Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1986

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.

Trojan(CAP): Ikari Warriors had those brief moments of triumph, but in Trojan it’s not long before you’re starved of them.  The core gameplay of blocking, attacking and jumping is promising, but the game turns into Ghosts n’ Goblins with its trial and error gameplay and unlike Ikari Warriors you can’t just brute force your way with continues just to move onto something that could potentially not make you want to tear your hair out.  Trojan is a dud.

Athena(SNK)

"The gods of Olympus have abandoned me.  Now there is no hope."

Athena has a lot going for it as an old-school platformer.  There’s good level variety, colorful graphics and lots of different powerups to get.  You start out in nothing but the red bikini and try to build up a set of armor and weapons as you navigate the worlds defeating enemies and breaking blocks.  It’s brutally difficult, but not in the bad trial and error way like Ghosts n’ Goblins and Trojan.  It just requires you to really know the ins, outs and secrets to come out on top.  It’s the kind of game that old-school challenge players might enjoy; the people who brag about beating Battletoads or Contra without using the Konami code.  Athena isn’t the game for me, but I respect it and it’s clear there was a lot of thought and love put into it.

The Speed Rumbler (CAP): I can’t find any release date of this game beyond the year so to space both companies’ games out a bit I played it in between two SNK releases.  The Speed Rumbler is another shoot ‘em up, but this time with cars.

The maneuvering with the car is the key factor of the game as you drive around, over or even through enemies while firing mounted machine guns.  Even when you bail from the car and go on foot you can at least have a fighting chance until a replacement car arrives.  Like Ikari Warriors, the game gets crazy difficult as it goes on to the point that you can’t avoid dying and have to brute force some areas with continues, but since the car has a health bar it isn’t quite as punishing.  Also like Ikari Warriors there is fun to be had in the little moments of survival, when you’re zipping around other cars and shooting a path to the finish line.  It’s entertaining enough to the end and that puts it on my good list.

Ikari Warriors 2: Victory Road(SNK)

Apparently if 2 players clash swords, something happens, but I can't find another player to try it.

Ralf and Clark go to another planet to fight aliens, quite a drastic departure from the military shooting from the first game.  This was the year Contra came out too.  What happened in 1986 to make people want to shoot up aliens all of a sudden?  For some reason just saying “aliens” makes me think of some movie I saw once, but I can’t put my finger on it.

Anyway, everything I said about the first Ikari Warriors still applies, but Victory Road does everything better.  The moments of triumph in between bouts of impossible difficulty are more frequent, there are more weapons, more enemy types and more bosses.  They’re tedious damage-sponge bosses that are hurt even though your shots bounce off of them and they include one of the worst final bosses I’ve ever seen in a game, but it’s a step in the right direction nonetheless.  Most of the time, the game is a fun run and gunner, but also includes a sword weapon that’s swung by turning the character and even deflects shots in doing so.  I can’t say I’ve ever played a game where I furiously rotate a control stick to perform a continuous crowd-slicing hurricane spin.  Victory Road is a victory for SNK.

Side Arms Hyper Dyne(CAP): This is the best shooting game yet.  The controls are fluid and responsive, especially on an arcade stick, the shooting action is satisfying and plays at a rapid pace, there are different weapons you can use and the graphics are the best yet.  It’s crazy to me how Capcom went from the rough sprites of The Speed Rumbler and Trojan to this.  You’d be spending a fortune if you played it in arcades, but even when you die you can continue in an instant so it never slows down.  The game’s main problem is that it goes on longer than it should and runs out of steam about halfway through.  Before the final boss there’s only 2 bosses fought multiple times with no variation in the rematches, as if they were put there just to lazily pad the game out.  The core gameplay is enough to recommend Side Arms to anyone looking for a decent arcade space shooter though.

What's with the cow item?

Legendary Wings(CAP): Take everything good I had to say about Side Arms and don’t apply it to Legendary Wings.  It’s more dime-a-dozen shooting like 1942 before it except now it occasionally becomes an uninspired, uninteresting side scroller where you walk down hallways fighting the same few enemies through copy/paste environments.  The graphics and sounds are a big step down and lack impact and the gameplay itself does not have a good sense of pacing, especially when you inevitably die and have to continue from the start of the whole stage, further compounded by having to effectively play the game twice because didn’t people love it when Ghost N’ Goblins did that?  Legendary Wings reeks of a game that was shoved out the door for the sake of existing and there’s no reason to play it.  At its very best, it’s dull.

The Winner

The decision for which company did the best in 1986 isn't very close.  Side Arms: Hyper Dyne is probably the game of the year, but it and The Speed Rumbler were pretty much all Capcom had going for them as far as quality games while the rest were weak and mediocre.  All of SNK’s games, on the other hand, were varying levels of passable, keeping their quality consistent.  In an arcade, the fun I had with the SNK games would’ve made me gravitate to their games for a good time, but a Capcom logo on a cabinet would prepare me for mediocrity.  Therefore, SNK wins 1986.

Things are going to get really heated in the next one.  Combined, Capcom and SNK released twice as many games in 1987 and a near equal number of games, meaning there will be a lot to compare and it will take a lot longer write about, so I’ll probably be splitting it into 2 parts.  Look forward to it.