Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1992: Part 1

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.

Football Frenzy(SNK): Are you ready for some footbaaaaaall?!

To my knowledge, Football Frenzy is the only Football game ever made for the Neogeo and they at least didn’t fumble it for their one try.  The game is simplified compared to other football games.  The player on offense has a select number of plays to choose from and the team on defense doesn’t need to select anything.  On pass plays the player just needs to hit the button to pass to the corresponding player and both players button mash to run faster.  It’s easy and fun.  Well, it’s easy and fun if you know Football.

That is definitely football.

The manual helps, but if you don’t know the rules of football, know good strategies like when to go for a field goal, or you don’t know what a two point conversion is, you are in trouble.  This is one for the football fans and it works for that demographic by being familiar enough for them to get into it, but not so complex that they can’t wrap their heads around the controls.  I had some good fun playing with a football fan and that’s the best way to play it because the single player campaign is nothing but random matches against computers with no payoff.

Soccer Brawl: (SNK): Sadly this game is not about getting into fights with wacko Brits.  Instead you play soccer as a team of super powered, buff cyborgs, which should make for an instant sports classic, but Soccer Brawl doesn’t do a lot with its premise to differentiate it from regular soccer except the ability to make powerful field-spanning kicks and that the ball bounces back when it goes out of bounds.

This is a game where you think they would go all-in on the presentation like Robo Army did, but it’s disappointing how little this game aspires for.  Every team looks exactly the same other than color and everything outside of the main gameplay is bland text on the same background and the graphics on the main game itself aren’t that special to begin with.  When you’re playing it, Soccer Brawl can hold your attention, but you’ll quickly forget it exists afterwards.

Mutation Nation(SNK)

Where is Kyo?  This cover promised me Kyo!

This game might as well be renamed 90s: The Video Game.  If this game were made by an indie studio today it would be considered a parody or pastiche.  In the context of the time, it packs in a whole bunch of stuff that was popular in the media.  A city has been taken over by mutants made by a mad scientist straight out of Beast Busters and he has an army of cyborgs alongside his mutant army to stop you.  You play as two radical dudes who know martial arts and wear jeans, open jackets, sunglasses and the M.C. Hammer haircut to take down the whole army yourselves through a grungy, dilapidated city because it’s the 90s and dark grungy cities are cool.

The game is worth a play for its 90s cheese alone, but it’s also a pretty good beat-em-up in its own right.  Like Robo Army, the punching is responsive and gratifying, there’s decent enemy variety and bosses are unique and memorable.  The thing that hurts it compared to its predecessor is how the special attacks control.  You get special moves from consumable items, just like Robo Army, but for whatever reason SNK forgot that the Neo Geo has 4 buttons and Mutation Nation only opts to use 2.  Without the third button for the special attacks, you instead have to hold down the attack button to charge up for a couple of seconds before you can use one, which goes against the fast-paced nature of the game that isn’t going to give you any breathing room and it often isn’t even all that worth it.  Most of the special attacks are screen-wide attacks that won’t even kill some enemies, so it might as well be the mega crash attacks from Capcom’s games, which can be done with the press of a button.

The easy to pick up and play beat-em-up core of the game is still solid and even if it doesn’t quite reach the level of Robo Army, it’s another enjoyable action game to play with a friend.

Street Fighter 2: Champion Edition(CAP): For the most part this is just Street Fighter 2 again, but there are a few notable changes for the game’s multiplayer potential to give it far more value to have in arcade.  The 4 grandmasters are now playable, adding to the roster of fighters, and now both players can play as the same character thanks to all of them having a new color for the second player.  You'd think that would be a given, but remember Street Fighter 2 was the first (real) fighting game and they hadn’t quite figured everything out.  In the original Ryu and Ken were designed to be exactly the same so that one mirror match was possible.  Now that it’s possible under any circumstance, Ken’s moves were also changed slightly to differentiate him.

Mind blown!

It’s still Street Fighter 2 and it’s still a fun time, but after all the Neogeo games I played in between the original SF2 and this, the janky animations and washed-out colors are more noticeable.  If Street Fighter doesn’t make some major advancements, SNK’s fighting games might surpass Capcom’s.

Last Resort(SNK): It’s been a while since the last dedicated shoot-em-up.  This one combines all the worst traits a shooter can have in one package.  There’s a lack of weapon variety, you die in one hit when enemy assaults are absolutely relentless, if you die you have to continue from a previous checkpoint, which this game can get really stingy with, and once you beat the game you have to do it all over again with a harder difficulty to get the true ending because that never pissed me right off!

To its credit, Last Resort doesn’t have a lot of cheap shots.  Nothing comes completely out of nowhere without giving you a chance to react, but there’s often so much shit on the screen that you lose track of what everything is and the punishing game design makes me not want to play it.  I think there are hardcore shoot-em-up mofos who might get enjoyment out of the game’s challenge, but even then the fact that it feels the need to repeat itself to artificially lengthen the game is just plain lazy.  This one does not get a pass.

Baseball Stars 2(SNK): Someone at SNK must’ve gotten sick of complaints that their games weren’t using all 4 buttons of the Neogeo because this game not only uses all 4 buttons, but what they do and what the joystick does is dependent on at least 3 different scenarios.  More than any other non-fighting game I have looked at so far, you badly need the manual for Baseball Stars 2.  It can take a while to get used to the quirks of the game and much like Football Frenzy, not knowing the rules of Baseball will leave you floundering and confused.  Also like Football Frenzy, the game’s a blast with friends.

