The King of Fighters 15 is the most anticipated fighting game of the year by many in the community, although there is still not much we know about it – like where we can play it.
However, there is a good chance that we already know more than what was shown in the recent trailers, at least as far as an unannounced character is concerned. Potential spoilers for future lineup revelations
After Tomohiro Nakata was recently announced to be the character designer and main illustrator for KOF15, some fans pointed to an older SNK employee page for the artist that contains an interesting image.
Nakata seems to be working on a very detailed portrait of the giant fighter Raiden, and what’s intriguing about this is that the image doesn’t appear to have been used since its creation two years ago.
This led some fans to theorize at the time that it could be concept art for King of Fighters 15, which seems more likely now that it did not appear back in that period of time.
Raiden is much more of a Fatal Fury character than a KOF, but he last appeared in KOF13 on Kim’s team along with Hwa Jai.
Nakata worked on the art for the mobile game King of Fighters All Star, but, as far as we can tell, Raiden didn’t appear there either.
It may seem strange that SNK showed an active KOF15 years before its debut, although it was certainly not the first time that a developer showed parts of games taking photos or videos from employees’ desks, whether on purpose or accidentally.
That said, however, there is also a high likelihood that it may have been created for an obscure promotional poster or the like, although it is impossible to say for sure.
No other relevant information can be found on Nakata’s page about the image.
We cannot determine when exactly the page was posted, but as soon as we can find people talking about it and Raiden’s portrait is in January 2019, that is, just a month after KOF15 was confirmed to be in development for investors .
Currently, only Kyo, Shun’ei, K ‘, Leona, Benimaru and Mai have been confirmed for KOF15, although SNK seems to be planning some sort of weekly reveal for now.
It would certainly be interesting to see the semi-retired fighter returning as a 3D model, but I wonder if he would kick Gang-il out of the team to join Kim or if he would partner with a new team.