title: Achtung Baby

text: The sleeve artwork for "Achtung Baby" was designed by Steve Averill, who had created the majority of U2's album covers, along with Shaughn McGrath. To parallel the band's change in musical direction, Averill and McGrath devised sleeve concepts that used multiple colour images to contrast with the seriousness of the individual, mostly monochromatic images from previous U2 album sleeves. Rough sketches and designs were created early during the recording sessions, and some experimental designs were conceived to closely resemble, as Averill put it, "dance-music oriented sleeves. We just did them to show how extreme we could go and then everyone came back to levels that they were happy with. But if we hadn't gone to these extremes it may not have been the cover it is now."


title: Achtung Baby

text: An initial photo shoot with the band's long-time photographer Anton Corbijn was done near U2's Berlin hotel in late 1990. Most of the photos were black-and-white, and the group felt they were not indicative of the spirit of the new album. They recommissioned Corbijn for an additional two-week photo shoot in Tenerife in February 1991, for which they dressed up and mingled with the crowds of the annual Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, presenting a more playful side of themselves. It was during the group's time in Tenerife and during a four-day shoot in Morocco in July that they were photographed in drag. Additional photos were taken in Dublin in June, including a shot of a naked Clayton. The images were intended to confound expectations of U2, and their full colour contrasted with the monochromatic imagery on past sleeves.


title: Achtung Baby

text: For the photoshoots in Berlin and Tenerife, the band were photographed with brightly painted Trabants, East German automobiles that they became fond of as a symbol for a changing Europe. Street artist Thierry Noir was commissioned to provide the artwork and painted the vehicles in Hansa Studios' parking lot; he became involved through a fellow collaborator of the band's, film director Wim Wenders. Images of the band with the Trabants appear on the sleeve and throughout the album booklet. These vehicles were later incorporated into the Zoo TV Tour set design as part of the lighting system.


title: Achtung Baby

text: Several photographs were considered as candidates for a single cover image, including shots of: a cow on an Irish farm in County Kildare; the nude Clayton; and the band driving a Trabant. Ultimately, a multiple image scheme was used, as U2, Corbijn, Averill, and the producers thought that "the sense of flux expressed by both the music and the band's playing with alter egos was best articulated by the lack of a single viewpoint". The resulting front sleeve is a 4×4 squared montage. A mix of Corbijn's original images from Berlin and the later photo shoots was used, as the band wanted to balance the "colder European feel of the mainly black-and-white Berlin images with the much warmer exotic climates of Santa Cruz and Morocco". Some photographs were used because they were striking on their own, while others were used because of their ambiguity. The nude photo of Clayton was placed on the rear cover of the record. On the US compact disc and cassette sleeves, Clayton's genitals are censored with a black "X" or a four-leaf clover, while vinyl editions feature the photo uncensored. The label of the physical CD and vinyl disc features an image of a "babyface" graffitied by artist Charlie Whisker onto an external wall of Windmill Lane Studios. The babyface image was later adopted as a logo for Zoo TV Tour memorabilia and was incorporated into the "Zooropa" album cover. In 2003, music television network VH1 ranked "Achtung Baby"s sleeve at number 39 on its list of the "50 Greatest Album Covers". Bono has called the sleeve his favourite U2 cover artwork.


title: Achtung Baby

text: The German word "Achtung" () in the album title translates into English as "attention" or "watch out". U2's sound engineer Joe O'Herlihy used the phrase "achtung baby" during recording, reportedly taking it from the Mel Brooks film "The Producers". The title was selected in August 1991 near the end of the album sessions. Bono thought it was an ideal title, as it was attention-grabbing to him, referenced Germany, and hinted at either romance or birth, both of which were themes on the album. The band were determined not to highlight the seriousness of the lyrics and instead sought to "erect a mask" with the title, a concept that was further developed on the Zoo TV Tour, particularly through Bono's characters such as "The Fly". Of the title, he said in 1992: "It's a con, in a way. We call it "Achtung Baby", grinning up our sleeves in all the photography. But it's probably the heaviest record we've ever made... It tells you a lot about packaging, because the press would have killed us if we'd called it anything else."


title: Achtung Baby

text: U2 considered several other titles for the album, including "Man" (in contrast to the group's debut, "Boy"), "69", "Zoo Station", and "Adam", the latter of which would have been paired with the nude photo of Clayton. Other titles in consideration included "Fear of Women" and "Cruise Down Main Street", the latter a reference to the Rolling Stones' record "Exile on Main St." and the cruise missiles launched on Baghdad during the Gulf War. Most of the proposed titles were rejected out of the belief that people would see them as pretentious and "another Big Statement from U2".


title: Achtung Baby

text: As early as December 1990, the music press reported that U2 would be recording a dance-oriented album and that it would be released in mid-1991. In August 1991, sound collage artists Negativland released an EP entitled "U2" that parodied U2's song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". Island Records objected to the release, believing consumers would confuse the EP for a new U2 record. Island successfully sued for copyright infringement but were criticised in the music press, as were U2, although they were not involved in the litigation. "Uncut"s Stephen Dalton believes that the negative headlines were tempered by the success of "Achtung Baby"s first single, "The Fly", released on 21 October 1991 a month before the album. Sounding nothing like U2's typical style, it was selected as the lead single to announce the group's new musical direction. It became their second song to top the UK Singles Chart, while reaching number one on the singles charts in Ireland and Australia. The single was less successful in the US, peaking at number 61 on the "Billboard" Hot 100.


title: Achtung Baby

text: Island Records and U2 refused to make advance copies of the album available to the press until just a few days before the release date, preferring that fans listen to the record before reading reviews. The decision came amid rumours of tensions within the band, and journalist David Browne compared it to the Hollywood practice of withholding pre-release copies of films from reviewers whenever they receive poor word-of-mouth press. "Achtung Baby" was released on 18 November 1991 in the UK and 19 November in the US on compact disc, tape cassette, and vinyl record, with an initial shipment of more than 1.4 million copies in the US. The album was the first release by a major act to use two so-called "eco-friendly" packages—the cardboard Digipak, and the shrinkwrapped jewel case without the longbox cardboard attachment. Island encouraged record stores to order the jewel case packaging by offering a four-percent discount.


title: Achtung Baby

text: "Achtung Baby" was U2's first album in three years and their first comprising entirely new material in over four years. The group maintained a low profile after the record's release, avoiding interviews and allowing critics and the public to make their own assessments. Instead of participating in an article with "Rolling Stone" magazine, U2 asked Eno to write one for them. The marketing plan for the album focused on retail and press promotions. In addition to television and radio advertisements being produced, posters featuring the sleeve's 16 images were distributed to record stores and through alternative newspapers in major cities. Compared to the large hype of other 1991 year-end releases, the marketing for "Achtung Baby" was relatively understated, as Island general manager Andy Allen explained: "U2 will not come out with that kind of fanfare in terms of outside media. We feel the fan base itself creates that kind of excitement."


title: Achtung Baby

text: "Mysterious Ways" was released as the second single five days after the release of "Achtung Baby". On the US "Billboard" charts, the song topped the Modern Rock Tracks and Album Rock Tracks charts, and it reached number nine on the Hot 100. Elsewhere, it reached number one in Canada and number three in Australia. Three additional commercial singles were released in 1992. "One", released in March at the beginning of the Zoo TV Tour, reached number seven in the UK and number ten in the US charts. Like its predecessor, it topped the Modern Rock Tracks chart, and the singles charts in Canada and Ireland. The song has since become regarded as one of the greatest of all time, ranking highly on many critics' lists. The fourth single from "Achtung Baby", "Even Better Than the Real Thing", was released in June. The album version of the song peaked at number 12 on the UK Singles Chart, while reaching number one on the US Album Rock Tracks chart. A "Perfecto" remix of the song by DJ Paul Oakenfold performed better in the UK than the album version did, peaking at number eight. "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" followed as the fifth and final single in November 1992. It peaked at number 14 on the UK Singles Chart, and number two on the US Album Rock Tracks chart. All five commercial singles charted within the top 20 in Ireland, Australia, Canada, and UK. Promotional singles for "Until the End of the World", "Salomé", and "Zoo Station" were also released.


title: Achtung Baby

text: In October 1992, U2 released "Achtung Baby: The Videos, the Cameos, and a Whole Lot of Interference from Zoo TV", a VHS and LaserDisc compilation of nine music videos from the album. Running for 65 minutes, it was produced by Ned O'Hanlon and released by Island and PolyGram. It included three music videos each for "One" and "Even Better than the Real Thing", along with videos for "The Fly", "Mysterious Ways", and "Until the End of the World". Interspersed between the music videos were clips of so-called "interference", comprising documentary footage, media clips, and other video similar to what was displayed at Zoo TV Tour concerts. The release was certified platinum in the US, and gold in Canada.


title: Achtung Baby

text: "Achtung Baby" received acclaim from critics. Elysa Gardner of "Rolling Stone" said U2 had "proven that the same penchant for epic musical and verbal gestures that leads many artists to self-parody can, in more inspired hands, fuel the unforgettable fire that defines great rock & roll." The review said that the album, like its predecessor "Rattle and Hum", was an attempt by the band to "broaden its musical palette, but this time its ambitions are realized". Bill Wyman from "Entertainment Weekly" called it a "pristinely produced and surprisingly unpretentious return by one of the most impressive bands in the world". Steve Morse of "The Boston Globe" echoed these sentiments, stating that the album "not only reinvigorates their sound, but drops any self-righteousness. The songs focus on personal relationships, not on saving the world." Morse commended the album's "clanging, knob-twisting sound effects" and the Edge's "metallic, head-snapping guitar". In the "Los Angeles Times", Robert Hilburn stated, "the arty, guitar-driven textures are among the band's most confident and vigorous ever". He said the album is a difficult one for listeners because of the dark, introspective nature of the songs, which contrasts with the group's uplifting songs of the past. Parry Gettelmen of the "Orlando Sentinel" said that "Achtung Baby" "shows U2 still has the power to surprise", highlighting the warmth of Bono's vocals, the imagery of his lyrics, and the producers for helping the Edge "achieve a spacious sound without getting anthemic". He commended the band's musical transformation, saying, "U2 proves much more adept at the dance-trance thing than the Happy Roses or Stone Carpets or other indistinguishable haircut bands". Jon Pareles of "The New York Times" lauded the record not only for featuring "noisy, vertiginous arrangements", but also for the group's ability to "maintain its pop skills". The review concluded, "Stripped-down and defying its old formulas, U2 has given itself a fighting chance for the 1990s."


