SNK vs. Capcom: The King of Arcades: 1985

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.

SNK vs. Capcom: The King of Arcades: Introduction (1979-1984)

In a truly massive sale from the Humble Bundle, I recently acquired a dearth of classic Capcom arcade titles and before that I had already amassed a dearth of classic SNK arcade titles.  To add to that, I have access to a dearth 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.