King of Fighters 2003 Oddities...

[XTuroRu]

Alright, i swear i am not making this up...

I am not a huge KoF buff, but i have played and liked the games, although the only ones i played were 96, 2000, and 2003. Now 2003 was the one i played the most, and was the second one i've owned (the other was 2000), so anyway. It had been a while since i last played it, and i still have not played it in some time, but i seem to remember the game having a more September/October-ish setting in the year 2003, not December (that doesn't even make any sense considering the stage design). I know i am not remembering this wrong, i quite clearly remember that, and acknowledging the fall style leaves in one stage. I only remember December being when the game came out.

Another thing that is most definitely not failing memory, is the absence of young girl character named Momoko Izuka. Momoko i KNOW was on the team with Athena and Malin. This was part of the reason i liked this game so much, because it had her. I liked her Capoeira style, i thought it was fresh and welcome to the series, plus she was damn cute. But i go back and look this game up after finding oddities with SF2, having felt strangely out of place, and even though the game is 99% as i remember, Momoko was no longer in it. Instead, Hinako, who i know was NOT in the game, was a part of the team. I noticed this while looking it up at VGMusem. I saw Hinako in there and was confused, but i became even more baffled to see its ending featured Athena having a concert, and some horny audience going nuts over Hinako and Malin...I don't remember this at all. I remember Momoko sitting around at a mall with Athena reflecting on what went on, and feeling inadequate and having some sense of stinging guilt, and she was having a deep conversation with Athena, who was comforting and reassuring her. The mood gets broken as Malin steps in, and brightens the mood, and then she and Momoko go to the arcades and play an arcade game, which looks to be Fatal Fury Special. It then gets light-hearted yet intense and a bit competitive, and it ends with Athena smiling and feeling delighted to have shared a team with these two.

Now when i go to look up this Momoko character, i find out she debuted in King of Fighters XI, which is not only a game i never played, but also one i remember being titled King of Fighters 2005. This is not what i remember, and i have no idea what is going on. I know what i played, i know what i saw. I also remember the Women Team theme song having a different climax, but strangely, i actually remember the hearing that music elsewhere, it was a song from a Russian Shanson group, i believe Mafik, but i could be wrong. I almost wonder if that Mafik song is now what that used to be. Lol. But seriously, does anyone remember anything i am describing? I swear to you i am not making any of this up. I know what i remember.