title: Achtung Baby

text: "Q"s Mat Snow called "Achtung Baby" U2's "heaviest album to date. And best." Snow praised the band and its production team for making "music of drama, depth, intensity and, believe it, funkiness". Adam Sweeting of "The Guardian" said that with the album, U2 "evolved a raw, semi-industrial noise though which to filter strong melodies and thrusting funk-rock grooves". He praised the group for improving their songwriting and incorporating "black humour" into darker lyrical themes. He called the album "quite an achievement" in following up a successful record, responding to emerging musical influences, and expanding the band's sound while still pleasing existing fans. Greg Kot of the "Chicago Tribune" felt the record "shows the band in a grittier light: disrupting, rather than fulfilling, expectations". He praised Lanois' production and said that due to the Edge's guitar playing, "U2 sounds punkier than it has since its 1980 debut, "Boy"". Kot concluded his review by calling the album "a magnificent search for transcendence made all the more moving for its flaws". Niall Stokes of "Hot Press" found the album to be paradoxical, calling it U2's bleakest record while containing "their most obvious singles", and saying, "It sounds less like the U2 that we know than anything they have done before and yet it is unmistakably them". He wrote, "Ostensibly decadent, sensual and dark, it is a record of, and for, these times." "The New Zealand Herald" found it "pretty damn good" and its sound "subdued, tightly controlled, [and] introverted". However, it said that too many "downbeat moments where songs seem to be going nowhere" prevented it from being a "truly wondrous affair". In "Spin", Jim Greer was more critical of the album, calling it an "ambitious failure"; the review welcomed its experimentation but judged that when the group "strays from familiar territory, the results are hit-and-miss". "The Village Voice" critic Robert Christgau rated it a dud, indicating a bad album unworthy of a review. Two years later, he reflected on the rating: "After many, many tries, "Achtung Baby" still sounded like a damnably diffuse U2 album to me, and I put it in the hall unable to describe a single song ... although I admittedly enjoy a few of its anthems-in-disguise now."


title: Achtung Baby

text: The success of "Achtung Baby" and the Zoo TV Tour re-established U2 as one of the most popular and critically acclaimed musical acts in the world. The group nearly swept "Rolling Stone"s 1992 end-of-year readers' polls, winning honours for "Best Single" ("One"), "Artist of the Year", "Best Album", "Best Songwriter" (Bono), "Best Album Cover", and "Comeback of the Year", among others. Critics at several newspapers, such as "The Washington Post", "The Boston Globe", and the "Chicago Sun-Times", ranked the album among the year's best. The album placed fourth on the "Best Albums" list from "The Village Voice"s 1991 Pazz & Jop critics' poll. It was shortlisted for the 1992 Mercury Music Prize. At the 35th Annual Grammy Awards, "Achtung Baby" won the award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and was nominated for Album of the Year, and it earned Lanois and Eno the award for Producer of the Year (Non-Classical). At the American Music Awards of 1993, "Achtung Baby" was nominated for Favorite Pop/Rock Album, and at the Juno Awards of 1993, it was nominated for Best Selling Album (Foreign or Domestic).


title: Achtung Baby

text: "Achtung Baby" performed well commercially; in the US, it debuted at number one on the "Billboard" 200 Top Albums on 7 December 1991, having sold 295,000 copies in its first week. The album fell to number three the following week, but spent its first 13 weeks on the chart within the top ten. In total, it spent 101 weeks on the "Billboard" 200 Top Albums. On 21 January 1992, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified it double-platinum. "Achtung Baby" peaked at number two on the UK Albums Chart, spending 93 weeks on the chart. In other regions, it topped the "RPM" 100 in Canada, the ARIA Albums Chart in Australia, and the RIANZ Top 40 Albums in New Zealand. The record sold 7 million copies worldwide in its first three months on sale, and by the end of 1992, it had sold 10 million copies.


title: Achtung Baby

text: "Achtung Baby" is certified 8× platinum in the US by the RIAA, and according to Nielsen Soundscan, the album had sold 5.5 million copies in the country by March 2009. The record has been certified 5× platinum in Australia, 4× platinum in the UK, and diamond in Canada, the highest certification award. Overall, 18 million copies have been sold worldwide. It is U2's second-highest-selling record after "The Joshua Tree", which has sold 25 million copies.


title: Achtung Baby

text: Following the release of "Achtung Baby", U2 staged a worldwide concert tour, titled the Zoo TV Tour. Like "Achtung Baby", the tour was intended to deviate from the band's past. In contrast to the austere stage setups of previous U2 tours, Zoo TV was an elaborately staged multimedia event. It satirised television and the viewing public's overstimulation by attempting to instill "sensory overload" in its audience. The stage featured large video screens that showed visual effects, random video clips from pop culture, and flashing text phrases. The shows incorporated channel surfing, prank calls, video confessionals, a belly dancer, and live satellite transmissions with war-torn Sarajevo.


title: Achtung Baby

text: Whereas the group were known for their earnest live act in the 1980s, their Zoo TV performances were intentionally ironic and self-deprecating; on stage, Bono portrayed several characters he conceived, including "The Fly", "Mirror Ball Man", and "MacPhisto". The majority of the album's songs were played at each show, and the set lists began with up to eight consecutive "Achtung Baby" songs as a further sign that they were no longer the U2 of the 1980s.


title: Achtung Baby

text: The tour began in February 1992 and comprised 157 shows over almost two years. During a six-month break, the band recorded the album "Zooropa", which was released in July 1993. It was inspired by Zoo TV and expanded on its themes of technology and media oversaturation. By the time the tour concluded in December 1993, it had sold about 5.3 million tickets and reportedly grossed US$151 million. In 2002, "Q" magazine said the Zoo TV Tour was "still the most spectacular rock tour staged by any band". The tour's 27 November 1993 concert in Sydney was filmed and commercially released as "" by PolyGram in May 1994.


title: Achtung Baby

text: For the band, "Achtung Baby" was a watershed that secured their creative future, and its success led to the group's continued musical experimentation during the 1990s. "Zooropa", released in 1993, was a further departure for the band, incorporating additional dance music influences and electronic effects into their sound. In 1995, U2 and Brian Eno collaborated on the experimental/ambient album "Original Soundtracks 1" under the pseudonym "Passengers". For "Pop" in 1997, the group's experiences with dance club culture and their usage of tape loops, programming, rhythm sequencing, and sampling resulted in their most dance-oriented album.


title: Achtung Baby

text: "Achtung Baby" is highly regarded among the members of U2. Mullen said: "I thought it was a great record. I was very proud of it. Its success was by no means preordained. It was a real break from what we had done before and we didn't know if our fans would like it or not." Bono called the album a "pivot point" in the band's career, saying, "Making "Achtung Baby" is the reason we're still here now." Clayton concurred, saying: "If we hadn't done something we were excited about, that made us apprehensive and challenged everything we stood for, then there would really have been no reason to carry on... If it hadn't been a great record by our standards, the existence of the band would have been threatened." The group's reinvention occurred at the peak of the alternative rock movement, when the genre was achieving widespread mainstream popularity. Bill Flanagan pointed out that many of U2's 1980s contemporaries struggled commercially with albums released after the turn of the decade. He argued that U2, however, were able to take advantage of the alternative rock movement and ensure a successful future by "set[ting] themselves up as the first of the new groups rather than the last of the old". Toby Creswell echoed these sentiments in his 2006 music reference book "1001 Songs", writing that the album helped U2 avoid "becoming parodies of themselves and being swept aside by the grunge and techno revolutions". AllMusic called the album "a pivotal moment for dance-rock, happening late in the game but showing that even the biggest young band in the world had an eye on the dancefloor". In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine called the band's musical transformation "thorough", "effective", and "endlessly inventive". He concluded that few artists at that stage in their career could have "recorded an album as adventurous or fulfilled their ambitions quite as successfully as U2 [did]". A 2010 retrospective by "Spin" said that "U2 became the emblematic band of the alternative-rock era with "Achtung Baby"."


title: Achtung Baby

text: "Achtung Baby" has been acclaimed by writers and music critics as one of the greatest albums of all time; according to Acclaimed Music, it is the 82nd-highest-ranked record on critics' lists. In 1997, "The Guardian" collated worldwide data from a range of renowned critics, artists, and radio DJs, who placed the record at number 71 on a list of the "100 Best Albums Ever". The record was ranked 36th in Colin Larkin's 2000 book "All Time Top 1000 Albums". In 2003, the National Association of Recording Merchandisers ranked it at number 45 on its "Definitive 200" list, while "USA Today" featured it on their list of the top 40 albums of all time. "Rolling Stone" placed the record at number 62 on its 2003 list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Subsequent updates to the list re-ranked the album: the 2012 version ranked it 63rd, calling it "a prescient mix of sleek rock and pulsing Euro grooves" while saying "the emotional turmoil made U2 sound more human than ever"; the 2020 version of the list ranked it 124th. In 2006, the album appeared on a number of all-time lists, including "Hot Press"s "100 Greatest Albums Ever" at number 21, "Time"s list of "The All-Time 100 Albums", and the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". VH1 ranked it 65th on the "100 Greatest Albums of Rock & Roll" episode of its television series "The Greatest". "Entertainment Weekly"s 2013 list of the "All-Time Greatest" albums ranked the record 23rd, saying that instead of "coast[ing] forever on the cinematic storytelling they mastered on the excellently righteous "The Joshua Tree"", the group "ripped up the rule book" with "Achtung Baby". The record topped "Spin"s list of the 125 most influential albums from 1985 to 2010; writer Charles Aaron said: "Unlike Radiohead with "OK Computer" and "Kid A", U2 took their post-industrial, trad-rock disillusionment not as a symbol of overall cultural malaise, but as a challenge to buck up and transcend... Struggling to simultaneously embrace and blow up the world, they were never more inspirational."


