SNK Gals Fighters was a silly fighting game on the Neo Geo
Pocket Color where a bunch of SNK’s girl fighters compete to win a wish in the
girls-exclusive Queen of Fighters tournament, spearheaded by the enigmatic-yet-familiar-looking
Miss X.
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| At first I thought it was Iori in drag wearing Eiji's mask, but she specifically says "私は庵ではない!" |
The roster was mostly KOF girls like Whip, Leona and
Shermie, but with other SNK characters like Shiki and Nakoruru from the Samurai
Shodown games and Kyo’s largely offscreen girlfriend Yuki.
Everyone in the game was drawn as chibis, there was a
mechanic in which the fighters clashed in a big ball of violence not unlike the
Persona games post-2 and the new characters Yuki and Miss X had moves that
included hysterical slapping, tripping and tearing apart the opposition with a
fork and knife.
Needless to say, it was not a serious game. It was fun and silly
with simpler controls. It’s a breed of
game we don’t seem to see as much of anymore since most fighting games want to
be the newest competitive affair. That’s why the spiritual follow-up, SNK
Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, being released on the PC was such a pleasant surprise.
The story is as entertainingly silly as I wanted it to be. Taking place after KOF 14, SNK Heroines is about the female fighters trapped in a pocket dimension formed by the inner desires of Kukri, of all people. The pocket dimension takes the form of a huge mansion with multiple rooms, where the girls are all forced to fight each other in teams of two while wearing ridiculous outfits. All the girls from the base game of 14 except for Alice, Angel and King are playable along with Shermie, who apparently has come back to life, and Terry, who has been turned into a girl, much to the amusement of the others.
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| "Bae" is not a word being said, nor is any Japanese equivalent. The translation tends to adds words that aren't there. |
With the DLC characters Kukri also accidentally gets
characters from other games involved, namely Skullo Mania from Fighting EX
Layer (now turned into a girl like Terry), Thief Arthur from the Million Arthur
games, Jeanne D’ Arc from World Heroes and the original mastermind herself, Miss X.
As the game’s arcade mode goes on, Kukri starts trapping the
girls in a big sand statue that feeds off their despair, which he plans to use
to cross his dream dimension into the real one.
It’s straightforward enough, but it’s what is built around it that makes
it so much fun. SNK Heroines delivers on
the dialogue and story bits.
Presumably because there are fewer characters, there are more
specific win quotes and every combination of characters has specific dialogue
with each other for the introduction cutscene and the cutscene before the final
fight with Kukri, with the exception of the DLC characters. After winning, both characters on the 2-woman
team get a slideshow ending told through artwork without words and use a
combination of chibi style and regular KOF style to comedic effect. They’re all funny and adorable.
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| It's the Band of Fighters! |
The presentation of the game as a whole was one of the first
things to strike me about SNK Heroines. All
the 2D artwork in the game is excellent and the gameplay is gorgeous to look at
in motion. The graphics are more bright
and colorful than 14 and the whole game radiates fun and eye candy. Glitter is all over the place and every time
a character lands a hit the impact explodes with something specific for that
character. For Leona it’s vegetables,
for Kula it’s frozen treats, for Terry it’s Neo Geo games and for Shermie it’s
hamsters, to name a few. Details like
that combined with the colorful costumes shower the game with flair like every
fight is an exploding stage show. It’s
gaudy to the point of glorious absurdity.
It helps a lot that the PC version is shockingly
well-optimized. KOF 14 runs mostly very
well with the occasional hiccup while on a lower resolution on my
computer. SNK Heroines runs at full
resolution with even fewer issues. I’ve
never seen a game with so much onscreen at once run so well on such a
relatively weaker system. I hope this
sets a gold standard.
All the gaudy glittery girly chaos is accompanied by a
frenetic and bubbly soundtrack that, while not as catchy as the mainline KOF
music, sets the tone perfectly.
The game is so fun on its aesthetical trappings alone that
discussing the actual gameplay seems almost like an afterthought, but there’s a
solid game to play past all the sparkle.
SNK Heroines takes a few cues from SNK Gals Fighters by not being too
complicated and certainly not on the level of depth of KOF. Fighting game players that only care about
winning and having no variables in a fight should stay away from this one. Players that want to have fun are a different
story.
SNK Heroines controls similar to something like One Piece:
Burning Blood. There is no ducking,
special and super attacks are each done with one button depending on the
direction the control stick is in and there are single buttons for guarding,
grabbing and swapping out. Like that
game and others of its ilk, rolling is done while holding the guard button.
The basic combo system is an evolution of the rush combos
from 14. You can pull of a quick combo
with a light attack button, but the heavy attack button uses a different move
depending on when you press it during the light attack combo or on its own. These can be chained into special attacks as
well as mid-combo tagging so there’s still combo experimentation to be had in
the game, it’s just simplified.
