Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 2004

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.

Hyper Street Fighter 2(CAP): This is the most low-effort Capcom game yet.  It is a version of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo with the option of using the version of a character from any previous Street Fighter 2 version, meaning the new feature is having less moves and more unbalanced characters.  I suppose that might be of interest to the kusoge-playing weirdos who like to find wild character imbalance for fun, but it’s little more than a ROM hack with no new content whatsoever.

If nothing else I was at least hoping this would give me a way to play a form of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo without the difficulty glitch, but no!  Somehow the difficulty still stays at the maximum no matter what difficulty you set it at, making it practically unplayable, and it’s even worse in this version because now even the Japanese version has the same glitch!  Wasn’t there supposed to be a patched version of SSF2T?!  Did Capcom go out of their way to NOT use the fixed version and instead subject Japanese players to the same unfun, unfair bullshit?!  How did they screw this up?!

Samurai Shodown 5 Special(SNK): You would think following the tradition of the Fatal Fury “special” games that this would just be an updated version of Samurai Shodown 5.  It’s actually a non-canon game that re-uses Samurai Shodown 5’s sprites and gameplay.  In both the Japanese and English versions there is no story, Sankuro is taken out and all the other boss characters from the previous Neogeo games return, with the only one getting new character sprites being Mizuki.

Since there’s no story in either version I don’t feel ripped off like with the base game, but it also means that Samurai Shodown 5 Special might as well be solely for multiplayer play, even moreso than the non-canon KOF games.  In single player mode, players fight some opponents and then fight the franchise’s bosses, each of whom must be defeated in a certain way to move onto the next one and each gets a little introductory dialogue in front of their character portrait.  It's not exactly riveting.

As a multiplayer game, Samurai Shodown 5 Special great and I’ve had a lot of fun playing it with other players through its various ports.  The versatile movement from the special button makes a return from the original 5 with some balance changes, a slightly bigger roster and my favorite addition to the franchise: overkill moves.

Overkill moves are the messy, gory finishes of Mortal Kombat by way of the risky, easily telegraphed and difficult to land instant kill attacks of Guilty Gear that can only be used when the opponent is low on health and on their final round.  Overkill moves have characters get bisected, blown up from the waist up, their necks broken and there’s even a good old-fashioned heart ripping.  If you do play the game, I highly recommend playing a version with an option to set the violence to high, like the Code Mystics port.  I think the violence level in arcades could be adjusted through some kind of dipswitch, but in most versions it’s set to the default medium violence level, where there’s blood, but no dismemberment, which takes some of the sting out of the action.

With the violence on high, Samurai Shodown 5 Special is the most violent Japanese fighting game I’ve ever played.  Watching your opponent get completely obliterated with a flashy finishing move is extremely satisfying and just as entertaining for the player on the receiving end.  The reactions of new players trying this game out and getting finished off by an overkill attack is absolutely hysterical.

As a non-canon game bringing the bosses all in one place alongside the series favorites already in the original Samurai Shodown 5, 5 Special has a healthy amount to play with, but I wish they had done more outside of the core gameplay.  They eventually did, but that was 16 years later.

Capcom Fighting Evolution(CAP)

Really?!  REALLY?!  This is what Capcom came up with after 2 years of absence?!

At the basest level, Capcom Fighting Evolution is a functional fighting game, having a game feel and sound design similar to Capcom vs. SNK 2, but without as much polish.  A player that has never played a fighting game before might consider Capcom Fighting Evolution acceptable because they’d have no standards, but any player that has played a 2D fighting game prior needs to brace themselves.  This is one of the laziest hackjobs I have ever seen, to the point that if someone told me it was a fan-made game made on the open source MUGEN fighting game engine I would be inclined to believe them.

One of the first things that strikes me about Capcom Fighting Evolution is that it’s UGLY!  It re-uses character sprites from CPS2 games, CPS3 games and Capcom vs. SNK, which was on the Sega NAOMI hardware, making for an astonishingly jarring rift in art style and quality between characters.  There’s only one wholly new character and she looks like she belongs in the Street Fighter Alpha games (which she was later added to).  After the effort both SNK and Capcom put into their respective crossovers to make the character sprites from the other company consistent with theirs, you’d think that wouldn’t be an issue.

Backgrounds are the most pathetic I’ve ever seen.  They look like you’re fighting in front of murals with how flat, lifeless and devoid of animation they are.  These murals are also filled with character art taken from other sources and it’s made incredibly obvious with how some of their art styles clash with each other.  Even when the backgrounds have more than one layer it looks like both layers are made of cardboard, like you’re fighting in front of the worst kind of indoor theme park ride.  I know this game wasn’t made using the same arcade system as Capcom vs. SNK 2, but if the system it did use could run Tekken 5, I think Capcom could’ve made something better-looking than this!

There’s no story or character interactions to salvage the game either because that would require effort.  The final boss is Pyron, another shameless and lazy re-use with nothing new, and then you get still panels from the Udon comic artists over the same droning and dull guitar track with no text.  The art is great, but throwing a bunch of still images with zero context at the player after a half-assed final boss is not a satisfactory conclusion.

I know there’s also the matter of massive character imbalance this game gets clowned on for, but even if the game were perfectly balanced there is no getting around how little it has to offer.  It’s practically an insult with how lazy it is.  Holy shit.

“If you thought Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter was lazy, if you thought Marvel Infinite was lazy, if you had gripes with any other Capcom fighting game, I dare you.  I double dippin’ dog dare you to tell me that any of that shit holds a candle to Capcom Fighting Evolution.  I dare you to tell me.  This game looks horrible, this game plays horrible, there is no… I don’t even know if there’s any defense to this game.  I don’t even know.  I have no idea if anyone can even defend this game.”
-Maximillian Dood

The Winner

In Capcom’s absence, SNK kept coming out with lots of wonderful and fun games, English version of Samurai Shodown 5 notwithstanding.  When it came time for Capcom to challenge SNK’s ever-increasing library of good times, they came out with a ROM hack of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo that didn’t fix a game-ruining issue a decade later and a slapdash low-effort Frankenstein’s Monster of a fighting game.  Do I even need to state that SNK wins?  SNK didn’t just win for these years.  They pulled off an overkill move.

Now more than ever Capcom needs to step up their game.  This was a disastrous time for them and if they continue with their half-assed arcade games, SNK will take the crown.  Rather than do better, it seems their solution was to not come out with arcade games for another 4 years and give SNK the leg up.  We’ll see how that pans out for them.