When it comes to shonen manga, anime and games, there are few with as much knowledge and love as the Shonen Otaku. Join me as we look at all different varieties of action-packed media.
12 years ago I wrote a piece on the original Clock Tower in
what was only the 4th post ever on this blog, where I called it the
scariest game ever made. In a way, that
makes Clock Tower kind of special to me.
Since that post I’ve played several different kinds of horror games,
from the David Lynch-like Harvester to the competitive horror of Dead by
Daylight and the surreal maze chase scares of Dark Deception, so I have a much
broader perspective on the genre than I did back then. I also have a confession to make that
affected my view on the game: at the time of that post my fear of Clock Tower
was based on my viewing of someone else playing it. I hadn’t played it myself. I couldn’t.
Clock Tower was released for the Super Nintendo/Super
Famicom in 1995, but wasn’t released in English, which I would normally
question, but in this case it makes sense.The game heavily features a pentagram and ambiguously satanic rituals at
a time when Nintendo was very averse to religious symbolism in games on their
consoles.It also had some
violence.There wasn’t much in the way
of blood and gore, but this was also a time when Nintendo got up in arms about
the bloodless cheese fest that was Night Trap.I’m not even sure how Clock Tower got a Japanese release, to be honest.
Nintendo got more lax as the years went on, but even Binding
of Isaac over a decade later was initially rejected for Nintendo consoles because of its religious themes.It’s funny how now they publish the Bayonetta games and a remaster of Night
Trap is available on their console.
The original Clock Tower would be rescued from Nintendo’s
nanny console and got a new version on the PS1 in 1997, shortly after its
direct sequel.The PS1 version added new
content and changed some of the visual and audio effects for the worse, in my
opinion.
You would think now that Clock Tower was on a system that
allowed for more freedom of violence and religious symbolism that it was the
perfect time for an English release, but no!They translated the sequel instead, advertised the sequel like it was
the first game and skipped the actual first game entirely!
This was such a baffling move!Clock Tower 2, as it’s known in Japan, is so
obviously a sequel!It follows the plot
points of the original game, directly references the events of the original
game and one of the big twists only makes sense if you played the original
game!
Sure, Persona 2 did the same thing, skipping the first of
its duology, Innocent Sin, and only translating the second, Eternal Punishment,
but at least in Persona 2: Eternal Punishment the ambiguity of previous events
was part of the plot and in the context of the characters in the game it was a mystery
to be solved that the player could follow along with.Clock Tower 2 expects the players to know the
original!The first game was right there
on the same system!
The Clock Tower games would consistently be released in
English since the second game, but there was never an English release of the
original. It fell on the fans to make
Clock Tower available to play for English speakers with English translated ROM
hacks and bootleg SNES reproduction cartridges.
The illegal way was the only way to play, but even though they worked, some
of these fan translated versions had the occasiona glitch, especially for the
PS1 version, from what I’ve read. They
weren’t the most ideal way to play.
Now with Clock Tower Rewind, we finally have an official
English release of the original Clock Tower.We can finally play it for real and it only took
This was the period where both company’s arcade releases
truly came to a near-close. That this
round starts in 2017 says it all. Since
2011, neither company made a single game for arcades that wasn’t an updated
version of a previous one. As I stated
last time, there were ports, mobile games and console games, but the previous
round set a precedent for both companies moving forward: now the console
versions of their fighting games would come first.
It’s a damn good thing Capcom followed that precedent in
particular because holy shit. The
release of Street Fighter 5 can be debated for being worse than The King of
Fighters 12. Compmared to the low bar
that is KOF 12, Street Fighter 5 had fewer characters, fewer features and fewer
modes to play, all at the price of a full retail game. Street Fighter 5 became the target of such
mockery and ridicule that people almost forgot about KOF 12. Almost.
As if to rub it in Street Fighter 5’s face, SNK brought out
a new King of Fighters game with a massive 50 characters and a fully featured
arcade mode with substantial story content.
I heard stories about Street Fighter players jumping ship to KOF 14
because of how much of a rip-off Street Fighter 5 was. There’s footage of a pro Street Fighter
player telling Capcom representatives to their faces that he was going to go
play Guilty Gear instead of Street Fighter 5.
It was really REALLY bad. It’s
the stuff of legends.
That is not the version being judged though. Capcom continually added to Street Fighter 5
with overpriced DLC until they finally got a feature-rich and complete game
re-released as the Champion Edition, which is what came out in arcades. SNK had already released KOF 14 for arcades
with all its DLC included by that point, plus a little spin-off. With the release of SNK’s 2019 Samurai
Shodown game later, we’ll have reached the last arcade game released by either
company. We will finally see if Capcom
will cement their lead as the best arcade game manufacturer or if SNK will tie
the score.