title: Achtung Baby

text: The 20th anniversary of "Achtung Baby" was marked by several releases in 2011. At the band's request, a documentary film about the album entitled "From the Sky Down" was produced. It was directed by Davis Guggenheim, who previously collaborated with the Edge for the documentary "It Might Get Loud" in 2008. "From the Sky Down" documents the album's difficult recording period, the band members' relationships, and U2's creative process. Archival footage and stills from the recording sessions appear in the film, along with unreleased scenes from "Rattle and Hum". For the documentary, the band were filmed during a return visit to Hansa Studios and during rehearsals for the Glastonbury Festival 2011. The film premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, becoming the first documentary to open the festival, and in October, it was broadcast on multiple television networks worldwide.


title: Achtung Baby

text: On 31 October 2011, "Achtung Baby" was reissued in five formats. In addition to a single-disc release of the album, a deluxe edition included a bonus disc of remixes and B-sides from the album's five singles, and a vinyl edition included the album on two LPs with two additional LPs of remixes. The 10-disc "Super Deluxe" and "Über Deluxe" editions included: the "Zooropa" album; three additional CDs with remixes, B-sides, and outtakes; a "kindergarten" disc with nascent versions of "Achtung Baby"s 12 songs; four DVDs containing "From the Sky Down", the "Zoo TV: Live from Sydney" concert film, music videos, and other bonus material; 16 art prints; and a hardback book. The "Über Deluxe" edition also contains a double-vinyl copy of the album, five 7-inch vinyl singles, a copy of U2's fan club magazine "Propaganda", and a replica of Bono's "Fly" sunglasses. The media initially reported that the reissue was a remastered release. However, the reissue's official website initially excluded any mention of "remastering" before adding it and then removing it. The Edge confirmed that the album was not fully remastered since "the original was so right" and so much "artistry had gone into the original EQ'ing" but did say that they were able to "optimize it... tweak the levels, give it a bit of a polish". "Blow Your House Down", an outtake included in the deluxe editions, was released as a promotional single in October 2011.


title: Achtung Baby

text: "Q" commissioned an "Achtung Baby" tribute album, entitled "AHK-toong BAY-bi Covered", that was included in the magazine's December 2011 issue. It features performances by Jack White, Depeche Mode, Damien Rice, Gavin Friday, Glasvegas, The Fray, Patti Smith, The Killers, Snow Patrol, Nine Inch Nails, and Garbage.


title: Achtung Baby

text: Continuing a campaign by U2 to reissue all of their records on vinyl, "Achtung Baby" was re-released on two 180-gram vinyl records on 27 July 2018. Unlike the 2011 reissue, the album was remastered for its 2018 reissue, with direction from the Edge. Each copy includes a download card that can be used to redeem a digital copy of the album.


title: Achtung Baby

text: In 2021, "Achtung Baby" was re-released in several formats for its 30th anniversary: standard black vinyl and deluxe color vinyl editions were released on 19 November, followed by a 50-track digital box set on 3 December. The band also collaborated with Thierry Noir on an art installation held at Hansa Studios; Noir, who painted the original Trabants featured in the album photography, contributed new artwork to a Trabant and a section of the Berlin Wall for the exhibition. The bonnet of the car was auctioned to benefit the Berlin Institute for Sound and Music.


title: The King of Fighters

text: The King of Fighters (KOF) is a series of fighting games by SNK that began with the release of "The King of Fighters '94" in 1994. The series was developed originally for SNK's Neo Geo MVS arcade hardware. This served as the main platform for the series until 2004 when SNK retired it in favor of the Atomiswave arcade board. Two "King of Fighters" games were produced for the Atomiswave platform ("The King of Fighters Neowave" and "The King of Fighters XI") before SNK decided to discontinue using it for the series. The series' most recent arcade hardware is the Taito Type X, first used with the release of "The King of Fighters XII". Ports of the arcade games and the original "The King of Fighters" games have been released for several video game consoles. The latest entry in the series, "The King of Fighters XV", was released in February 2022.


title: The King of Fighters

text: The games' story focuses on the title tournament where fighters from multiple SNK games take part. SNK also created original characters to serve as protagonists from each of their story arcs while still interacting with fighters from "Art of Fighting" and "Fatal Fury", among others. Multiple spin-off games, such as the "R" duology for the Neo Geo Pocket and "Maximum Impact" for the PlayStation 2, for example, have also been released. There have been multiple cross-over games where the SNK cast interacted with characters created by Capcom, while some characters have been present as guest characters in other games, such as Geese Howard in "Tekken 7", Kyo Kusanagi in "Fighting Days", and Terry Bogard in "Fighting EX Layer" and "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate".


title: The King of Fighters

text: "The King of Fighters" was originally conceptualized as a side-scrolling beat 'em up until SNK changed it to a fighting game that took its subtitle from the first "Fatal Fury game": "". Though originally released yearly from its first inception, the company decided to take more time to develop their games after 2004. Critical reception of the video games have been generally positive with their use of teams and balanced gameplay often cited.


title: The King of Fighters

text: SNK released the first game in the series, "The King of Fighters '94", on August 25, 1994. It featured characters from SNK's previous fighting game series "Fatal Fury" and "Art of Fighting", as well as original characters (including characters from other franchises such as "Ikari Warriors" and "Psycho Soldier", adapted for a versus fighting game).


title: The King of Fighters

text: The game's success led SNK to release yearly installments for the series numbering the games for the year they were released. "The King of Fighters '95", as well as adding new characters, began the series' first story arc titled "The Orochi Saga". It was also the first game in the series that allowed players to create their own three-member teams with any character in the game. "The King of Fighters '96" established the second part of "The Orochi Saga". Depending on the playable characters on a team, an exclusive ending would be played. "The Orochi Saga" story arc concluded in "The King of Fighters '97". Unlike the series' previous games, "The King of Fighters '98" did not feature a story. Instead, it was promoted as a "Dream Match" game that allowed players to choose most of the characters available from the previous titles, including ones that were supposedly dead. SNK refitted the Dreamcast version and renamed it "The King of Fighters: Dream Match 1999" with an extended cel animated introduction and 3D backgrounds.


title: The King of Fighters

text: "The King of Fighters '99" introduced "The NESTS Chronicles" story arc. In a new tactic, a specific person from a team would be an assistant called a "Striker". This person would be able to aid the team for a few seconds in combat. The Dreamcast version was titled "The King of Fighters: Evolution", with several improvements in the game such as new Strikers and better animation. "The King of Fighters 2000" is the second part of "The NESTS Saga" as well as the last "KOF" game produced by SNK before its bankruptcy. It adds a few new playable characters and a couple of Strikers—most from earlier KOF titles and other SNK franchises such as "Metal Slug", "Robo Army", "Burning Fight", "Buriki One", "The Last Blade", "Savage Reign" and "Kizuna Encounter". "The King of Fighters 2001" ends the second story arc. The Korean company Eolith helped develop the game after SNK was declared bankrupt. "The King of Fighters 2002" was created to reunite old characters from previous "KOF" games and featured no story, similar to "KOF '98". It was also developed by Eolith.


title: The King of Fighters

text: A new "KOF" story arc titled the "Tales of Ash" began in "The King of Fighters 2003", the last "KOF" game to be released for the Neo Geo system. It allowed players to change characters while playing, but the number of team members was reduced to three. SNK returned to develop the franchise with this entry. By 2004, SNK abandoned the series' yearly releases and numbered future games in a more conventional manner. The first main series' game released as such was "The King of Fighters XI" in 2005. In 2009, "The King of Fighters XII" was released. It used high-resolution, hand-drawn 2D sprites on detailed 2D backgrounds. It is a storyless gathering of fighters, similar to "KOF '98" and "2002". The story arc ends with "The King of Fighters XIII", released during the summer of 2010, which features the entire roster from "The King of Fighters XII" as well as additional characters.


title: The King of Fighters

text: "The King of Fighters XIV", featuring 3D graphics and a large roster of characters while also establishing a new story arc was released for the PlayStation 4 on August 23, 2016. In December 2018, SNK revealed it was working on "The King of Fighters XV", and was released on February 17, 2022.


title: The King of Fighters

text: "The King of Fighters '94" was remade and released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2 as "The King of Fighters '94 Re-Bout" in Japan. This version has several new features like hi-res graphics, online play, team edit, a playable Rugal Bernstein, and the addition of Saisyu Kusanagi. A remake of "KOF '98" titled "The King of Fighters '98 Ultimate Match" was released in Japanese arcades in 2008 and later on some video game consoles expanding the character roster and improving the graphics. A remake of "KOF 2002", titled "The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match" was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2009 in Japan. SNK also produced a game titled "The King of Fighters: Battle de Paradise" which could be connected to the Japanese Dreamcast port of "KOF '99". Yumekobo also developed the visual novel game with strategy elements for fights known as . The game follows Kyo's daily life as he prepares to fight in the tournament in "KOF '97" while interacting with other rivals. For the Neo Geo Pocket, an adaptation of "KOF '97" titled "King of Fighters R-1" was released on October 28, 1998. A sequel for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, "King of Fighters R-2" an adaptation of "KOF '98", was released on March 19, 1999.