Whenever the subject of Neogeo sports games comes up, or even arcade sports games in general, Baseball Stars 2 and Neo Turf Masters are two of the ones I hear get brought up the most, and for good reason.  If you can ignore that every player is a palette swapped version of each other and that there’s only one music track, Baseball Stars 2 might have the best presentation out of any game thus far from either company.  It has smooth animations, impressive depth thanks to the sprite scaling, clear voice acting and beautiful artwork used to illustrate key moments like catches, safe calls and the batter socking the pitcher in the face for hitting him with the ball.

This actually wears out your pitcher, which hurts their effectiveness.

This is something only the power of the Neogeo could pull off back then and I doubt there’s anything that can match it this year.  If you want baseball gaming at its finest, you have to play this game.

Ninja Commando(SNK): If you’re thinking Captain Commando’s ninja pal got his own game, I am sorry to disappoint you.  What the game is actually about is the evil Mars Corporation building a time machine to go around messing up history to solidify their power.  You play as 3 ninjas who take one of Mars’ time machines and go to different periods fighting the forces of Mars and chasing down their leader named Spider.

Ninja Commando actually has quite a lot of cutscenes, shown before every stage and after every boss.  The dialogue is quick, to the point, cheesy and even more cheesily translated, but there’s actual character establishment to get you invested, even if only for the fleeting half hour length of the game.

You would think a game about ninjas would mean there’s fast melee action, but Ninja Combat is purely a shoot-em-up.  These ninjas have infinite voids for pockets with a neverending supply of kunai so you can mash that fire button to lay down the hurt, with a screen clearing ninpo for good measure.  Each ninja also has access to special moves done with motion inputs, but neither the manual nor the pause menu for ADK Damashii tells you what they are so you’re on your own there.

Above your life bar is what the character is saying mid-game.  Another nice touch.

It’s fast, frantic and fun.  The time periods are all vastly different from each other, with their own hazards, enemies and historical figures for bosses.  The story presented along the way is icing on the cake.  Don’t sleep on Ninja Commando.

Quiz and Dragons: Most quiz arcade games are never translated into English, but this seems to be one of the only ones to be released in English first and I’ve gotten to play it.  Answering multiple choice trivia questions is the game.  There are different categories and challenges from different monsters to keep things interesting, but there isn’t much you do other than answer those questions.  There’s just one big problem to anyone playing this in the modern day.

This game was made in 1992.

“Who currently hosts The Price is Right?”

Drew Carey.

“Bob Barker.”

What?!

“In what movie did Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges recently star in?”

Robin Williams is dead.  This is a trick question.

“The Fisher King.”

You said recently!

This happens a lot.  Quiz and Dragon’s use of “current” and “recently” date it hard into the moment it was made, making it age very poorly.  You need to remember what things were like in 1992 to get far so I hope you weren’t a toddler, fetus or not even conceived at that point in time.  Even at the time this game had to have become dated within just a few years.

There are timeless questions like state capitols, Shakespeare plays and sports rules, but I always question whether some things it asks are true anymore given it’s been over 30 years and all sorts of things change, like Pluto no longer being a planet.

With quiz games being nearly nonexistent in arcades it was probably pretty cool back then though.  I would love to see an updated take on the concept, but the only quiz games I’ve played in recent years is You Don’t Know Jack.

King of the Monsters 2(SNK): You would think after how crap the first King of the Monsters was SNK would strive to make the sequel better, but the game’s campaign mode, which can be played with a friend, is complete and utter bullshit where nothing works and nothing is fun.  I’ll save my breath on detailing why because this website called Gaming Hell did a great summary on just how much of a disaster the game is from a game design perspective and I agree with it.  Epic fail.

Varth: Operation Thunderstorm(CAP): SNK makes a fresh new one-of-a-kind game like Ninja Commando and Capcom makes another war shooter.  I was ready to cross this one off as another lame Capcom war shoot-em-up, but it’s actually better than the 1942 offshoot games thanks to its slightly futuristic slant.

"More guns! This tank does not have enough guns!"

You’re given two pods that can both fire missiles and protect you from most enemy fire, something you’re going to need.  Varth had to have been pushing Capcom’s CPS to its absolute limits with how much is onscreen in rapid succession.  Tons of enemies, tons of enemy fire and your own fire filling the screen with explosions and flashy effects more than any shoot-em-up before it.

As busy as the screen can get and as challenging as the game is, it’s far easier to distinguish where you are and what you’re shooting than in Last Resort.  Level design is kept interesting with next to no artificial padding, bosses are enormous multi-segmented and ridiculously armed war machines that are fun to see get destroyed piece by piece and the music is awesome and gets you pumped.  How did nobody tell me that Varth’s soundtrack is so kickass?  This is one of those soundtracks where you think Capcom would at least throw a few songs from it in as bonus tracks in Street Fighter 5 or something.

Varth’s flaws are its lack of any extra touches outside of the shooting and its length.  As well-done as the shooting is, that's all the game has.  There are no little touches to the presentation like some of the other shoot-em-ups so far.  You go from one level to the next and then get a pathetic text ending, which is a chore to get in the first place because Varth is longer than it needs to be.

Like I said, the game doesn’t artificially pad itself out for the most part, but the whole thing takes about an hour, which I’ve already mentioned is too long for most arcade games if the gameplay doesn’t change in a meaningful fashion.  With the convenience of re-releases like the Capcom Arcade Stadium, you can save your progress and play it in bits at a time.  If you do that it’s a good game to play over time, but there is no way I would sit in an arcade and play through this in one go.  I would definitely play for a good while though and that’s recommendation enough.

In part 2 I'll be looking at the later parts of the year, where the fighting games SNK would become known for will really start to innovate and heat up.