Curious things happened in the aftermath of The King of
Fighters 13 and Super Street Fighter 4. SNK wasn’t coming out with a lot of new games except mobile phone ones
and ports of previous games. There were
some good mobile games and good ports, mind you. I still love The Rhythm of Fighters and had
some fun with Metal Slug Defense, which led into Metal Slug Attack and apparently
Metal Slug Attack had so much of an audience that just recently they came out
with a complete console version of it called Metal Slug Attack: Reloaded. For ports, the Code Mystics ports for KOF 98
and 2002UM were made available on PC with online play, which for me was a huge
deal.
On Capcom’s side… Well a lot of people consider it Capcom’s
darkest time period and would lead into them becoming the evil fan-hating
company they are today. There were
already a lot of contentious decisions and games like the Bionic Commando
remake, Dark Void, DMC: Devil May Cry (it’s not THAT bad, guys) and of course Street
Fighter X Tekken. Street Fighter X
Tekken was a disaster for Capcom because of on-disc DLC due to a deal
with Sony and a gameplay customization system essentially kind of being pay to
win. I play Street Fighter X Tekken on
the Vita, where all the characters are included, so I didn’t get as much
withheld content and I think it’s a pretty fun crossover, but I am in the
minority.
Capcom had one possible saving grace with Sengoku Basara 4,
a game that was shaping up to be the end all be all for action gaming once it
came out in English. As long as Sengoku
Basara 4 came out, Capcom would become immortalized as the greatest game
company in the that could do no wrong. Everything hinged on that one game as far as console games went.
Both companies were either too busy or didn’t care enough to
make new arcade games after their last ones, but both of them did throw arcades
a bone and released updated versions of their best, most recent fighting
games. Now we’ll decide which of the
company’s best of their best is THE best.
The Marvel vs. Capcom Collection is out and with its
widespread availability, Capcom has some more ammunition under their belt. While doing the Capcom vs. SNK series I’ve
had to skip all but the last two games included in this collection, but now
that I can finally play them, it’s time to fill in some gaps and maybe make it something of a review of the collection as a whole..
I had previously stated that when this
collection came out I would go back and edit the included games into their
respective year, but on further contemplation, that could cause a mess for
consistency because there’s the possibility of these games elevating Capcom
just enough to retroactively score a win for a year, which would make future posts referencing victories contradictory. Therefore, this bonus round is going to give
Capcom a few chances to reclaim a point in the competition and allow me to
evaluate the 5 games I didn’t get to play before. I will conclude each one by determining if it
was good enough for Capcom to have had a better showing in its release year
than SNK’s games. In the case of years
where Capcom won, all they have to do is not have the game be a disaster
than brings them down.
2009 was the beginning of Capcom’s golden age. It was when the far superior console version of
Street Fighter 4 came out and got more fans into the franchise, since digital
distribution of classic games wasn’t quite as available as it is now. This gave rise to the “09ers”. The newbies.
Capcom was hitting big. It wasn’t just Street Fighter 4 either. Capcom was also making tons of master works
around this time, such as Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, Devil May Cry
4 and Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes, the game with the distinction of having
the single greatest English dub in the history of the gaming medium and one of
the cornerstones of action gaming.Capcom was the best company in gaming at this point in time.
However, that was all on consoles. Another arcade version of Street Fighter 4
wouldn’t come until later on, giving SNK their chance to swoop in with their
flagship franchise and claim themselves as the rulers of the arcades. Once again Capcom has to play catchup and try
to beat everything SNK comes out with with just one game. Let’s see if they do that.
SNK had an overall good few years for the arcades while on handhelds and consoles it was more of a mixed bag and very few of what they were putting out, like the Days of Memories visual novel games, were coming out in English. What's more, after Capcom's complete and total absence in arcades for a good while, they at last came back to challenge SNK this year in 2008. Will their new arcade games be enough to make up for all the strides SNK had already been making while they were gone? Let's find out.
2004 was the end of an era for arcades. The Neogeo had an astonishing 14 year run, a
true testament to its power, but after Samurai Shodown 5 Special, SNK decided
that it was time to move forward in their arcade technology so they started
using Sammy/Sega’s Atomiswave, an awesome system that allowed for an excellent
fusion of 2D and 3D visuals, not unlike the NAOMI system. Outside of the games SNK would make for it,
it had games like Dolphin Blue, Arc System Works’ Fist of the North Star game
and DIMP’s The Rumble Fish. All in all
it was a great home for SNK to make bigger and better arcade games.
What did Capcom have?