Tagging is as easy as pressing a button and instantly
switching places with your other fighter much like in KOF 2003 and 11. The major differences in how SNK Heroines
plays compared to other games with a tag system comes down to two things: the
health/ special attack meter and the items.
In SNK Heroines, both characters on a team share a health
meter that also acts as their special attack meter. As their health goes down, their not-shared
maximum special attack meter takes up the space the health bar used. The special attack meter is used for the
super attacks like most fighting games (now only requiring a single button),
but here it’s for normal special attacks too.
If a special attack is used while the meter is empty, that attack is
downgraded to near-uselessness and is accompanied by a silly sound effect. It’s imperative to know when to swap with
your partner, as the special meter recharges when that character is benched.
The special meter is also required in order to win the
match. Characters do not simply lose
when their health is depleted to zero.
If that happens in this game, they become stunned for a few seconds
before getting back into the fight. In
order to win, a player has to finish off the opponent with one of their super
attacks when the enemy’s health is in the red.
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| They all get a quick zoom-in before using super attacks. |
I like this a lot.
The health and special attack meters sharing the same gauge calls back
to older systems like the Samurai Shodown rage gauge or Art of Fighting
desperation attacks, where players were given more power as their situation
became more dire, and finishing a dizzied opponent sort of reminds me of that
last feeling of triumph in a Mortal Kombat game. Being forced to finish off your opponent with
style also fits right in with how gaudy the rest of the game is and it allows
for some pretty amazing last-minute victories if one player manages to recover
from being dizzy and still win and that’s in part thanks to the items.
Each team can hold one item obtained from hitting floating
orbs around the arena. Regardless of
what the active character is doing, the benched character can throw their item
into the arena. From springs to big iron
balls to simple special meter recharges, the items keep both players on their
toes and add an extra layer of both randomness and strategy, like Super Smash
Brothers. Since the bench character is
treated separately from the active one, and can even be controlled by another
player in multiplayer, items can be used for combo breaking or even saving a
player when they’re about to be hit by the finishing move.
The game is fun, frantic and easy to learn, with enough of a
competitive edge to stay interesting.
It’s so easy to lean, in fact, that I would recommend it to fighting
game newcomers. That is, if it weren’t
so heavy on content specifically for the longtime fans that you’d swear it was
exclusively for them.
Callbacks are abound in this game and any longtime SNK fan
will appreciate the level of detail gone into referencing other games. Miss X is the peak of SNK
For some extra value, SNK Heroines has a respectable amount
of content to play with in its customize mode, where characters can be given
accessories and two more outfits with the in-game currency you earn. It’s nowhere on the level of Senran Kagura’s
dressing room, since all you can really do is add accessories to the
pre-established costumes, but it does have a lot to work with, including a wide
variety of eye designs and three extra voice options per character. With the exception of Miss X’s last voice
option, the actors for the changeable voices don’t change, but have different
tones and some seem to be references of some sort. I noticed Shermie has her lower tone of
speech from her Orochi form as an option and said form is a color option for
her original costume. Others are only
marginally different from the others.
For extra fun, you can pose those costumes into 2D
backgrounds and foreground frames with different poses and stickers, all of
which SNK Heroines has a good number of, but the fun is in the little things. They could have cheaped out and given all the
characters a shared bank of default poses, but since this is a game that loves
callbacks and references, there are a lot of poses from past games in some form
or another that are fun to look at and use.
For a little extra detail you can control a character’s mouth and eye
expression as well as the direction their eyes look. Backgrounds too include backgrounds from the
SNK Heroines’ endings, KOF 14’s endings and even live action pictures of places
like SNK’s offices and the real like Esaka location the Japan
I also like that every character gets a smooth remix of
their themes from previous games that sound like something that would be played
in a lobby or elevator and how a few of the accessories change sound effects in
battle. Like I said, it’s all in the little
details that makes this game feel complete.
The core fighting and character customization is the core of
the game and thus is mostly all the content SNK Heroines has going for it outside
of a few nice little quirks; cutscenes can be bought with in-game currency for
the gallery mode so you don’t need to play the game with every combination to
see it all, the online lobbies have the cute KOF LINE stickers available and
the menu voice and music can be selected, but that’s about it.
There are quite a few Steam user reviews that criticize SNK Heroines for its $60 asking price for the base game and its DLC and I do have to agree with that grievance. Like with KOF 14, that’s asking a bit too much. There are only 7 stages made for the arcade mode and only 7
battle music tracks unless you get the DLC that adds a few more, and once again there is no English dub even though it's fully voiced.
SNK Heroines is a game
that feels like everything that needs to be there for what they were going for is
there, making it a tightly-designed and thoroughly entertaining distraction
from the mainline games, but that complete game doesn't even have half of what other fighting games offer. It’s well worth
buying if you can get it at half the initial price at $30-$40, but regardless it's a solid game that anyone who has already played KOF 14 should play at some point. I give SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy a 7 out
of 10.
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