The King of Fighters '95[a] (KOF '95) is a fighting video game developed and published by SNK for the Neo Geo arcade and home consoles in 1995.

One of the main focuses in the creation of The King of Fighters '95 was the introduction of the Rivals Team, most notably Iori, who became one of the favorite characters of the staff.

The gameplay and rules are mostly unchanged from The King of Fighters '94 where players can choose a team of three members and compete against others until all three characters are defeated.

Through the main play mode, players must defeat all of the teams from the game in order to fight the bosses: the brainwashed Saisyu Kusanagi, followed by a stronger Rugal Bernstein.

Saisyu Kusanagi, Kyo's father, appears as a fighter for the first time (having made a non-playable cameo in KOF '94) as a computer-controlled sub-boss character.

They introduced a few new features, including the counterattack was an improved version of the dodge attack that was difficult to execute in "'94" and was arranged in the KOF style.

The CPU in "'94" seemed to be trapped in a fairly simple strategy, so this time, the concept of the computer's movements is to make it as difficult as possible to defeat it with just one pattern.

[6] The sub-boss character, Saisyu Kusanagi, was never meant to appear in the game as the staff wanted to make so that he died in The King of Fighters '94 during one of the cut-scenes from the Hero Team.

[8] Fatal Fury boss character Geese Howard was meant to be playable in the game; various considerations at the time, however, led developers to abandon this plan.

[12] The character stood thanks to his violent moves able comparable to the ones from Midway's Mortal Kombat fighting game series.

"[14] A more outlandish design, called "Rugal Infinity", would have featured his body merged with Geese and Krauser, appearing as a six armed naked man with the other two men's faces sticking out of the sides of his head, akin to depictions of the god Ashura.

[15] Dubbing him "Omega Rugal", they ultimately settled on an appearance similar to his King of Fighters '94 counterpart, but with his upper body having burst from his clothing, wild white hair, cybernetic prosthetics replacing his right hand and eye, and the Greek letter "Ω" tattooed on his back.

The Saturn version (which required a ROM cartridge that came packaged with the game disc) was also released in Europe by Sega.

It featured compatibility with the Super Game Boy, as well as introducing Nakoruru from the Samurai Shodown series as a secret character.

[21] The Neo Geo AES version was added via emulation to the Wii's Virtual Console service on April 26, 2010.

It is slightly edited, however; the blood is removed and Mai lacks her signature bounce, both in her fighting stance and win animation.

[35] 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.

He found the level of skill and technique involved in the game to be both its strongest point and the main limiting factor on its appeal: "SNK fans swear blind that King of Fighters is far superior to Street Fighter Alpha (and its sequel) simply because the element of skill required is that much tougher - making the rewards that much sweeter.

The majority of us are unlikely to reach that pinnacle of skill ... but the fact is that if you're good enough, it remains one of the greatest fighting games of all time."

[29] 1UP.com praised SNK's characters designs and the addition of the team edit option, making the game a good competition for Street Fighter Alpha.

[28] Reviewing the Neo Geo CD version, Maximum deemed that "SNK remain masters of the sprite-based one-on-one fighting genre, leaving all competitors way behind with King of Fighters '95."

They elaborated that the team combat makes for greater variety than the average fighting game, the team edit feature greatly increases the game's enjoyability and longevity, the unusually high difficulty of executing combos makes pulling them off more satisfying, and the animations are greatly improved from The King of Fighters '94.

[31] The PlayStation version, however, was much less well received, as reviewers stated it has poor design in comparison to other fighting games from the same year.

[30] A reviewer for Next Generation said that the PlayStation version compounded the game's lack of fresh and original gameplay with long load times.

"[37] 1UP.com praised the introduction of Omega Rugal, noting him to be "one of the most stylish boss designs in fighting history", although players could hate him due to how difficult it is to defeat him.