Capcom was doing very well for themselves on home consoles
and came out with some of the greatest games of all time, like the Viewtiful
Joe franchise, Resident Evil 4 and Haunting Ground. The arcades didn’t get any of the action from
them during this time, partially for reasons I’ve already explained regarding
home console hardware catching up and partially because as much success as
Capcom saw, this was also an era of Capcom idiocy.
“People didn’t like our half-assed asset recycle bin
fighting game?!Clearly the people don’t
want arcade games!” “People didn’t like our already mediocre game about Japanese
warlords?!But we edited the entire
setting with no context to replace it, made the music worse, changed the
gameplay and even cut content!Clearly those
stupid Americans don’t want it!What
they want is Beatdown: Fists of Vengeance!” “Hey, Hideaki Istuno!I have some stuff here left over from the guy who bailed!Make a sequel to Devil May Cry in a few
months, will you?”
SNK didn’t release anywhere close to as many games as Capcom
did, but since games on the Atomiswave were able to be ported to the PS2 and
Xbox very easily (not sure why not the Gamecube), this means they could cover
both fields..With the increased memory
capacity of PS2 discs, SNK was also able to dip into their arcade game library
and make compilations like the Fatal Fury Battle Archives and Art of Fighting
Anthology.
Finally and most notably, SNK made the King of
Fighters: Maximum Impact games, console-exclusive 3D KOF games with their own
continuities that for once actually got proper advertising and merchandise in
English.Ads for Maximum Impact appeared
in magazines, there were TV commercials, the Hong Kong
comic was released in English (as was KOF 2003’s) and Maximum Impact 2/The King
of Fighters 2006 got its own sets of trading cards for the Universal Fighting
System card game alongside Samurai Shodown 5.
Capcom would eventually make a big comeback to arcades with
one game in particular, but that wouldn’t come out until 2008, so until then we
got 4 different games on the Atomiswave for SNK to build their portfolio with
for this stretch of time before Capcom entered the picture again to challenge
SNK’s arcade dominance.
Capcom laid low in the arcade scene in 2002 and 2003, but in 2004 they came out with two new titles for the arcades. This is Capcom's chance to beat the likes of KOF 2002 and Metal Slug 5 for the next point. This is also the year with what you might call a closure of a generation. This year had the truly very last game ever made for the Capcom CPS2 and the last game released for the Neogeo. After this year, both companies would move on to new arcade hardware for future games. I'll have officially played everything in both Capcom Arcade Stadiums and my entire (digital) library of Neogeo games. It has been a hell of a ride, but even with all of those exhausted for the sake of this series, I'll still have a ways to go because my access to the games from these companies don't end there. This era of arcade gaming will now have its send-off as I judge which company was the best for the years 2002 to 2004.
I’ve reached the inevitable problem I expected to run into
when I started this series was this point in time. During the 7th console generation,
SNK was able to recover from their bankruptcy and continue making arcade games
for a while longer in addition to some home console-original games and home
ports of their older games. Capcom went
even further ham on the console games and set themselves up as quite possibly
the best game company there was until they took to meth and thought making
Devil Kings was a good idea.
"Y'know that cool Japanese game about Japanese figures in Japan? What if they WEREN'T?"
This means that in the arcades, SNK was largely uncontested
from Capcom for several years, although other companies like Namco were still
around with Tekken and Soul Calibur. SNK
did go uncontested for the first few years of this series before Capcom games
started getting into arcades, but I obviously didn’t count those years as SNK
victories because Capcom wasn’t there to be victorious over. Now that we’re at the point where both
companies are still around it’s fair game, but it wouldn’t be fair if I were to
give SNK points for default because it’s possible a game company can use those
years to make something so incredible that it’s better than any game the
company made before it.
Therefore, for the rest of this series, I’ll be judging each
company by a stretch of time between Capcom’s years of arcade game
releases.That means 2002-2004, 2005-2008,
2009 & 2010, 2012-2014 and then it will finish off with 2016 all the way to 2019 with
the release of the arcade version of Samurai Shodown 2019.Though they’ll have far fewer games, if
Capcom’s games manage to be amazing enough to blow everything from SNK out of
the water, they can get the points.By
the end of this, only one company will be declared the King of Arcades!Now we’ll get started with SNK’s games of
2002, where they were still getting help from Eolith and recovering from bankruptcy.
If 2000 marked the sharp decline of Capcom and SNK’s arcade
days, 2001 practically marked the end of it, or at least the near-end because
there’s more years to go. SNK officially
went bankrupt and was bought out by the South Korean company Eolith while Capcom
put even more focus on console games, which worked out well considering they
made Devil May Cry.