title: The King of Fighters

text: In 2004, SNK produced the first 3D installment of the series, "". The game and its sequel "", and its upgraded version "Maximum Impact: Regulation A", revises much of the backstory for the characters and settings from previous games. A third update called "Regulation A2" was planned but cancelled. The producer of the "Maximum Impact" series, Falcoon, stated that the "Maximum Impact" games are in a different continuity from the original series of games. Another spin-off video game, "The King of Fighters Neowave", was released for the Xbox, PlayStation 2 and Arcade during 2005 and 2006. "Neowave" is essentially a remix of "KOF 2002", with a new presentation and a few roster changes. Like "KOF2002", "Neowave" has no storyline and is considered a "dream match". Tomokazu Nakano created the character artwork. Two video games were released for the Game Boy Advance titled "The King of Fighters EX: Neo-Blood" and "The King of Fighters EX2: Howling Blood" featuring characters and backgrounds from "KOF '99" and "2000", respectively. A role-playing video game was also created exclusively for the PlayStation under the title "The King of Fighters: Kyo", adapting a manga with the same name. An N-Gage version of the second Game Boy Advance game was released in 2005 titled "The King of Fighters Extreme", which added Bluetooth multiplayer capability.


title: The King of Fighters

text: By late 2000s, at least three pachislot games were developed for the series. The first, "The King of Fighters", is based on the Orochi storyline; the second, "The King of Fighters 2", is based on the fight of K' against the NESTS cartel; and the third, "Maximum Impact" focuses on the series' 3D titles. None of these was released outside Japan. At least six games for Japanese mobile phones have also been developed. While a few of them are fighting games, others are mini-games like volleyball and quizzes.


title: The King of Fighters

text: Several characters from the series also appear in crossover video games. "NeoGeo Battle Coliseum" is a 2-on-2 tag team fighting game for the Atomiswave arcade board, and "SNK Gals' Fighters" is a fighting game for the Neo Geo Pocket Color. Along with the "KOF", characters from other SNK series also star in both of these games. A rhythm game titled "The Rhythm of Fighters" was released for mobile phone games during 2015. Capcom also produced a series of similar crossover fighting games with SNK. The SNK-produced fighting games of this crossover include the Dimps-developed portable fighting game "" for the Neo Geo Pocket Color in 1999 and "" for the Neo Geo in 2003. The games produced by Capcom are "" in 2000. This was followed by a minor upgrade, "Capcom vs. SNK Pro", and a sequel titled "Capcom vs. SNK 2", both released in 2001. The three games were produced for NAOMI hardware and later ported to various consoles. SNK also produced "SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos", and the video game card game titled "SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters DS".


title: The King of Fighters

text: Multiple mobile phone games have also been produced including "The King of Fighters All Star", "Kimi wa Hero", "Clash of Kings", "KOF X Arena Masters", "KOF: WORLD", "The King of Fighters Orochi Go", "The King of Cyphers", and a crossover with "Fatal Fury". An otome game "King of Fighters for Girls" is also in development. The characters have also been guests in other mobile games such as Kyo in "Fighting Days".


title: The King of Fighters

text: In addition to the remakes of games such as "KOF '94 Re-bout", "KOF '98 Ultimate Match", and "KOF 2002 Unlimited Match", SNK has released compilations of their "KOF" games. Two "KOF" compilations were released in Japan for the PlayStation 2 as part of the Neo Geo Online Collection.


title: The King of Fighters

text: The first compilation, features "KOF '95", "KOF '96", and "KOF '97", the three games comprising the Orochi story arc. The compilation features a Color Edit mode that allows the player to create a custom color palette for every character in each game, the choice to play each game with original and arranged soundtracks, and an online versus mode which supports the Multi-Matching BB (MMBB) service. The second compilation, , features the original Neo Geo versions of "KOF '99", "KOF 2000", and "KOF 2001", as well as the corresponding Dreamcast versions of each game. It has the same features as the previous compilation but with online support available only for the Dreamcast games in the compilation.


title: The King of Fighters

text: A separately produced compilation titled "The King of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga" was released for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and Wii outside of Japan. This compilation has the same lineup of games as the Japanese "Orochi Hen", along with "KOF '94" and "KOF '98". The extra features are different. There is an added Challenge Mode where the player must win certain matches against the CPU in "KOF '98" under specific conditions, a media gallery featuring listenable tracks from each game, and a collection of official illustrations.


title: The King of Fighters

text: There were also two double-pack compilations, the first being "The King of Fighters 2000/2001" ("The King of Fighters: The Saga Continues" in PAL regions) and "The King of Fighters 2002/2003," both on PlayStation 2 and Xbox.


title: The King of Fighters

text: The basic gameplay system of "KOF" is similar to SNK's previous games like the "Fatal Fury" series, "Art of Fighting" and "Samurai Shodown". The game uses a four attack button configuration like "Fatal Fury 2" and "Fatal Fury Special", that consists of light punch, light kick, strong punch and strong kick. Like "Fatal Fury 2", specialized techniques are performed by pressing buttons in combination, allowing the player to dodge an opponent's attack or to launch a character's powerful knockdown attack. As with most other fighting games, each character has a set of basic, unique, and special moves the player can perform using a specific series of joystick and button inputs. Each new installment provides new ways to create stronger attacks such as "The King of Fighters '97". Instead of charging the Power Gauge it is now filled when the player strikes the opponent or by performing Special Moves. The player can stock up to three Power Gauges. The player can use one stock of the Power Gauge to perform a Super Special Move or enter a "MAX" mode, in which the player's defensive and offensive strength are increased. Performing a Super Special Move while in MAX mode allows the player to perform a more powerful Super Special Move.


title: The King of Fighters

text: The franchise is known for innovating the fighting genre by replacing a traditional round-based format used in preceding fighting games with a format consisting of 3-on-3 team-based matches dubbed the Team Battle System. Instead of choosing a single character, the player selects from one of eight available teams, each consisting of three members. Before each match, the players choose the order in which their team members enter the battle. When the match begins, the members chosen to go first on their respective teams will fight. When one character is defeated, the next member of the same team will take his or her place, while the character on the other team will have a small portion of their life restored (if energy was lost during the previous round). If a character is losing a match against the opponent, then the player can call one of the remaining teammates standing on the sidelines to jump in and perform a support attack. The match ends when all three members of either team lose.


title: The King of Fighters

text: Three games—"The King of Fighters '99", "2000", and "2001"—added the idea of each team being given an extra character that can assist the player to produce more attacks or combos against the enemy. While "2002" brought back the classic 3-o- 3 teams, "2003" and "XI" made the change so that each team switches fighters in the middle of combat with one of them being a "Leader" character who can perform stronger techniques. Later games, however, returned to the classic way of fighting while still delivering different ways and rules of fighting.


title: The King of Fighters

text: The titular King of Fighters tournament originated from SNK's previous fighting game franchises, "Fatal Fury" and "Art of Fighting" (canonically and chronologically beginning during the events of "Art of Fighting 2"). The first game in the series, "KOF '94", centers on a black market arms dealer named Rugal Bernstein, who hosts a well-known fighting tournament to lure worthy adversaries into his trap so that he can kill them and turn them into stone statues, adding them to his collection of defeated martial artists. In addition to previously established fighting game stars Terry Bogard and Ryo Sakazaki, the game introduces a new hero: a young Japanese martial artist named Kyo Kusanagi, who serves as the lead character in the early "KOF" games. In making Kyo, SNK wanted his personality to contrast with those of earlier leads and stand out within the crossover.


title: The King of Fighters

text: In "KOF '95", Rugal, having survived the previous tournament, hosts a new one with the intention of seeking revenge against his adversaries. "KOF '95" introduced Kyo's rival Iori Yagami to the series. It was the first game to mention the presence of the Orochi clan, which would serve as the central plot element in the series' following two games. The tournaments in "KOF '96" and "KOF '97" are hosted by a woman named Chizuru Kagura, who seeks to recruit allies (particularly Kyo and Iori, who are descended from the Three Divine Vessels along with Kagura herself) to fight against the Orochi clan. The Orochi storyline concludes in "KOF '97". The next game in the series, "KOF '98", is a "Special Edition" with no plot development.


title: The King of Fighters

text: "KOF '99" introduces a new story arc involving a mysterious corporation known as NESTS, which seeks to create an army of genetically altered fighters. The game introduces a new lead character named K', a fugitive from NESTS who was genetically enhanced with Kyo's DNA. The next two games in the series, "KOF 2000" and "KOF 2001", continue the NESTS story line, with each game unraveling the mystery of the organization further. "KOF 2002", like "KOF '98" before it, is a "Special Edition" of the series with no particular plot. Like Kyo, K' was created as a different hero. Rather than the cocky Kyo, K' is a dark hero who reluctantly fights against the NESTS syndicate.


title: The King of Fighters

text: "KOF 2003" begins a new story line focusing on another new lead character named Ash Crimson, a young man who seeks to possess the powers of the Three Divine Vessels for his own unknown agenda. Similar to K', Ash is given a different characterization acting as a villain during his story arc. The tournaments in "KOF 2003" and "KOF XI" were hosted by "Those From the Past", an organization of inhuman warriors who try to break the Orochi seal to take its powers so they can give them to their shrouded master. While "KOF XII" does not have a story, "KOF XIII" follows another tournament hosted by them where Ash eventually confronts their superior despite him being Ash's ancestor.


title: The King of Fighters

text: "KOF XIV" establishes a new storyline involving a new lead character named Shun'ei. Described as a "kind-hearted" person, SNK states that while Shun'ei is not a new main character, he is still important for the saga.


