It’s not very often that Terry Bogard, Mai Shiranui, and the rest of the classic King of Fighters crew make it outside of the fighting ring and into different, non-beat-’em-up  kinds of games. And, honestly, it’s probably for the best.

In King of Fighters: Sky Stage, someone’s inexplicably decided to take the series’ formidable cast to the skies to take on the bullet-hell, shmup genre. Unfortunately for them, clunky controls push the traditionally ultra-difficult genre past being just simply challenging and into the realm of controller-throwingly frustrating. While a huge roster of other KOF characters make appearances, taking down Wild Iori and Orochi is at best a mundane task, and at worst incredibly annoying.

What’s worse are the outdated graphics, which is odd considering the game’s arcade origins. Even stranger, Sky Stage only takes up about a third of the screen with enemy designs that manage to be both uninteresting and generic. Next time, the King of Fighters crew should really stick what to what they’re good at: beating each other up with fists, not bullets.

On Xbox Live Arcade

+ Lots of KOF characters for diehard fans who demand to play them all.

- Ugly, generic design.

- Sluggish controls; frustrating difficulty level even for the traditionally difficult shmup genre.

? Who thought this would be a good idea?

4.0