SNK’s dire financial situation meant they were only able to
put out one game before they went bankrupt (presumably already long since in
development) and then just one King of Fighters game in collaboration with Eolith,
who had their own ideas and their own game developers on the scene, for better
or worse.Capcom’s new strategy meant
they only put out two games as well.I
mean I guess it was that or be
It makes sense that arcade gaming would be on the decline. I guess rising manpower requirement played a
hand in it, but part of what made most of these arcade games so amazing when
they came out was that they were on hardware much more powerful than what was
available on home consoles and most ports of them were imperfect. 2001 was the year of the Xbox, Gamecube and
PS2, and the Dreamcast was already on the scene. All of them were not only capable of running
both company’s latest and greatest games, but enhanced versions of them, which
was a good thing for them to take advantage of, and I’m sure as hell happy with
my PS2 copies of KOF 2000 & 2003, but it also showed that arcades no longer
had quite the appeal they used to.
That doesn’t mean it was all over.Through all the odds SNK was still able to
make another yearly addition to The King of Fighters and Capcom made another
game to throw down with SNK for cross-company grudge matches.With two games from each company, both have
an equal opportunity to win 2001!Who
will it be?!
At last we reach the turn of the millennium. The big triple-0. Home console gamers that survived the Y2K
virus were eating good. The Dreamcast
had a solid library built up with Resident Evil: Code Veronica now added, the
Nintendo 64 got Banjo-Tooie, a bigger and better sequel and all the Pokemon
fans like me were playing Gold and Silver while they went to the theater to
watch Pokemon the Movie 2000.
In arcades, things could’ve been better. Third Strike was Capcom’s last game on their
short-lived CPS3 board and at the time it didn’t get the kind of recognition it
gets today. Capcom put a higher focus on
console games, like the aforementioned Resident Evil: Code Veronica, meaning
arcade game production greatly slowed down and they largely switched
development from their own arcade systems to Sega’s NAOMI arcade board, which
made porting games to the Dreamcast easier, though it looks like they had just
one or two more games on their old reliable CPS2 system in the pipeline to put
out.
One of these games happened to be another game in which oursettle
their differences: Capcom vs. SNK.This
time it was actually in arcades and developed by Capcom instead of SNK, but as
much as I would like to include it, I don’t have any version of it nor does any
arcade have it.My local theater used to
have it many years ago and I remember thinking it was awesome, but that’s too
far back for a proper analysis.I’ll
make up for that with the sequel.
SNK wasn’t doing so hot thanks to the abject failure of the
Hyper Neogeo 64 and various instances of overspending.This resulted in them being bought out by a
fairly vile company that wanted nothing more than to shut the company down and use
their properties for pachinko games until SNK would officially go bankrupt the
following year.
They weren’t out completely just yet though! Before the original SNK could go under, they
had a few games already in development they finished up and released. That means we only have 2 games from SNK this
year versus Capcom’s 3. That these
companies used to make 6-8 games a year previously shows how down bad arcade
gaming was at this point, but that doesn’t mean the games themselves are
bad. Capcom and SNK were still going at
it and now we will determine who was the best arcade company of the year 2000.
In the real world, not a lot of note was going on in
1999. I think there was a guy who said
he did not have sexual relations with a woman and some kids shot up a school,
but the big impacts were being felt with our friends/enemies Capcom and SNK. Late in 1998, SNK put out the Neogeo Pocket, a handheld
system of their design not unlike the Game Boy.SNK had already done some portable work on Nintendo’s handheld with a port of Samurai Shodown as well as KOF 95 and
96, but this time they made their own system to put their games on.By that point, however, the Game Boy Color
was out so it wasn’t long before they upgraded to a color system as well, the
Neogeo Pocket Color.The Neogeo Pocket Color
had a selection of miniaturized SNK games that were effectively ports of their
Neogeo games, retaining the core gameplay experiences with only 2 buttons.
It had all the SNK essentials like Fatal Fury, Samurai
Shodown, KOF and even a few sports games plus its very own Sonic game.In fact, the Neogeo Pocket Color games are
where the Japanese game developer Dimps got their start, who would go on to
make the outstanding Sonic Rush games on the Nintendo DS.That’s all great, but one of the biggest and
best games on the Neogeo Pocket Color was the one that would finally let Capcom
and SNK settle things personally.
For the first time, SNK and Capcom would truly go head to
head, as M. Bison and Geese team up to run a fighting tournament where all
their company’s fighters would fight as a part of their evil plan! Finally you could show those Street Fighter
peasants or KOF losers that your company is better and use your skillz with
your favorite character!