title: The King of Fighters

text: The prototype version of the game was a "River City Ransom"-style TEAM-BATTLE side-scrolling beat 'em up. However, the idea was eventually abandoned. They eventually decided to turn their idea into a fighting game. This game was a team battle concept and there were not enough characters, so characters from "Fatal Fury", "Art of Fighting", "Ikari Warriors" and "Psycho Soldier" were also added to the roster. The concept of a three-person team was one of the ideas kept from the side-scrolling version. The title "The King of Fighters" was re-used from the subtitle of the first "Fatal Fury" game, "". "The King of Fighters" series' director Toyohisa Tanabe asserted that the "Art of Fighting" and "Fatal Fury" fighters were added specifically for adults. The newer "KOF" characters were intended to appeal to younger and recent audiences. Characters like Benimaru Nikaido and Chang Koehan were added to provide an off-beat variety to the cast, which he had previously said was too serious.


title: The King of Fighters

text: While the first two games used the Neo Geo MVS arcade, "The King of Fighters '96" includes 68 KB of video RAM and 64 KB of RAM. This made "The King of Fighters '96" the first game to break the technical limits of the MVS system. SNK staff members noted that due to the great popularity of some of the series' characters, it is difficult to design new ones that might have the same appeal. This also happens during location tests of new games. The artist known as Shinkiro was responsible for the first artwork involving the cast. As a result, newcomer artist Hiroaki felt for his debut that he needed to draw appealing characters, despite his inexperience. For the first time, former producer Takashi Nishiyama was not on the team for "The King of Fighters 2000" which caused the team some concern. Despite early unease over the game's state, SNK was pleased with the outcome and described it as an appealing arcade game. Following its release, SNK thanked the fans for their support. Mexican company Evoga had a major influence on the games due to the franchise's popularity within Latin America.


title: The King of Fighters

text: In 2000, SNK went bankrupt. Eolith negotiated a license agreement in the same year to keep producing the "KOF" series because of the franchise's popularity in Korea and worldwide. BrezzaSoft assisted Eolith with the game's production. Fearing disappointing returning fans, Eolith decided to maintain most of the common parts from "The King of Fighters" while adding new elements to it. One of the biggest changes is the optional use of Strikers where players can use between one and three characters to assist the playable one. The team aimed to refine the original gameplay system of earlier "KOF" games. While conducting a popularity poll of the characters, Eolith still aimed to include the least popular teams in the game. The great popularity of Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami led to their immediate inclusion in the game. References to works from Evoga can be seen in the game's scenarios. While working on it, the team played "The King of Fighters '98" for the developers to see if they could include a character within the game. A member from Evoga won, resulting in the team asking to add Angel to the game. Starting in 2003, the games were again developed by SNK, now called SNK Playmore. SNK Playmore discontinued the AES system in 2003, preferring to publish video games in cooperation with Sammy, using its Atomiswave arcade board, which provided a more secure, modern platform for new arcade releases. This allowed the new "KOF" games to feature better audio and graphics than earlier games.


title: The King of Fighters

text: Following the release of the first game in "The King of Fighters" series, a new game was released each year. The last of these yearly releases was "The King of Fighters 2003". In December 2004, Falcoon, the series' main illustrator, mentioned that the next game the SNK Playmore staff were trying to release was different from "The King of Fighters: Maximum Impact" or what could have been a "The King of Fighters 2004". The game's development began when SNK staff finished making "Neo Geo Battle Coliseum". "KOF 2003" would be followed by "XI", "XII" and "XIII" which had major changes to appeal to the audience. The decision to create "The King of Fighters XIV" was made when SNK Playmore's CEO Eikichi Kawasaki decided the company should return to producing appealing fighting games rather than Pachinko-Slot Machines and Mobile Apps. While it took some time, full production of the game began when more staff from Esaka joined the team in April 2014. Yasuyuki Oda was the game's director. This was his first contribution to the franchise, leading a younger staff. During his first employment at SNK, games like "Virtua Fighter" motivated him to make a 3D game after he had left SNK. When Oda returned to SNK, there was never any debate about transitioning the series transition from 2D to 3D, though adapting some of the characters proved more difficult than others. Many of SNK's staff consider "KOF '98" and "KOF 2002" the best games in the franchise. They gave them ideas to create new entries in the series that would surpass the quality of these two games. During a contest, SNK used the DLC character Najd based on the Saudi Arabian artist Mashael. SNK Chairman Zhihui Ge expressed a desire to attract more Middle Eastern fans to play the game. He also hired new creators during the post-release of "XIV".


title: The King of Fighters

text: During 1995 Tatsuya Shingyoji wrote a manga adaptation of "The King of Fighters '94". It was serialized in "Monthly Shōnen Ace" published by Kadokawa Shoten and collected into four "tankōbon" volumes. They were released from February 10, 1995, to December 1996. There is also a spin-off manga story based on the adventures of the characters from "The King of Fighters '96" centered around Kyo and Iori's rivalry entitled "The King of Fighters: Kyo." It was written by Masato Natsumoto and published by Kodansha in two "tankōbon" volumes in 1997. Ryo Takamisaki also developed another adaptation from "KOF '96" which Shinseisha published in three "tankōbon" compilations from June 1996 to February 1998. Akihiko Ureshino also wrote multiple novelizations based on the games with different artists contributing to each installment.


title: The King of Fighters

text: A "manhua" adaptation of "KOF" titled "The King of Fighters: Zillion" was created by Andy Seto. Hong Kong artists Wing Yang and King Tung produced further "manhua" for the games, beginning with "The King of Fighters 2001" through "2003" along with the "Maximum Impact" series. Both authors also made a sequel, "The King of Fighters 03: Xenon Zero" (拳皇 XENON ZERO), to conclude the 2003 tournament. ComicsOne licensed the series with its first volume tying in with the release of a new video game and kept publishing it after their transition to DrMaster. They were published in five issues of 128 pages from May 25, 2005, to June 26, 2008. Another "manhua" series is "King of Fighters RX Project '00" (拳皇RX) in three volumes that was officially sponsored by SNK-Playmore Hong Kong. The NESTS saga version was illustrated by Ricky, and covers the fight against NESTS primarily focused on the 2000 tournament.


title: The King of Fighters

text: "" is a "shōnen manga" authored by Kyōtarō Azuma. It is based on the events of "The King of Fighters XIV". The series was serialized in Kodansha's "Magazine Pocket" since January 2018, ending in August 2020. Seven Seas Entertainment licensed the manga for a North American release with the first volume released in March 2020. light novel series "Iori Yagami's Isekai Mu'sou" by Nobuhiko Tenkawa which debuted in July 2019. The art was done by Eisuke Ogura. Centered after the events of "KOF '97", Iori finds himself into another world.


title: The King of Fighters

text: A short series based on "KOF" titled "" was released in 2005. Production I.G produced the title as an original net animation with a total of four episodes, each about 10 minutes in length. It has since been released as a bonus DVD, packaged with "KOF: Maximum Impact 2". An English-language live-action film "The King of Fighters" was released direct-to-DVD in the United States in 2010. New anime and live-action drama productions were announced in 2016.


title: The King of Fighters

text: The CG anime series "" was released on Steam and YouTube beginning in 2017. The first season retells the story of the first games with Kyo Kusanagi leading the Japan Team to participate in the title tournament, eventually encountering the host, Rugal, who is using the power of the mythical creature Orochi. The series has received over 800 million views.


title: The King of Fighters

text: SNK has released a series of CD soundtracks titled "SNK Character Sounds Collection" or "SNK Sound Character Collection" (SNKサウンドキャラクターズコレクション). As of 2008, there are 11 volumes; each one focuses on a single character. The CDs have different versions of the characters' themes, as well as quotes. Most of the albums' covers are illustrated by Masato Natsumoto. The Band of Fighters, shortened as BOF, is a character image band that includes Kyo Kusanagi, Iori Yagami, Terry Bogard, Nakoruru and Athena Asamiya.


title: The King of Fighters

text: Dengeki Bunko and Pony Canyon have released several radio drama CDs based on the series. Some of them are direct adaptations of the video games "KOF '94" to "KOF '00". Another CD is "Iori Yagami Original Drama the Setting Sun and Moon ~ Prologue" (八神庵オリジナルドラマ 夕陽と月〜プロローグ〜), which is centered on Iori Yagami. The drama originally aired on the Game Dra Night and Neo Chupi and was then released by Pony Canyon CD on July 7, 1999. The guidebook "The King of Fighters Perfect Reader" includes the bonus CD drama "KOF: Mid Summer Struggle". There are two stories on it—one is serious the other is a parody focused on "KOF '03". The scenarios were developed by Akihiko Ureshino and BoHyou. SNK also gave away a four-CD soundtrack featuring songs from past "KOF" games with the pre-order of "KOF XIII" on any GameStop in the United States.


title: The King of Fighters

text: In December 2006, Sabertooth Games released a "King of Fighters 2006" set along with "Samurai Shodown V" for its "Universal Fighting System" ("UFS") collectible card game; character starter packs were released for Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui. Other merchandise includes a number of figures and statues, mostly of Mai. Additionally, scale figures based on Kyo's and Iori's original forms and their "XIV" looks have been released, including a Nendoroid figure based on Kyo.


title: The King of Fighters

text: The original "The King of Fighters" games were well received for their use of team battles and the number of characters. Some games were often listed as the best fighting games from their release. The four reviewers of "Electronic Gaming Monthly" declared the Neo Geo AES version a solid improvement over the previous "King of Fighters", particularly applauding the addition of the team edit feature which remained in all of the following games. Critics noted they often served as rivals to Capcom's "Street Fighter" series based on some character designs and moves. While "KOF '96" was felt to be unbalanced due its usage of projectile moves, its updated graphics impressed reviewers. SNK's constant use of 2D sprites across multiple games has been criticized by reviewers who found them dated despite attempts to improve the graphics with the release of "XI". As a result, the graphic overhaul in the two following games was met with high praise.


