This was the period where both company’s arcade releases
truly came to a near-close. That this
round starts in 2017 says it all. Since
2011, neither company made a single game for arcades that wasn’t an updated
version of a previous one. As I stated
last time, there were ports, mobile games and console games, but the previous
round set a precedent for both companies moving forward: now the console
versions of their fighting games would come first.
As if to rub it in Street Fighter 5’s face, SNK brought out
a new King of Fighters game with a massive 50 characters and a fully featured
arcade mode with substantial story content.
I heard stories about Street Fighter players jumping ship to KOF 14
because of how much of a rip-off Street Fighter 5 was. There’s footage of a pro Street Fighter
player telling Capcom representatives to their faces that he was going to go
play Guilty Gear instead of Street Fighter 5.
It was really REALLY bad. It’s
the stuff of legends.
That is not the version being judged though. Capcom continually added to Street Fighter 5
with overpriced DLC until they finally got a feature-rich and complete game
re-released as the Champion Edition, which is what came out in arcades. SNK had already released KOF 14 for arcades
with all its DLC included by that point, plus a little spin-off. With the release of SNK’s 2019 Samurai
Shodown game later, we’ll have reached the last arcade game released by either
company. We will finally see if Capcom
will cement their lead as the best arcade game manufacturer or if SNK will tie
the score.