Were K', Kula, and Maxima really supposed to be in XII?

[SolidSonicTH]

I think we all accept that XIII is the ultimate fruition of what XII was trying to be. A common assumption is that K' and his team were lost assets for the game.

However, apparently these cards can be unlocked in KoF-i. I'll post a couple as an example:






Particularly, I picked out ones that show character portraits of characters who weren't in XII. It's clear from these images that XII art was drawn up for the Women Fighters, Hwa Jai, Takuma, and Vice yet none of these images show any pictures of K' or his team.

Do you think SNK just never got around to drawing these characters or do you think K' and his crew were actually not meant to be a part of the "complete" XII experience?

[sibarraz]

There's that famous K' and Mai artwork XII style released on the a5th anniversary page, so maybe there where plans for him