Technically SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash came out
first, but that game isn’t a head-to-head crossover of SNK and Capcom as much
as it is a game where Capcom and SNK’s characters and creators come together in
a friendly little card game where Capcom and SNK characters are able to support
each other, which is just wrong!Capcom
and SNK are enemies!I would review
those crossovers, but neither were in arcades.I will say both are absolutely fantastic
games though.
This manpower being put into their handheld system is
presumably why there aren’t as many SNK games for this year. Capcom’s reason for fewer games was because apparently
not doing as hot in the arcades and they put more effort into releasing just a
few big games instead of the numbers they were pumping out in previous years.
That may have paid off because holy smokes is 1999 one hell
of a year.This year has both companies
at their best and there is not going to be a lot of negativityThe year’s winner might be down to the wire.
1998 was another big year for gaming. Some of the greatest games of all time that
are still revered to this day were coming out.
Resident Evil 2, Banjo-Kazooie, Metal Gear Solid, Half-Life and Spyro
the Dragon and of course The Legend of fucking Zelda the fucking Ocarina of
fucking Time. It was a great time to be
a gamer, particularly a console gamer.
Near the end of the year, Capcom and SNK would be introduced
to one of their best friends: The Sega Dreamcast. The Dreamcast was an incredible machine for
the time, capable of 3D and 2D graphics neither the Playstation nor Nintendo 64
could pull off. It’s best known for Soul
Calibur, but the Dreamcast was practically a fighting game machine by all
measures. While the Playstation would
struggle to run certain Capcom and SNK arcade games, the Dreamcast was able to
handle enhanced ports of those games, including some packages with 2 games in
one! It was the only console that could
run Street Fighter 3 at the time and some of Capcom’s 3D games like Power Stone
would also get their Dreamcast port down the line.
3D backgrounds!
I sure hope that doesn’t mean home console gaming is going
to supplant arcade gaming because there are some great arcade games this year,
mostly from SNK. Capcom seems to have
slowed down their arcade game production, possibly because of the cost of
making games for that beast the CPS3, and were putting more manpower into their
console games, such as the aforementioned Resident Evil 2. SNK meanwhile was still chugging along with
the Neogeo while the Hyper Neogeo 64 dragged its feet. Let’s find out who put their efforts on a
winning horse.
In the real world, 1997 was the year of Princess Diana’s
death and the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong from the U.K. to China, resulting in Bruce Lee’s
relative Chin wiping out all 1.2 billion of the incoming Chinese immigrants.
In gaming, 1997 was cementing the dominance of home consoles
and PCs in gaming. With polygons and
storage space further evolving, we got games like Diablo, The Curse of Monkey
Island, Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy 7, one of the worst games I’ve ever
played, but would become synonymous with the Playstation because I guess
standards were that low. SNK
translations may be bad, but holy shit Final Fantasy 7’s is even worse. IT WAS THE MOST EXPENSIVE GAME MADE AT THE
TIME?!
Anyway, Capcom and SNK apparently figured they had to up
their game with brand new arcade hardware, both of which… Could’ve gone better.
Capcom came out with the CPS3 system, an arcade board that
would allow for even more sprites and higher capacity memory. It was a super powerful system that could
outclass the Neogeo’s ever-increasing cartridge sizes. It came out at the tail end of 1996 with Red
Earth, but of course what they really needed to sell people on this thing was a
new Street Fighter, leading to one of the most fascinating disasters of the era.
SNK made the Hyper Neogeo 64, a 3D system to try and
replicate the success other companies were having with this new dimension of
play. From what I understand it was only
marginally more powerful than the Nintendo 64.
Both of these new systems had almost no games for them. The CPS3 only had 6 games made for
it (half of which are updated re-releases) and the Hyper Neogeo 64 only had
7. Both their miniscule libraries were also difficult to port to home systems. In
fact, only one Hyper Neogeo 64 game has ever seen any re-release and it’s rare,
so I won’t be able to play any of them.
Regardless of the quality of the games, the fact is that
neither company got a lot of mileage out of their new hardware and they made
safer bets continuing to make games for their existing hardware. Which company came out looking the best as a
result will now be put to the test.
Continuing from the first half for this year, there are a couple games I was unable to play or couldn't include. I was going to include SNK's Ironclad, but it was made for the Neogeo CD, a home console, and never got an arcade release. To counterbalance that, because of health complications, I haven't been able to go to the arcades I need to, which is the only way for me to play almost all of Capcom's Marvel licensed games, meaning I can't include X-Men vs. Street Fighter. If only the lawyers would let us have those games on home consoles again.
Yeah while I was getting this post ready, Capcom announced a new fighting collection with every Marvel fighting game and their Punisher game for good measure. It's kind of cheating the premise that I'm playing each of these games by order of release, but once I get that collection, I'll edit my thoughts on each one into previous posts and try to get back into the mindset of their respective year when playing them. I doubt any of them are going to change any of the winners of the year.
