Watch the newly released trailer for King of Fighters XII. This is the first King of Fighters title being released on the current console generation using sprites in HD.

Fighting genre fans will recall in the past when arcades were still a viable source of income, fighting games drew the biggest crowds and led to the famed “quarter-on-screen-dibs” line system. I remember watching gamers playing Street Fighter II and noticing a single line of quarters would sit on the lip of the screen and the joysticks.

King of Fighters was a series that used to sit next to Street Fighter II, with a different style of playing. Most gamers who were excellent at Street Fighter had trouble converting to the different attack structure in King of Fighters. With the newest installment coming July 20, 2009, it appears that the online fighting community will be welcoming another member back into the fold.

It’s actually hard to really convey how the game will be when viewing just the trailer.  While the game looks solid, without actual hands-on time, the controls could actually be a broken shell of what used to make fighting games great. The HD graphics appear smooth in motion, but will they actually maintain that framerate when the game is being played online? Online multiplayer is an important aspect of the fighting genre now, but latency can kill the success of a title, if the lag is not taken care of.

Check out the trailer below: