Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1994: Part 2

It's still 1994!  Let's goooooo!

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1994: Part 1

If we weren’t there already, we have officially reached the peak of fighting game mania.  With Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and Fatal Fury games bringing in the players, more and more companies wanted a piece of the action.  There were more fighting games being made than ever before, be it on consoles or arcades.

They didn’t even stay in the games.  Fighting games were being turned into major multimedia franchises.  Both Fatal Fury and Street Fighter got their own movies this year and Mortal Kombat was on the way to getting one in the following year.

With such a boom, Capcom and SNK upped their arcade production this year, so much so that I need to split it into 2 parts.  It was important that they did because in 1994 there was extremely tough fighting game competition.

Some of the biggest and best fighting games came out in 1994.  Games like Kasumi Ninja, Ballz 3D, Shaq Fu and one of the most highly regarded fighting games even to this day, Rise of the Robots.  There was also this one game called Tekken that Namco made, but who cares about that shit.

Truth be told, I don’t think either company can make a game that can surpass Rise of the Robots, but in the comparison of Capcom and SNK’s arcade games, that doesn’t matter.  Time to see what we got in this crazy, crazy year.

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1993

In 1993, the fighting game genre had gone into full swing.  Mortal Kombat 2 came out with even better graphics, more violence and cheating asshole computer opponents.  Home ports of arcade games like it and Street Fighter 2 were topping the sales charts and other companies got in on the fighting action themselves, like Data East with Fighter’s History and Konami with TMNT: Tournament Fighter.

1993 was also a big year for 3D gaming.  The PC megahit Myst came out with its 3D pre-rendered backgrounds and full motion video, while on the console side, Nintendo made Star Fox, a game able to render polygons on a Super Nintendo cart.  For fighting games, Sega topped off the year by revolutionizing the genre by adding a 3D element with Virtua Fighter.  It was a year of major technological advancements for the medium of gaming.

I have to admit, 3D models having faces is pretty impressive too.

For arcades, one of the biggest technological advancements came with Capcom's new arcade hardware.  One that could, in some ways, even surpass the Neogeo: the CPS2 board!  This new technology would allow for more and bigger sprites, more colors and even better audio thanks to QSound technology (though Qsound was used in a less-used CPS1 variant called the CPS Dash).

Though 3D fighting would blow up in the coming years in large part due to Virtua Fighter, Capcom and SNK were still sticking with what they had in two dimensions, albeit with less releases this time.  In fact, this year Capcom only has 3 games to work with.  Even still, there’s a direct point of comparison with two of Capcom’s games.  Both have an updated version of their hit fighting games and, more uniquely, both have a wrestling game.

Let’s see who gets treated like Roman Reigns and who gets treated like John Cena!

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1992: Part 2

Continuing on from part 1, there's a lot more fighting games to close off the year and that's a train that isn't going to stop rolling for a long time.

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.

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1991

In the realm of gaming, 1991 was very significant for SNK, Capcom and Nintendo.  Nintendo released the Super Nintendo, their super powerful 16 bit system that would become home to SNK and Capcom’s fighting games, which started kicking off the same year with each company’s flagships and company mascots making their (actual) debuts.  Nintendo’s war was with Sega and their Genesis on the home console battlefield though, a separate one from Capcom and SNK’s arcade battlefield happening around the same time.  Judging home ports might be a neat idea for a future article, but for now I am deciding which company is the King of Arcades for 1991.  Naturally there’s a lot to say about the two big titles for this year.

The Final Days of Nintendo Online

It is once again a dark day for gaming.  Nintendo’s last bastion of online gaming, the WiiU and 3DS, has now been shut down like the Wii and DS before it.  The only thing keeping Nintendo in people’s good graces is no more and this time there’s no excuse like the shenanigans with Gamespy that I’m aware of.

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1991: Part 1

We're a year in now and the 90s are in full swing.  This year may be the turning point for the arcade scene moving forward and there are going to be a lot of changes around here, one of which should come from you! If you like the article be sure to like, comment and subscribe!