For now, we're in 1996 and SNK brought back their crossover fighting game idea in a big way.
In 1996 3D gaming was the hottest new thing. Sure some 3D games started trickling out the
previous year with the launch of the Sony Playstation and pre-rendered 3D
visuals had been around for a bit longer, but now that 3D graphics could be
rendered in real time with real polygons the sky seemed to be limit. Several of the lesser-selling 2D consoles of
yesteryear bit the dust and Nintendo came out with the Nintendo 64, making the
3D capable systems the dominating force.
All the big names paving the way for the evolution of gaming as were coming out, including Super Mario 64, Resident Evil, Bubsy 3D,
Crash Bandicoot, Duke Nukem 3D and Wave Race 64.
For fighting games, the 3D train continued.Capcom started to dabble in their own 3D
fighting games beginning with Star Gladiator, which I won’t be looking at for
this one because I can’t find a copy of it anywhere, though I do recall playing
it once at a convention.I don’t
remember much except that I wasn’t impressed and it was right next to a cabinet
with KOF 2002 Unlimited Match and that awesome Arc System Works Fist of the
North Star fighting game was there too so those games overrode my memory. With other companies, Sega released both Virtua Fighter 3
and Fighters Megamix, Namco released Tekken 2, the ever-popular Mortal Kombat
Trilogy came out for home consoles and of course Tecmo began the Dead or Alive
franchise with the very first game, building off Virtua Fighter’s
foundation.This all combined with smash
hit fighters like War Gods, Pray For Death and Iron & Blood: Warriors of
Ravenloft, which I imagine made it harder for Capcom and SNK to get people to
their good old 2D arcade cabinets, which by all accounts had their own
strengths that home consoles still didn’t have, as evidenced by still less than
stellar home ports. As for which among these two arcade giants did the best this
year, I’ll be the judge of that.
Much like in 1994, 1995 kept a lot of the crazes of the era
rolling with continuing advances in both game design and technology. On the Super Nintendo, Chrono Trigger came
out with its intricate time travel plot, Donkey Kong Country 2 wowed audiences
just as much as the original did and Yoshi’s Island
put new spins on the Mario series with an origin story spotlighting the
dinosaur sidekick from Super Mario World.
The big game changer of course came from Sony with what
would become their CD-based juggernaut, the Sony Playstation. With the 3D graphics possible on the PS1, the
3D gaming explosion got even bigger, with home consoles now being able to run
their own versions of the latest Tekken and Virtua Fighter games, as well as
console-exclusive games like Battle Arena Toshinden. The possibilities offered by the extra CD
storage space opened all kinds of possibilities for game developers, like Full
Motion Video, something the PC had already been dabbling in. In fact, on the PC side of things FMV games were
at their peak, with Phantasmagoria, Psychic Detective and The 11th
Hour delivering experiences players had never seen before.
In the fighting game space, Capcom and SNK had possibly even
stiffer competition than last year, thanks to the PC and console-made fighting
games you didn’t have to go to the arcades for.
This was the year of Xenophage: Alien Blood Sport, Kasumi Ninja and a
game still considered one of the best fighting games of all time, Expect No
Mercy.
Neither Capcom or SNK was any worse for wear as there were
changes coming this time, with each company’s biggest franchise making a major
shift after their own periods of re-releases.
Let’s see who pulls off those shifts best and came out as the better
company of 1995.
If we weren’t there already, we have officially reached the
peak of fighting game mania. With Mortal
Kombat, Street Fighter and Fatal Fury games bringing in the players, more and
more companies wanted a piece of the action.
There were more fighting games being made than ever before, be it on
consoles or arcades.
They didn’t even stay in the games. Fighting games were being turned into major
multimedia franchises. Both Fatal Fury
and Street Fighter got their own movies this year and Mortal Kombat was on the
way to getting one in the following year.
With such a boom, Capcom and SNK upped their arcade
production this year, so much so that I need to split it into 2 parts. It was important that they did because in 1994
there was extremely tough fighting game competition.
Some of the biggest and best fighting games came out in
1994. Games like Kasumi Ninja, Ballz 3D,
Shaq Fu and one of the most highly regarded fighting games even to this day,
Rise of the Robots. There was also this
one game called Tekken that Namco made, but who cares about that shit.
Truth be told, I don’t think either company can make a game
that can surpass Rise of the Robots, but in the comparison of Capcom and SNK’s
arcade games, that doesn’t matter. Time
to see what we got in this crazy, crazy year.