title: The King of Fighters

text: While the fighting system has been well-received, critics have had mixed feelings regarding the Striker system introduced in "KOF '99". In "GameSpot"s "The History of SNK" article, "KOF '99: Evolution" was described as one of the best fighting games on the Dreamcast, along with "". However, because it was released during the PlayStation 2's launch and Dreamcast's ending, the game did not sell well. The boss character Rugal Bernstein, among others, has been described as one of the most challenging characters to defeat in fighting games; this feeling also led to some criticism.


title: The King of Fighters

text: The developers of "KOF" noted that Kyo and Iori were also highly popular in Korea which led to their immediate inclusion in "The King of Fighters 2001", the first game not developed by the original company. In the book "Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific", Kyo was regarded as one of the most popular video game characters in Hong Kong from the mid-1990s onward alongside Iori and Mai, among others, to the point of overshadowing the "Street Fighter" characters who were also largely well-known. The Mexican company Evoga had a major influence on the game due to the franchise's popularity in Latin America and often playtested the games. With "KOF XIV", SNK noted the series' popularity was still dominant in South America and China, leading to the creation of teams composed of characters from those areas. The popularity of the franchise in those markets has been attributed mainly to economic factors - machines featuring "King of Fighters" series were often cheaper and more easily accessible than those featuring competing titles from other companies.


title: The King of Fighters

text: "The Daily Star" noted the games' popularity comes not only from the gameplay but also the characters who tend to develop across the series—for example the rivalry between Kyo and Iori. The franchise's story arcs were also found to be appealing as they stand out from other fighting game franchises. Kakuchopurei.com felt the series offered a balanced cast which would help any newcomer while also agreeing with "The Daily Star" on how SNK handled the story lines. There has also been censorship of some of the ports of the North American games, most notably Whip's gun and blood. Singer Del the Funky Homosapien has recorded a song titled "The King of Fighters" whose lyrics involve the characters and special moves. Ash Crimson's character received a poor response in Western regions. In an interview with Ignition Entertainment's director of business development Shane Bettehausen, Alex Lucard of "Diehard GameFan" said that North American SNK fans detested Ash and complained about his inclusion in "The King of Fighters XII" without a storyline while popular series' characters were overlooked. "After Ignition" polled fans to choose an artbox for console versions of "The King of Fighters XII". The company announced Ash's unpopularity reduced the number of potential covers to two featuring Kyo and Iori.


title: The King of Fighters

text: Ben Herman, president of SNK Playmore USA, commented that although he received complaints about the English voices for the game, "Maximum Impact" sold over 100,000 units as of May 2006, becoming a commercial success. Despite initial issues with the online mode and other features of the game "The King of Fighters XIV" Yasuyuki Oda said the fan response was positive especially after these issues were fixed.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: A randomized controlled trial (or randomized control trial; RCT) is a form of scientific experiment used to control factors not under direct experimental control. Examples of RCTs are clinical trials that compare the effects of drugs, surgical techniques, medical devices, diagnostic procedures or other medical treatments.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Participants who enroll in RCTs differ from one another in known and unknown ways that can influence study outcomes, and yet cannot be directly controlled. By randomly allocating participants among compared treatments, an RCT enables "statistical control" over these influences. Provided it is designed well, conducted properly, and enrolls enough participants, an RCT may achieve sufficient control over these confounding factors to deliver a useful comparison of the treatments studied.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: An RCT in clinical research typically compares a proposed new treatment against an existing standard of care; these are then termed the 'experimental' and 'control' treatments, respectively. When no such generally accepted treatment is available, a placebo may be used in the control group so that participants are blinded to their treatment allocations. This blinding principle is ideally also extended as much as possible to other parties including researchers, technicians, data analysts, and evaluators. Effective blinding experimentally isolates the physiological effects of treatments from various psychological sources of bias.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: The randomness in the assignment of participants to treatments reduces selection bias and allocation bias, balancing both known and unknown prognostic factors, in the assignment of treatments. Blinding reduces other forms of experimenter and subject biases.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: A well-blinded RCT is considered the gold standard for clinical trials. Blinded RCTs are commonly used to test the efficacy of medical interventions and may additionally provide information about adverse effects, such as drug reactions. A randomized controlled trial can provide compelling evidence that the study treatment causes an effect on human health.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: The terms "RCT" and "randomized trial" are sometimes used synonymously, but the latter term omits mention of controls and can therefore describe studies that compare multiple treatment groups with each other in the absence of a control group. Similarly, the initialism is sometimes expanded as "randomized clinical trial" or "randomized comparative trial", leading to ambiguity in the scientific literature. Not all RCTs are randomized "controlled" trials (and some of them could never be, as in cases where controls would be impractical or unethical to use). The term randomized controlled clinical trial is an alternative term used in clinical research; however, RCTs are also employed in other research areas, including many of the social sciences.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: The first reported clinical trial was conducted by James Lind in 1747 to identify treatment for scurvy. The first blind experiment was conducted by the French Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism in 1784 to investigate the claims of mesmerism. An early essay advocating the blinding of researchers came from Claude Bernard in the latter half of the 19th century. Bernard recommended that the observer of an experiment should not have knowledge of the hypothesis being tested. This suggestion contrasted starkly with the prevalent Enlightenment-era attitude that scientific observation can only be objectively valid when undertaken by a well-educated, informed scientist. The first study recorded to have a blinded researcher was conducted in 1907 by W. H. R. Rivers and H. N. Webber to investigate the effects of caffeine.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Randomized experiments first appeared in psychology, where they were introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce and Joseph Jastrow in the 1880s, and in education.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: In the early 20th century, randomized experiments appeared in agriculture, due to Jerzy Neyman and Ronald A. Fisher. Fisher's experimental research and his writings popularized randomized experiments.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: The first published Randomized Controlled Trial in medicine appeared in the 1948 paper entitled "Streptomycin treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis", which described a Medical Research Council investigation. One of the authors of that paper was Austin Bradford Hill, who is credited as having conceived the modern RCT.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Trial design was further influenced by the large-scale ISIS trials on heart attack treatments that were conducted in the 1980s.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: By the late 20th century, RCTs were recognized as the standard method for "rational therapeutics" in medicine. As of 2004, more than 150,000 RCTs were in the Cochrane Library. To improve the reporting of RCTs in the medical literature, an international group of scientists and editors published Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) Statements in 1996, 2001 and 2010, and these have become widely accepted. Randomization is the process of assigning trial subjects to treatment or control groups using an element of chance to determine the assignments in order to reduce the bias.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Although the principle of clinical equipoise ("genuine uncertainty within the expert medical community... about the preferred treatment") common to clinical trials has been applied to RCTs, the ethics of RCTs have special considerations. For one, it has been argued that equipoise itself is insufficient to justify RCTs. For another, "collective equipoise" can conflict with a lack of personal equipoise (e.g., a personal belief that an intervention is effective). Finally, Zelen's design, which has been used for some RCTs, randomizes subjects "before" they provide informed consent, which may be ethical for RCTs of screening and selected therapies, but is likely unethical "for most therapeutic trials."


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Although subjects almost always provide informed consent for their participation in an RCT, studies since 1982 have documented that RCT subjects may believe that they are certain to receive treatment that is best for them personally; that is, they do not understand the difference between research and treatment. Further research is necessary to determine the prevalence of and ways to address this "therapeutic misconception".


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: The RCT method variations may also create cultural effects that have not been well understood. For example, patients with terminal illness may join trials in the hope of being cured, even when treatments are unlikely to be successful.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: In 2004, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) announced that all trials starting enrolment after July 1, 2005, must be registered prior to consideration for publication in one of the 12 member journals of the committee. However, trial registration may still occur late or not at all.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Medical journals have been slow in adapting policies requiring mandatory clinical trial registration as a prerequisite for publication.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: One way to classify RCTs is by study design. From most to least common in the healthcare literature, the major categories of RCT study designs are:


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: An analysis of the 616 RCTs indexed in PubMed during December 2006 found that 78% were parallel-group trials, 16% were crossover, 2% were split-body, 2% were cluster, and 2% were factorial.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: RCTs can be classified as "explanatory" or "pragmatic." Explanatory RCTs test efficacy in a research setting with highly selected participants and under highly controlled conditions. In contrast, pragmatic RCTs (pRCTs) test effectiveness in everyday practice with relatively unselected participants and under flexible conditions; in this way, pragmatic RCTs can "inform decisions about practice."


