slaying the
Yamata no Orochi that influenced the franchise's first story arc end with this installment. The series' previous installment, ''
The King of Fighters '96, was the last game to be directed by Masanori Kuwasashi, who experienced pressure with the annual release schedule. Kuwasashi was replaced with battle designer Toyohisa Tanabe, who ended the Orochi arc with The King of Fighters '97
. Tanabe was in charge of balancing characters; his main objective was to end the Orochi story arc by revealing the title villain who would become a boss and face the Sacred Treasures Team, who debuted in the previous game. KOF '97'' was intended to improve on the previous game's new, experimental systems. The Orochi arc was planned since the series' beginning; the protagonist
Kyo Kusanagi was inspired by Japanese myths, most notably the
Kusanagi no Tsurugi weaponry obtained by the god
Susanoo-no-Mikoto followed by the encounter with the mythical beast. He was also given a move titled "Orochinagi" which was conceptualized to be used to defeat it. The developers wanted to give players a large number of
combos with the new characters and moves, leading to the development of the game's Advanced and Extra fighting systems. The narrative of ''KOF '97'' focuses on Kyo and his social life as antagonists almost sacrifice his girlfriend Yuki to revive the final boss. Although Yuki only has one line in the game, SNK carefully chose a voice actor for the character, who speaks in the Sacred Treasures Team's ending as a cameo when Kyo thinks of Yuki as he defeats the final boss. The gameplay was created to appeal to players of ''The King of Fighters '95
and The King of Fighters '96''. The latter game onwards removed Kyo's original projectile version in exchange for
hand-to-hand combat. This version of the protagonist was added as an alternative playable version because he was popular with gamers. Among other subplots,
Iori Yagami in his Orochi form was originally meant to be the final boss of the game after the player beats the New Faces Team in their Orochi forms. It was later decided to make Orochi Iori the mid-boss, with Orochi as the final boss and the New Faces Team as sub-bosses. Tanabe stated the staff was initially reluctant to add this version of Iori to the series' roster due to worries about fan reactions, but did so to add more impact to the Orochi Saga's climax. He was particularly pleased to see surprised reactions from female fans to this form during ''KOF '97''s location testing. After deciding Iori as the mid-boss character, developers focused on adding
Leona Heidern as an alternative mid-boss character if players were already using Iori in the game. As such, several television advertisements, and advertisements in other media, were produced to notify players about a "fork in the game" and to give hints about Orochi Leona. Leona was revealed to be related with the Orochi, and the missing character Heidern acted as Leona's father figure. Key arts of snakes were heavily featured in promotion of the game to symbolize the villain. The New Faces Team was created to offset the remaining top-three characters. The team-member characters were developed as a counterpart to the Hero Team; Chris manipulates fire like Kyo, Shermie uses lightning like
Benimaru Nikaido and
Yashiro Nanakase is a male giant like
Goro Daimon. The plot element of Chris acting as a new body for Orochi was developed in the early stages of production, but the staff considered using other ideas. At the start of production, the plan was for Chris to use the "Flame of Darkness (Black Flame)" but because viewing the black flame on a screen was difficult, its color was changed to purple. Orochi was first intended as "a buck-naked Chris" fighting with a shining energy ball. His final design was chosen after developers conducted a survey in which only two responders favored the first design. Orochi's character-design codename was "Chief", but several people opposed giving him the final name. In regards to characters from other series,
Blue Mary from
Fatal Fury 3 was favored over her later designs. To have all eight of the servants of Orochi confirmed in this game,
Ryuji Yamazaki from
Fatal Fury 3 was chosen as the new member because the developers considered him to be a good villain and liked his snake-like appearance—the ancient Orochi was a giant snake. To adapt the character for ''KOF '97
, the game planner provided Yamazaki with new moves. Yamazaki was too different from his Fatal Fury'' persona after Tanabe got the producer's permission as in
KOF he is a rebellious servant of the villains while in his original game he is portrayed as a man working for the mafia. ==Release==