In 1993, the fighting game genre had gone into full swing. Mortal Kombat 2 came out with even better
graphics, more violence and cheating asshole computer opponents. Home ports of arcade games like it and Street
Fighter 2 were topping the sales charts and other companies got in on the
fighting action themselves, like Data East with Fighter’s History and Konami
with TMNT: Tournament Fighter.
1993 was also a big year for 3D gaming. The PC megahit Myst came out with its 3D
pre-rendered backgrounds and full motion video, while on the console side,
Nintendo made Star Fox, a game able to render polygons on a Super Nintendo
cart. For fighting games, Sega topped
off the year by revolutionizing the genre by adding a 3D element with Virtua
Fighter. It was a year of major
technological advancements for the medium of gaming.
I have to admit, 3D models having faces is pretty impressive too.
For arcades, one of the biggest technological advancements
came with Capcom's new arcade hardware. One
that could, in some ways, even surpass the Neogeo: the CPS2 board! This new technology would allow for more and
bigger sprites, more colors and even better audio thanks to QSound technology
(though Qsound was used in a less-used CPS1 variant called the CPS Dash).
Though 3D fighting would blow up in the coming years in large
part due to Virtua Fighter, Capcom and SNK were still sticking with what they
had in two dimensions, albeit with less releases this time. In fact, this year Capcom only has 3 games to
work with. Even still, there’s a direct
point of comparison with two of Capcom’s games.
Both have an updated version of their hit fighting games and, more
uniquely, both have a wrestling game.
Let’s see who gets treated like Roman Reigns and
who gets treated like John Cena!
Continuing on from part 1, there's a lot more fighting games to close off the year and that's a train that isn't going to stop rolling for a long time.
1991 started the era of the fighting game. With some precendent established, 1992 had
both companies start to pick up momentum on the craze Street Fighter 2 and
Fatal Fury started the previous year and expand on what they could do with this
new genre of games, all the while pumping out the sports, shoot-em-ups and
beat-em-ups that had by this point proven to be a safe bet. At least, SNK was pumping out the other
games.
Something you’ll notice about this year is that Capcom’s
arcade production is dwarfed by SNK’s.
This year I’ll be looking at 10 SNK games and only 5 Capcom games, 2 of
which are Street Fighter 2 reversions.
It’s as if they put so much effort into their big monster hit Street
Fighter 2 that they didn’t give as much attention to the rest of them. Their continued home console development
might have played a part too, I suppose, which includes a Super Nintendo port of Street Fighter 2 that made absolute gangbusters.
This was also the year Midway got into the fighting game genre with the first Mortal Kombat, starting a legacy that would last a lifetime, but let's not make this a 3-way battle.
What else happened in 1992?
Well, there was some cartoon that revolutionized
television animation and continues to get merchandise and high praise even 30
years later, but nothing important.
There are so many games (from SNK) this time that it will be
split into 2 parts.
In the realm of gaming, 1991 was very significant for SNK,
Capcom and Nintendo.Nintendo released
the Super Nintendo, their super powerful 16 bit system that would become home
to SNK and Capcom’s fighting games, which started kicking off the same year
with each company’s flagships and company mascots making their (actual)
debuts.Nintendo’s war was with Sega and
their Genesis on the home console battlefield though, a separate one from
Capcom and SNK’s arcade battlefield happening around the same time.Judging home ports might be a neat idea for a
future article, but for now I am deciding which company is the King of Arcades
for 1991.Naturally there’s a lot to say
about the two big titles for this year.
It is once again a dark day for gaming.Nintendo’s last bastion of online gaming, the
WiiU and 3DS, has now been shut down like the Wii and DS before it.The only thing keeping Nintendo in people’s
good graces is no more and this time there’s no excuse like the shenanigans
with Gamespy that I’m aware of.
We're a year in now and the 90s are in full swing. This year may be the turning point for the arcade scene moving forward and there are going to be a lot of changes around here, one of which should come from you! If you like the article be sure to like, comment and subscribe!
It is now officially the 90s! It’s the time to wear flannel, parachute pants, sunglasses and hats on backwards, at least according to what pop culture tells me.
There’s nothing good on TV though so we go to gaming for our
entertainment.In the realm of gaming,
technology was going into the next generation.The Sega Genesis released in North America
with the Super Nintendo getting ready to come out in the next year, but in the
arcade, something big arrived.
SNK released the Neogeo.
This thing was a beast with some of the highest possible memory capacity
allowing for the most detailed graphics and the best sound, all with expandable
memory cartridges that would allow for even bigger and better games throughout
its 14 year run, one of the longest in gaming history. When it came to 2D games, the Neogeo was at
the top of the line.