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Another classification of RCTs categorizes them as "superiority trials", "noninferiority trials", and "equivalence trials", which differ in methodology and reporting. Most RCTs are superiority trials, in which one intervention is hypothesized to be superior to another in a statistically significant way. Some RCTs are noninferiority trials "to determine whether a new treatment is no worse than a reference treatment." Other RCTs are equivalence trials in which the hypothesis is that two interventions are indistinguishable from each other.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: There are two processes involved in randomizing patients to different interventions. First is choosing a "randomization procedure" to generate an unpredictable sequence of allocations; this may be a simple random assignment of patients to any of the groups at equal probabilities, may be "restricted", or may be "adaptive." A second and more practical issue is "allocation concealment", which refers to the stringent precautions taken to ensure that the group assignment of patients are not revealed prior to definitively allocating them to their respective groups. Non-random "systematic" methods of group assignment, such as alternating subjects between one group and the other, can cause "limitless contamination possibilities" and can cause a breach of allocation concealment.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: However empirical evidence that adequate randomization changes outcomes relative to inadequate randomization has been difficult to detect.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: However, no single randomization procedure meets those goals in every circumstance, so researchers must select a procedure for a given study based on its advantages and disadvantages.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: This is a commonly used and intuitive procedure, similar to "repeated fair coin-tossing." Also known as "complete" or "unrestricted" randomization, it is robust against both selection and accidental biases. However, its main drawback is the possibility of imbalanced group sizes in small RCTs. It is therefore recommended only for RCTs with over 200 subjects.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: To balance group sizes in smaller RCTs, some form of "restricted" randomization is recommended. The major types of restricted randomization used in RCTs are:


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: At least two types of "adaptive" randomization procedures have been used in RCTs, but much less frequently than simple or restricted randomization:


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: "Allocation concealment" (defined as "the procedure for protecting the randomization process so that the treatment to be allocated is not known before the patient is entered into the study") is important in RCTs. In practice, clinical investigators in RCTs often find it difficult to maintain impartiality. Stories abound of investigators holding up sealed envelopes to lights or ransacking offices to determine group assignments in order to dictate the assignment of their next patient. Such practices introduce selection bias and confounders (both of which should be minimized by randomization), possibly distorting the results of the study. Adequate allocation concealment should defeat patients and investigators from discovering treatment allocation once a study is underway and after the study has concluded. Treatment related side-effects or adverse events may be specific enough to reveal allocation to investigators or patients thereby introducing bias or influencing any subjective parameters collected by investigators or requested from subjects.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Some standard methods of ensuring allocation concealment include sequentially numbered, opaque, sealed envelopes (SNOSE); sequentially numbered containers; pharmacy controlled randomization; and central randomization. It is recommended that allocation concealment methods be included in an RCT's protocol, and that the allocation concealment methods should be reported in detail in a publication of an RCT's results; however, a 2005 study determined that most RCTs have unclear allocation concealment in their protocols, in their publications, or both. On the other hand, a 2008 study of 146 meta-analyses concluded that the results of RCTs with inadequate or unclear allocation concealment tended to be biased toward beneficial effects only if the RCTs' outcomes were subjective as opposed to objective.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: The number of treatment units (subjects or groups of subjects) assigned to control and treatment groups, affects an RCT's reliability. If the effect of the treatment is small, the number of treatment units in either group may be insufficient for rejecting the null hypothesis in the respective statistical test. The failure to reject the null hypothesis would imply that the treatment shows no statistically significant effect on the treated "in a given test". But as the sample size increases, the same RCT may be able to demonstrate a significant effect of the treatment, even if this effect is small.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: An RCT may be blinded, (also called "masked") by "procedures that prevent study participants, caregivers, or outcome assessors from knowing which intervention was received." Unlike allocation concealment, blinding is sometimes inappropriate or impossible to perform in an RCT; for example, if an RCT involves a treatment in which active participation of the patient is necessary (e.g., physical therapy), participants cannot be blinded to the intervention.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Traditionally, blinded RCTs have been classified as "single-blind", "double-blind", or "triple-blind"; however, in 2001 and 2006 two studies showed that these terms have different meanings for different people. The 2010 CONSORT Statement specifies that authors and editors should not use the terms "single-blind", "double-blind", and "triple-blind"; instead, reports of blinded RCT should discuss "If done, who was blinded after assignment to interventions (for example, participants, care providers, those assessing outcomes) and how."


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: RCTs without blinding are referred to as "unblinded", "open", or (if the intervention is a medication) "open-label". In 2008 a study concluded that the results of unblinded RCTs tended to be biased toward beneficial effects only if the RCTs' outcomes were subjective as opposed to objective; for example, in an RCT of treatments for multiple sclerosis, unblinded neurologists (but not the blinded neurologists) felt that the treatments were beneficial. In pragmatic RCTs, although the participants and providers are often unblinded, it is "still desirable and often possible to blind the assessor or obtain an objective source of data for evaluation of outcomes."


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Regardless of the statistical methods used, important considerations in the analysis of RCT data include:


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: The "CONSORT 2010 Statement" is "an evidence-based, minimum set of recommendations for reporting RCTs." The CONSORT 2010 checklist contains 25 items (many with sub-items) focusing on "individually randomised, two group, parallel trials" which are the most common type of RCT.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Two studies published in "The New England Journal of Medicine" in 2000 found that observational studies and RCTs overall produced similar results. The authors of the 2000 findings questioned the belief that "observational studies should not be used for defining evidence-based medical care" and that RCTs' results are "evidence of the highest grade." However, a 2001 study published in "Journal of the American Medical Association" concluded that "discrepancies beyond chance do occur and differences in estimated magnitude of treatment effect are very common" between observational studies and RCTs. According to a 2014 Cochrane review, there is little evidence for significant effect differences between observational studies and randomized controlled trials, regardless of design, heterogeneity, or inclusion of studies of interventions that assessed drug effects.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Two other lines of reasoning question RCTs' contribution to scientific knowledge beyond other types of studies:


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Like all statistical methods, RCTs are subject to both type I ("false positive") and type II ("false negative") statistical errors. Regarding Type I errors, a typical RCT will use 0.05 (i.e., 1 in 20) as the probability that the RCT will falsely find two equally effective treatments significantly different. Regarding Type II errors, despite the publication of a 1978 paper noting that the sample sizes of many "negative" RCTs were too small to make definitive conclusions about the negative results, by 2005-2006 a sizeable proportion of RCTs still had inaccurate or incompletely reported sample size calculations.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Peer review of results is an important part of the scientific method. Reviewers examine the study results for potential problems with design that could lead to unreliable results (for example by creating a systematic bias), evaluate the study in the context of related studies and other evidence, and evaluate whether the study can be reasonably considered to have proven its conclusions. To underscore the need for peer review and the danger of overgeneralizing conclusions, two Boston-area medical researchers performed a randomized controlled trial in which they randomly assigned either a parachute or an empty backpack to 23 volunteers who jumped from either a biplane or a helicopter. The study was able to accurately report that parachutes fail to reduce injury compared to empty backpacks. The key context that limited the general applicability of this conclusion was that the aircraft were parked on the ground, and participants had only jumped about two feet.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: RCTs are considered to be the most reliable form of scientific evidence in the hierarchy of evidence that influences healthcare policy and practice because RCTs reduce spurious causality and bias. Results of RCTs may be combined in systematic reviews which are increasingly being used in the conduct of evidence-based practice. Some examples of scientific organizations' considering RCTs or systematic reviews of RCTs to be the highest-quality evidence available are:


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: RCTs can be expensive; one study found 28 Phase III RCTs funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke prior to 2000 with a total cost of US$335 million, for a mean cost of US$12 million per RCT. Nevertheless, the return on investment of RCTs may be high, in that the same study projected that the 28 RCTs produced a "net benefit to society at 10-years" of 46 times the cost of the trials program, based on evaluating a quality-adjusted life year as equal to the prevailing mean per capita gross domestic product.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: The conduct of an RCT takes several years until being published; thus, data is restricted from the medical community for long years and may be of less relevance at time of publication.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: It is costly to maintain RCTs for the years or decades that would be ideal for evaluating some interventions.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Interventions to prevent events that occur only infrequently (e.g., sudden infant death syndrome) and uncommon adverse outcomes (e.g., a rare side effect of a drug) would require RCTs with extremely large sample sizes and may, therefore, best be assessed by observational studies.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Due to the costs of running RCTs, these usually only inspect one variable or very few variables, rarely reflecting the full picture of a complicated medical situation; whereas the case report, for example, can detail many aspects of the patient's medical situation (e.g. patient history, physical examination, diagnosis, psychosocial aspects, follow up).


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: A 2011 study done to disclose possible conflicts of interests in underlying research studies used for medical meta-analyses reviewed 29 meta-analyses and found that conflicts of interests in the studies underlying the meta-analyses were rarely disclosed. The 29 meta-analyses included 11 from general medicine journals; 15 from specialty medicine journals, and 3 from the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. The 29 meta-analyses reviewed an aggregate of 509 randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Of these, 318 RCTs reported funding sources with 219 (69%) industry funded. 132 of the 509 RCTs reported author conflict of interest disclosures, with 91 studies (69%) disclosing industry financial ties with one or more authors. The information was, however, seldom reflected in the meta-analyses. Only two (7%) reported RCT funding sources and none reported RCT author-industry ties. The authors concluded "without acknowledgment of COI due to industry funding or author industry financial ties from RCTs included in meta-analyses, readers' understanding and appraisal of the evidence from the meta-analysis may be compromised."


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Some RCTs are fully or partly funded by the health care industry (e.g., the pharmaceutical industry) as opposed to government, nonprofit, or other sources. A systematic review published in 2003 found four 1986–2002 articles comparing industry-sponsored and nonindustry-sponsored RCTs, and in all the articles there was a correlation of industry sponsorship and positive study outcome. A 2004 study of 1999–2001 RCTs published in leading medical and surgical journals determined that industry-funded RCTs "are more likely to be associated with statistically significant pro-industry findings." These results have been mirrored in trials in surgery, where although industry funding did not affect the rate of trial discontinuation it was however associated with a lower odds of publication for completed trials. One possible reason for the pro-industry results in industry-funded published RCTs is publication bias. Other authors have cited the differing goals of academic and industry sponsored research as contributing to the difference. Commercial sponsors may be more focused on performing trials of drugs that have already shown promise in early stage trials, and on replicating previous positive results to fulfill regulatory requirements for drug approval.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: If a disruptive innovation in medical technology is developed, it may be difficult to test this ethically in an RCT if it becomes "obvious" that the control subjects have poorer outcomes—either due to other foregoing testing, or within the initial phase of the RCT itself. Ethically it may be necessary to abort the RCT prematurely, and getting ethics approval (and patient agreement) to withhold the innovation from the control group in future RCT's may not be feasible.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Historical control trials (HCT) exploit the data of previous RCTs to reduce the sample size; however, these approaches are controversial in the scientific community and must be handled with care.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Due to the recent emergence of RCTs in social science, the use of RCTs in social sciences is a contested issue. Some writers from a medical or health background have argued that existing research in a range of social science disciplines lacks rigour, and should be improved by greater use of randomized control trials.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Researchers in transport science argue that public spending on programmes such as school travel plans could not be justified unless their efficacy is demonstrated by randomized controlled trials. Graham-Rowe and colleagues reviewed 77 evaluations of transport interventions found in the literature, categorising them into 5 "quality levels". They concluded that most of the studies were of low quality and advocated the use of randomized controlled trials wherever possible in future transport research.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: Dr. Steve Melia took issue with these conclusions, arguing that claims about the advantages of RCTs, in establishing causality and avoiding bias, have been exaggerated. He proposed the following eight criteria for the use of RCTs in contexts where interventions must change human behaviour to be effective:


