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.

Savage Bees(CAP): It’s just a reskin of 1942, but the evasion command is now a bullet-clearing move instead, which doesn’t change it up at all.  It’s mind-numbingly repetitive and even the bosses aren’t bosses so much as formations of regular enemies to gun down.  I got nothing out of playing it.

Commando(CAP): The first shoot ‘em up here to be on foot, also called a run & gunner.  Commando is the first Capcom game here I can say is solid overall.  The graphics are improved, there’s a few more music tracks, sound effects are satisfying and the gameplay is on point.  You can fire in 8 directions and drop grenades while enemies swarm you all over the place, but one of the unique features this time is the emphasis on the “run” part of the run & gun.  The game is not an auto-scroller.  The goal is to make it to the end of the stage and then survive the encounter at the end of it.  Killing every enemy onscreen is not the objective and you can move along at your own pace instead of waiting for another swarm of enemies to come your way like their previous games.

It’s held back only by a couple of problems, but seeing as it’s one of the earliest examples of the genre, it’s understandable.  Enemy bullets are single white pixels.  They move slow enough for you to know to dodge them, but they’re so small that they get lost in the chaos when you’re shooting your own faster-moving single white pixels, leading to a lot of deaths that don’t feel fair.  That would be less a problem for me if you could just keep putting quarters in the machine, but the game also doesn’t allow you to continue once your lives are gone, which they will be because you die in one hit and the game gets really hard.  It’s still a fun retro game in its own right and a good foundation for its genre.

TNK III(SNK): This game is important in gaming history for effectively inventing the twin-stick shooter, though done with only one stick that could rotate.  Playing it on the Anniversary Collection, the games that used this rotating joystick can be played twin stick-style.  The actual game’s design is not important in gaming history.  In fact, it’s really bad.  There is next to no music, barely even any sound effects and from start to finish it’s enemies making cheapshots at you, often with major damage.  The game would be challenging and borderline unfair if you were fast enough to dodge the onslaught, but you’re in a slow-moving tank with pathetic range, meaning you just get blasted the entire way through.  The only way to get through this game is to constantly continue because when you continue, all the enemies that were on the screen are cleared.  If you were playing this in a real arcade, it would be a game you only win with money, but when you play it with infinite continues, you only win with soul-crushing repetition.  It’s the worst shooter yet.

Ghosts N’ Goblins(CAP): Yes, it is as hard as its reputation suggests and no it is not a good game.  Ghosts N’ Goblins is the purest form of trial and error gameplay, the worst kind.  Cheapshot after cheapshot after cheapshot in a game where you can only take one hit.  Even abusing the arcade stadium’s rewind feature only does so much when the level design is practically designed to fuck you over.  I especially love instances like zombies spawning right on top of you so there’s nothing you can do to avoid them.  Was this game even play tested?

Alpha Mission(SNK): SNK innovated once again by giving players a bunch of ship armor upgrades they can activate for a burst of a variety of powers.  The shooting gameplay is satisfying and never lets up, taking a cue from Konami’s Xevious with ground enemies that can only be hit by a secondary attack.  It even has some fun bosses with cool visual designs and attack patterns, which I normally wouldn’t point out, but most bosses so far have just been an enemy that takes more hits or a group of enemies glued together.  The difficulty can be a bit much at times and coupled with the fact that you have to restart the stage every time, it can be frustrating, but overall Alpha Mission gets a pass.

Gunsmoke(CAP): Remember when there was controversy about gunning down Africans in Resident Evil 5?  This game did it first, but with Native Americans.  Questionable political correctness aside, Gunsmoke can be fun at times, mostly when you get some powerups to better match up to the constant onslaught of enemies.  There’s no 8 directional shooting like in Commando.  Instead there’s 3 different angles of shooting forward, which becomes a major problem when enemies shoot you from behind and you can’t shoot back.  The game falls for the same problem as TNK3: you get blasted constantly at all times in such a manner where it’s virtually impossible to not get hit, even with powerups, but at least you’re more mobile than in that game.  It has a few innovations and is the best-looking game of the year, but I wouldn’t quite call it “good.”

Section Z(CAP): Another dime a dozen shooter, this time a side scroller.  Being a side scroller is pretty much the only thing making it stand out because other than that it’s uninspired and repetitive.  The shooting isn’t particularly satisfying and the stages are practically featureless in terms of design.  There isn’t much to say about this one besides being mediocre and forgettable.

The Winner

Both Capcom and SNK were not at their A-game in 1985.  Capcom made more games, but most of them were nothing special or just plain bad.  SNK meanwhile only had 2 games, one of which was pretty good and the other was a total failure.  It’s a tough call, but I’m giving the win to Capcom because games like Section Z and Savage Bees got boring, but I still had fun for a little while, unlike TNK 3.  Gunsmoke and Commando were Capcom’s standouts and they weren’t quite as fun as Alpha Mission individually, but in terms of time spent enjoying a game I did get more out of the two when taking both into consideration.  Had Alpha Mission been a game that had me fist-pumping and telling everyone that they should play it instead of just been a decent game, SNK might’ve won.

That’s one point for Capcom.  Get ready next year for 1986, when the shooting games continue, with a few exceptions.