It’s 1989 and even though it hasn’t hit the start of the
next decade, you might consider this year to be 90s as hell. 1989 is when a lot of cornerstones of the era
got their start as they continued into the next decade. Tim Burton’s Batman movie changed the way
people looked at comic book movies and a few years later lead to the creation of Batman:
The Animated Series.
Disney’s The Little Mermaid hit theaters, leading to what is called the
Disney Renaissance with several more iconic animated movies from the company in
the following years. In gaming, one of
the games I’ll be looking at, Final Fight, also set a standard for beat-em-ups
of the 90s. It was the transitionary
period to the new decade and both Capcom and SNK brought both their A-games and
B-games. Let’s see who comes out on top!
It’s 1988 and the pop culture swing of the era wasn’t quite
over yet, what with Die Hard, Bloodsport and even slasher icon Chucky in
Child’s Play all hitting theaters. Signs
of the move into the technological advancement era of the 90s started to
trickle in though, as a thing you might have heard of called the internet made
its very first official connection and Capcom brought out their new weapon in
the fight against SNK: The Capcom CPS.
It's more what you didn't see inside the cabinet that impressed.
The newfound power given by this mighty piece of hardware
would allow Capcom to be on the cutting edge, with more and bigger sprites and
better, clearer audio to make for gaming experiences not even the 16-bit
consoles that would come out a few years later could match.SNK, meanwhile, hadn’t quite made that
leap.Perhaps bigger doesn’t mean better
and SNK can instead eke out a win this year with their charm and game design
alone, but it’ll be some stiff competition.
It's 1987 and out competitors are in full swing! This year we can see the start of Capcom's drift away from the shooty shooty bang bang games that have dominated the arcades, but SNK was still going all-in on the shooting action so I guess you can say they stuck to their guns. This isn't a competition for who made the most creative and genre-busting games though. This is for who made the best games. In other words, who is the year's King of the Arcades and
1985 was a year of shooty shooty bang bang arcade games and
that trend continues with 1986, but perhaps because they were aware of the
saturation of such games, this year saw some new innovations. The question then is who innovated and
polished their games the best.
Ikari Warriors(SNK): Ikari Warriors has a lot of the same
problems as its run n’ gun contemporaries of this time period, but makes enough
significant improvements to make it stand out.
It’s viciously unfair and brutal like the others, but unlike TNK3, the
Ikari Warriors can move a little faster and unlike Commando, bullets are bigger
and easier to distinguish. When the
enemies thinned out in between impossible to dodge onslaughts of deceptive
grenade blast radiuses and hails of endless machine gun fire, there were
moments of fun. Those 5-15 seconds of
not dying, dodging bullets while gunning down enemies and the grenade
trajectories cooperating gave me dopamine hits that were just frequent enough
to keep me going. It helps that it’s
also one of the nicest-looking games yet and there’s only 2 music tracks, but
the main one is long enough to make it not feel
grating and it’s an impressive bit of music for the time, with the
multi-layered music and backup drum beat.
At last the clash of the century begins. Capcom and SNK, having already established a
portfolio of modest titles, but 1985 is when things start to get heated. Something you may notice though is that their
games of 1985 are very… Shooty. In fact
all of them are either space shooters or military shooters. It could be a coincidence, but there was also
a very shooty movie that came out that same year.
It’s entirely possible that the monster popularity of this
shooty movie influenced what games they were wanting to make. Just a hunch, but regardless of their
intentions, what matters here is how good they are, so let’s begin.
In a truly massive sale from the Humble Bundle, I recently
acquired a wealth of classic Capcom arcade titles and before that I had already
amassed a wealth of classic SNK arcade titles.
To add to that, I have access to a wealth of various classic arcade titles
through a chain of arcades all within driving distance and I have coupons for
them to boot. With such a massive
collection at my fingertips, I thought I’d do something fun.
I didn’t get to go to a lot of arcades back in the 90s and
when I did, I was such a small kid that I could barely reach the controls.Even when I could, I couldn’t really
appreciate what was going on.Now that
I’m older and more experienced, I’m going back in time to the days of Capcom
and SNK’s rivalry.The days before
Sengoku Basara 4 or Mohammed Bin Salman; the simpler times.Both companies were innovating and making
games of all types and genres, but now that I can assess the majority of their
catalogues, I can answer the question of which company I would’ve considered
the best of their day.
For this series of posts, I’ll be playing through both SNK
and Capcom’s arcade games by order of release, year by year, and judge which
company made the best games.For each
game I’ll be giving some of my thoughts.Some brief, but some a little more in-depth as there are a few I have a
bit of a history with to tell.With over
100 of these games to play in total, I won’t be going in-depth on every single
one and each one will be judged by how much fun I have, regardless of the time
period.
