King of Fighters: Kyo authored by Masato Natsumoto, Billy starts investigating Kyo Kusanagi in order to make him talk about the ancient demon Orochi. Reception Billy's character has been well received by gamers as he has appeared in several popularity polls developed by video games journals. In Gamest's 1997 Heroes Collection, Billy was voted as the staff's fourth favorite character. In the character popularity poll on Neo Geo Freak's website, he was voted as the seventeenth favorite character with a total of 757 votes. For the special endings in The King of Fighters '97, three video games journals, Gamest, Famitsu and Neo Geo Freak, had to create a team composed of three characters from the game so that they would be featured in an image after passing the arcade mode. The special team created by the Neo Geo Freak's staff was a team of fire wielders: Billy, Kyo Kusanagi, and Mai Shiranui. The special ending only appears in Japanese versions of the game. His character also received comments from video games reviewers, who added praise and criticism. Avi Krebs from GamingExcellence.com commented that Billy Kane is one of the hardest boss characters from the first Fatal Fury, but he remains "pale" in comparison to the final boss, Geese Howard. Gamezone reviewer Nick Valentino noted him to be one of the most recognizable characters from the Fatal Fury series, describing him as "staff-wielding maniac". Additionally, Billy was found to be one of the best new characters from KOF: Maximum Impact 2 by Greg Kasavin from GameSpot, who also labelled him as "stick fighter". 1UP.com agreed on this, noting it to be great news and labelling Billy to be "King of Fighters first weapon-wielding character". In another article, the 1UP.com staff noted his winpose against Iori Yagami in The King of Fighters 2002 as the best one from the game, liking that he and Eiji Kisaragi (who makes a cameo in the scene) finally take their revenge. References Fatal Fury characters Fictional bodyguards in video games Fictional criminals in video games Fictional bojutsuka Fictional British people in video games Fictional English people Fictional gangsters Fictional henchmen in video games Fictional martial artists in video games Fictional stick-fighters Male characters in video games Male video game villains The King of Fighters characters Video game bosses Video game characters introduced in 1991