The King of Fighters '95 is a fighting game produced by SNK for the Neo Geo arcade and home consoles in 1995. It is the sequel to The King of Fighters '94 and the second game in The King of Fighters series. It is also the first game in the series to be ported to other home consoles besides the Neo Geo AES and Neo-Geo CD thus making SNK a second-party developer, with versions released for the PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Game Boy. Furthermore, it was also re-released in The King of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga in 2008 for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and Wii.
One of the main focuses on 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 from the staff. The game has received mixed reviews from various video games publications. Most writers have complained about the response from controls and long loading times from the PlayStation port. However, the introduction from the enhanced version of Rugal, Omega Rugal, as well as the differences between all the characters have been noted to be one of the best parts from the game.
Upon release, Computer and Video Games magazine called it "arguably the greatest 2D fighting game ever" made. The King of Fighters '95 was awarded Best Neo-Geo Game of 1995 by Electronic Gaming Monthly in 1996. 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.