If you follow me on Twitter, it's not terribly uncommon to see me call a ToD a 100% combo more often than not because I picked the lingo up from those YouTube videos of the early 2000's. The KOF community, namely the South American community on YouTube, actually use the term '100%' meaning the combo is capable of doing 100% of the opponent's health. In fact, the term ToD actually has its origins in classic SFII. In fact, a common video topic in the earliest days of YouTube was compilations by skilled players of ToD combos for most or all of the cast of an older KOF game like 98 or 2002. Despite how notorious XIII's ToD combos were, they're not actually specific to XIII. There are some ToD that are character-specific or situation-specific. Sometimes they are performed with a glitch or exploit, and sometimes it simply requires a lot of meter.

The Touch of Death Debate A touch of death combo (ToD) is a combo where, once started, is guaranteed to finish the round. It's the elephant in the room and it needs to be addressed. Why? Because HD mode and 100% combos are all anyone ever talks about when it comes to XIII. We will dive into how it works and how even a beginner can do really cool stuff with it! But first, we must have the ToD debate. HD mode is just MAX mode and it was separated from your usual super meter so that the cost of MAX activations didn't conflict with the cost of EX specials. Often touted as 'gamebreaking,' and 'an instant win for anyone that could do big combos,' widespread misunderstandings of this meter were almost single-handedly responsible for most of the complaints about XIII as both a fighting game and, surprisingly, as how HD meter allegedly made XIII 'not a true KOF.' None of this is true.

One of the most controversial aspects of XIII was the HD meter. What is different in KOF is your close heavy normals are very quick which means, unlike Ryu's close HP, Kyo's close C will link after a jump-in. In fact, the turn-of-phrase, 'aim for the waist,' actually originates from early SFII tutorials. The beloved 3rd Strike, for example, has a very similar design to how jump-ins work and how you need to convert those jump-ins into combos. In today's age of jump-ins generally being +100f on hit or block this may be especially jarring, but it's important to note that this was somewhat common of fighting games before SFIV. Today you won't ever hear this advice, but there was a time when if you wanted to link a move after you hit with a jump-in, you needed to aim the jump-in to hit at your opponent's waist. XIII comes from the 'aim for the waist' mentality of a bygone era. Jump-ins One of the aspects of XIII to draw the most ire, combo conversions from a jump-in, weren't as easy due to the low hitstun on jump-ins.

King kof 13