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: A 2005 review found 83 randomized experiments in criminology published in 1982–2004, compared with only 35 published in 1957–1981. The authors classified the studies they found into five categories: "policing", "prevention", "corrections", "court", and "community". Focusing only on offending behavior programs, Hollin (2008) argued that RCTs may be difficult to implement (e.g., if an RCT required "passing sentences that would randomly assign offenders to programmes") and therefore that experiments with quasi-experimental design are still necessary.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: RCTs have been used in evaluating a number of educational interventions. Between 1980 and 2016, over 1,000 reports of RCTs have been published. For example, a 2009 study randomized 260 elementary school teachers' classrooms to receive or not receive a program of behavioral screening, classroom intervention, and parent training, and then measured the behavioral and academic performance of their students. Another 2009 study randomized classrooms for 678 first-grade children to receive a classroom-centered intervention, a parent-centered intervention, or no intervention, and then followed their academic outcomes through age 19.


title: Randomized controlled trial

text: A 2018 review of the 10 most cited randomised controlled trials noted poor distribution of background traits, difficulties with blinding, and discussed other assumptions and biases inherent in randomised controlled trials. These include the "unique time period assessment bias", the "background traits remain constant assumption", the "average treatment effects limitation", the "simple treatment at the individual level limitation", the "all preconditions are fully met assumption", the "quantitative variable limitation" and the "placebo only or conventional treatment only limitation".


title: Francys Arsentiev

text: Francys Arsentiev (January 18, 1958 – May 24, 1998) became the first woman from the United States to reach the summit of Mount Everest without the aid of bottled oxygen, on May 22, 1998. She then died during the descent.


title: Francys Arsentiev

text: Francys Yarbro Distefano-Arsentiev was born Francys Yarbro, on January 18, 1958, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to John Yarbro and his wife Marina Garrett. At age six, her father took her to the Colorado mountains. Growing up, she attended The American School in Switzerland and schools in the United States. Arsentiev attended Stephens College before ultimately graduating from the University of Louisville. She then received a Master's degree from the International School of Business Management in Phoenix. Arsentiev worked as an accountant in Telluride, Colorado during the 1980s.


title: Francys Arsentiev

text: In 1992, Yarbro married Sergei Arsentiev. Together, they climbed many Russian Peaks, including the first ascent of Peak 5800m, which they named Peak Goodwill, as well as Denali via the West Buttress. Arsentiev became the first U.S. woman to ski down Elbrus, and she summitted its east and west peaks. By this time, she had developed an interest in becoming the first U.S. woman to summit Everest without the use of supplemental oxygen.


title: Francys Arsentiev

text: In May 1998, Francys and Sergei Arsentiev arrived at base camp, Mount Everest. On May 17, they ascended from Advance Base Camp to the North Col, and the following day they reached 7700 m (25,262 ft) as 21 other climbers reached the summit of Everest from the North. On May 19, they climbed to 8,203 meters (27,000') (Camp 6). Sergei reported by radio that they were in good shape and were going to start their summit attempt on May 20 at 1:00am. On May 20, after spending the night at Camp 4, they started their summit attempt but turned around at the First Step when their headlamps failed. On May 21, they again stayed at Camp 6, after ascending only 50–100 meters (200' to 300') before turning around.


title: Francys Arsentiev

text: After these two aborted attempts on the summit, they began their final ascent on May 22. Due to the absence of oxygen supplementation at such high altitude, the two moved slowly and summitted dangerously late in the day. As a result, they were forced to spend yet another night above 8,000 meters (26,000'). During the course of the evening, the two became separated. Sergei made his way down to camp the following morning, only to find that his wife had not yet arrived. Realizing she had to be somewhere dangerously high upon the mountain, he set off to find her, carrying oxygen and medicine.


title: Francys Arsentiev

text: Details of what happened next are uncertain, but the most plausible accounts suggest that on the morning of May 23, Francys Arsentiev was encountered by an Uzbek team that was climbing the final few hundred meters (yards) to the summit. She appeared to be half-conscious, affected by oxygen deprivation and frostbite. As she was unable to move on her own, they attended to her with oxygen and carried her down as far as they could, until, depleted of their own oxygen, they became too fatigued to continue the effort. Francys was still alive. As the Uzbek climbers made their way down to camp that evening, they encountered Sergei Arsentiev on his way back up to her. This is the last time he was seen alive.


title: Francys Arsentiev

text: On the morning of May 24, Briton Ian Woodall, South African Cathy O'Dowd, and several more Uzbeks encountered Francys Arsentiev while on their way to the summit. She was found where she had been left the evening before. Sergei Arsentiev's ice axe and rope were identified nearby, but he was nowhere to be found. Both Woodall and O'Dowd called off their own summit attempts and tried to help Francys for more than an hour, but because of her poor condition, the perilous location, and freezing weather, they were forced to abandon her and descend to camp. She died as they found her, lying on her side, still clipped onto the guide rope. She was aged 40, with one son. Her corpse had the nickname "Sleeping Beauty".


title: Francys Arsentiev

text: The mysterious disappearance of her husband was solved the following year when Jake Norton, a member of the 1999 "Mallory and Irvine" expedition, discovered Sergei's body lower on the mountain face, apparently dead from a fall while attempting to rescue his wife.


title: Francys Arsentiev

text: Woodall initiated and led an expedition in 2007, "The Tao of Everest", with the purpose of returning to the mountain to bury the bodies of Francys Arsentiev and an unidentified climber ("Green Boots"), both of whom were plainly visible from the nearby climbing route. Francys Arsentiev's body was visible to climbers for nine years, from her death, May 24, 1998, to May 23, 2007. On May 23, 2007, Woodall was able to locate Arsentiev's body, and after a brief ritual, dropped her to a lower location on the face, removing the body from view. In 2014, "Green Boots" was moved to a less conspicuous location by the Chinese.


title: Hermitage Museum

text: The State Hermitage Museum () is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the largest art museum in the world by gallery space. It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired an impressive collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day. It has been open to the public since 1852. The "Art Newspaper" ranked the museum 6th in their list of the most visited art museums, with 1,649,443 visitors in 2021.


title: Hermitage Museum

text: Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items (the numismatic collection accounts for about one-third of them). The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya, and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property. Since July 1992, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky.


title: Hermitage Museum

text: Of the six buildings in the main museum complex, five—namely the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage, and Hermitage Theatre—are all open to the public. The entrance ticket for foreign tourists costs more than the fee paid by citizens of Russia and Belarus. However, entrance is free of charge the third Thursday of every month for all visitors, and free daily for students and children. The museum is closed on Mondays. The entrance for individual visitors is located in the Winter Palace, accessible from the Courtyard.


title: Hermitage Museum

text: A hermitage is the dwelling of a hermit or recluse. The word derives from Old French "hermit, ermit" "hermit, recluse", from Late Latin "eremita", from Greek "eremites", that means "people who live alone", which is in turn derived from ἐρημός ("erēmos"), "desert".


title: Hermitage Museum

text: Originally, the only building housing the collection was the "Small Hermitage". Today, the Hermitage Museum encompasses many buildings on the Palace Embankment and its neighbourhoods. Apart from the Small Hermitage, the museum now also includes the "Old Hermitage" (also called "Large Hermitage"), the "New Hermitage", the "Hermitage Theatre", and the "Winter Palace", the former main residence of the Russian tsars. In recent years, the Hermitage has expanded to the General Staff Building on the Palace Square facing the Winter Palace, and the Menshikov Palace.


title: Hermitage Museum

text: The Western European Art collection includes European paintings, sculpture, and applied art from the 13th to the 20th centuries. It is displayed, in about 120 rooms, on the first and second floor of the four main buildings. Drawings and prints are displayed in temporary exhibitions.


title: Hermitage Museum

text: Since 1940, the Egyptian collection, dating back to 1852 and including the former Castiglione Collection, has occupied a large hall on the ground floor in the eastern part of the Winter Palace. It serves as a passage to the exhibition of Classical Antiquities. A modest collection of the culture of Ancient Mesopotamia, including a number of Assyrian reliefs from Babylon, Dur-Sharrukin and Nimrud, is located in the same part of the building.


title: Hermitage Museum

text: The collection of classical antiquities occupies most of the ground floor of the Old and New Hermitage buildings. The interiors of the ground floor were designed by German architect Leo von Klenze in the Greek revival style in the early 1850s, using painted polished stucco and columns of natural marble and granite. One of the largest and most notable interiors of the first floor is the Hall of Twenty Columns, divided into three parts by two rows of grey monolithic columns of Serdobol granite, intended for the display of Graeco-Etruscan vases. Its floor is made of a modern marble mosaic imitating ancient tradition, while the stucco walls and ceiling are covered in painting.


title: Hermitage Museum

text: The Room of the Great Vase in the western wing features the high Kolyvan Vase, weighing , made of jasper in 1843 and installed before the walls were erected. While the western wing was designed for exhibitions, the rooms on the ground floor in the eastern wing of the New Hermitage, now also hosting exhibitions, were originally intended for libraries. The floor of the Athena Room in the south-eastern corner of the building, one of the original libraries, is decorated with an authentic 4th-century mosaic excavated in an early Christian basilica in Chersonesos in 1854.