Gotten a younger look which supposed to be in her senior years.
No panty shots
bad choice of uniform color...and beyond.

Still fap worthy though...

I liked the moe :3

i like this character but why dont they make it as new character?
this one ruins Athena's.....

And this is a bad thing...why exactly? She looks better now then ever.

Athena 2001 is the ugliest

This design is shit.

(sarcasm) Oh look, a loli schoolgirl, how original, never seen that before or anything.

No way does that pander to otaku (/sarcasm)

This whole game is a disaster anyway, fuck playmore.

her legs look fat

...wow. I wouldn't even have recognized that as Athena D:

my ranking would be:
1. KOF 97', highlight=tights
2. KOF 02', highlight=skirt
Those chubby legs in XII seems to be a pretty big failure // personal opinion only
A list of character design:
http://plaza.rakuten.co.jp/kanpai/6001

KOF2000 is the only one I accept. The new Athena looks damn generic. In fact, a lot of the characters now have questionable appearances. Well, thankfully Ash still looks as pretty as ever.

If you look at her platform game with fully voiced J-pop BGM, you'd see that if they had "moe" back then, that would be exactly what they were going for.

I hardly think you could call a character who can fight independently in a martial arts tournament a moeblob though... wouldn't you at least need moe + dojikko + crybaby?

...and I don't even like Athena, lol... Yuri FTW! >:3

i just thougt it was a different character, well it was ok till 2000, 2001 is just leena le from d-gray man, and the rest they just fucked up her, they already had yuri for moe, they even got a shota with bao.

In the past, people used to say that sex sells, but now moe sells better... Well, at least in Japan^^
But i like moe, so that's a good thing.