There is something overwhelmingly 90s about the beat-'em-up genre, so it seems entirely appropriate that a fighter ported over to iOS should celebrate the era with pride. The King of Fighters 98 (SNK Playmore, £2.49) is a celebration of button-bashing that collects all the combatants from the series' history and pits them against each other in three v three bouts.
KoF may not be as familiar as Capcom's street-based favourite, but the gameplay matches up well, with four buttons for light and heavy attacks, and the usual duck, dash, crouch and jump mechanism, using the d-pad. The fancy "desperation" strikes can be tricky to pull off, with finger-twisting combinations required, and the whole thing is much easier using a control pad rather than the on-screen buttons.
Lack of online multiplayer mode is a shame, but local support using bluetooth seems apt for a genre that has its roots in the gritty, hands-on arena of the old-school arcade, where getting up close and personal with your foe was a necessity, not a hardship.
