SNK, creators of The King of Fighters saga, planned to integrate characters from other franchises as guest fighters. Why was Goku ruled out of KOF 98?
The legendary saga of The King of Fighters will receive a new installment very soon that will arrive on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X | S and PC. However, a secret of the franchise has just come to light, Goku could be a fighter from the legendary The King of Fighters '98 .
Polygon did an article about the development of Capcom vs. SNK. In this publication, the medium indicates that he managed to talk with Toyohisa Tanabe, director of the KOF saga , who explained that during the creation of The King of Fighters '98 they were experimenting with several ideas of crossovers and one of them was to insert the flagship character of Dragon Ball Z, Goku .
The creative dared to tell an untold secret of the development of KOF 98 . As mentioned, he was able to play two versions of the video game where characters from Street Fighter and Dragon Ball Z were title fighters; however, the proposal did not materialize.
“We did it on development hardware, so of course it was never on a physical cartridge. Also, I just remembered this, it wasn't just the iconic Street Fighter fighters we were playing with. We also put characters from Dragon Ball, such as Goku, "he added.
Tanabe mentions that this all happened two years after the release of Cacpom vs. SNK, when the entire team from The King of Fighters '98 had already finished the development of this legendary title and decided to create versions of it, but only as a sketch.