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1990

It is now officially the 90s!  It’s the time to wear flannel, parachute pants, sunglasses and hats on backwards, at least according to what pop culture tells me.

There’s nothing good on TV though so we go to gaming for our entertainment.  In the realm of gaming, technology was going into the next generation.  The Sega Genesis released in North America with the Super Nintendo getting ready to come out in the next year, but in the arcade, something big arrived.

SNK released the Neogeo.  This thing was a beast with some of the highest possible memory capacity allowing for the most detailed graphics and the best sound, all with expandable memory cartridges that would allow for even bigger and better games throughout its 14 year run, one of the longest in gaming history.  When it came to 2D games, the Neogeo was at the top of the line.

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1989

It’s 1989 and even though it hasn’t hit the start of the next decade, you might consider this year to be 90s as hell.  1989 is when a lot of cornerstones of the era got their start as they continued into the next decade.  Tim Burton’s Batman movie changed the way people looked at comic book movies and a few years later lead to the creation of Batman: The Animated Series.

Disney’s The Little Mermaid hit theaters, leading to what is called the Disney Renaissance with several more iconic animated movies from the company in the following years.  In gaming, one of the games I’ll be looking at, Final Fight, also set a standard for beat-em-ups of the 90s.  It was the transitionary period to the new decade and both Capcom and SNK brought both their A-games and B-games.  Let’s see who comes out on top!

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1988

It’s 1988 and the pop culture swing of the era wasn’t quite over yet, what with Die Hard, Bloodsport and even slasher icon Chucky in Child’s Play all hitting theaters.  Signs of the move into the technological advancement era of the 90s started to trickle in though, as a thing you might have heard of called the internet made its very first official connection and Capcom brought out their new weapon in the fight against SNK: The Capcom CPS.

It's more what you didn't see inside the cabinet that impressed.

The newfound power given by this mighty piece of hardware would allow Capcom to be on the cutting edge, with more and bigger sprites and better, clearer audio to make for gaming experiences not even the 16-bit consoles that would come out a few years later could match.  SNK, meanwhile, hadn’t quite made that leap.  Perhaps bigger doesn’t mean better and SNK can instead eke out a win this year with their charm and game design alone, but it’ll be some stiff competition.

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1987

It's 1987 and out competitors are in full swing!  This year we can see the start of Capcom's drift away from the shooty shooty bang bang games that have dominated the arcades, but SNK was still going all-in on the shooting action so I guess you can say they stuck to their guns.  This isn't a competition for who made the most creative and genre-busting games though.  This is for who made the best games.  In other words, who is the year's King of the Arcades and

who's bad?

Well, Data East, but that's not until next year.

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.

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.

SNK vs. Capcom: The King of Arcades: Introduction (1979-1984)

In a truly massive sale from the Humble Bundle, I recently acquired a dearth of classic Capcom arcade titles and before that I had already amassed a dearth of classic SNK arcade titles.  To add to that, I have access to a dearth of various classic arcade titles through a chain of arcades all within driving distance and I have coupons for them to boot.  With such a massive collection at my fingertips, I thought I’d do something fun.

I didn’t get to go to a lot of arcades back in the 90s and when I did, I was such a small kid that I could barely reach the controls.  Even when I could, I couldn’t really appreciate what was going on.  Now that I’m older and more experienced, I’m going back in time to the days of Capcom and SNK’s rivalry.  The days before Sengoku Basara 4 or Mohammed Bin Salman; the simpler times.  Both companies were innovating and making games of all types and genres, but now that I can assess the majority of their catalogues, I can answer the question of which company I would’ve considered the best of their day.

For this series of posts, I’ll be playing through both SNK and Capcom’s arcade games by order of release, year by year, and judge which company made the best games.  For each game I’ll be giving some of my thoughts.  Some brief, but some a little more in-depth as there are a few I have a bit of a history with to tell.  With over 100 of these games to play in total, I won’t be going in-depth on every single one and each one will be judged by how much fun I have, regardless of the time period.