Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1996: Part 1

In 1996 3D gaming was the hottest new thing.  Sure some 3D games started trickling out the previous year with the launch of the Sony Playstation and pre-rendered 3D visuals had been around for a bit longer, but now that 3D graphics could be rendered in real time with real polygons the sky seemed to be limit.  Several of the lesser-selling 2D consoles of yesteryear bit the dust and Nintendo came out with the Nintendo 64, making the 3D capable systems the dominating force.  All the big names paving the way for the evolution of gaming as were coming out, including Super Mario 64, Resident Evil, Bubsy 3D, Crash Bandicoot, Duke Nukem 3D and Wave Race 64.

For fighting games, the 3D train continued.  Capcom started to dabble in their own 3D fighting games beginning with Star Gladiator, which I won’t be looking at for this one because I can’t find a copy of it anywhere, though I do recall playing it once at a convention.  I don’t remember much except that I wasn’t impressed and it was right next to a cabinet with KOF 2002 Unlimited Match and that awesome Arc System Works Fist of the North Star fighting game was there too so those games overrode my memory.
 
With other companies, Sega released both Virtua Fighter 3 and Fighters Megamix, Namco released Tekken 2, the ever-popular Mortal Kombat Trilogy came out for home consoles and of course Tecmo began the Dead or Alive franchise with the very first game, building off Virtua Fighter’s foundation.  This all combined with smash hit fighters like War Gods, Pray For Death and Iron & Blood: Warriors of Ravenloft, which I imagine made it harder for Capcom and SNK to get people to their good old 2D arcade cabinets, which by all accounts had their own strengths that home consoles still didn’t have, as evidenced by still less than stellar home ports.
 
As for which among these two arcade giants did the best this year, I’ll be the judge of that.

Neo Turf Masters(SNK): This game is one of the big chungus sports game of not just the Neogeo, but arcades as a whole.  If you ask any arcade goer what the best arcade golf game is, there’s a good chance they’re going to tell you it’s Neo Turf Masters.  There was a crowd of people watching guys play Neo Turf Masters when I went to the arcade a few months back.
 
Truth be told, there isn’t much special about it from a gameplay perspective.  Sure there are 4 different courses and 6 different characters with different stats, but when you actually play the game you just try to hit ball into hole by gauging and aiming your shot like any other golf game.  There’s only so much you can do with that.  I think what really sets is apart is the graphics.
 
The detail put into the game’s presentation is downright crazy for a 1996 game.  Neo Turf Masters uses rotoscoping of real people for the golf swing animations, parallax scrolling for the environments and voice acting for characters and the announcers to really bring the game to life and the detailed character portraits for the different results top it off.  A strong presentation can go a long way in bringing the hype for a sports game and bring the hype Neo Turf Masters does.  It’s the perfect golf title for a social gathering.

Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara(CAP): As a sequel this game doesn’t do a lot to change the formula from the first game and instead it gives players more.  More classes, now with 2nd player variants, more branching paths, more bosses and a longer, even more epic story with more places to explore and the most replay value in any beat-em-up game I’ve ever seen thanks to more alternate pathways.  Everything that made Tower of Doom awesome is still awesome in Shadow over Mystara and just like the original it’s a must-play.  It does lose points for having one of the worst final bosses in the genre though.
 
Street Fighter Alpha 2(CAP): I thought the first Alpha game was great, but Street Fighter Alpha 2 is so much better in every way that the original is nearly obsolete.  There are more characters, making for a particularly sizeable roster with more story, more music and more stages featuring some of the best backgrounds the franchise has ever had.  Every stage in Alpha 2 is a work of art, particularly the crowds of cyclists on Chun-Li’s stage and the Capcom crossover party on Ken’s Yacht.
 

Chain combos are mostly gone, but the custom combo system in its place is a fun way to spend some meter and go apeshit on the opponent.  In between finding the right moment for custom combos or the super moves, the spacing, positioning and mixups are all a brilliant dance of combat.  Street Fighter Alpha 2 is Street Fighter at its finest and even if you never played any other Street Fighter game before, you can and should play this one.
 
Art of Fighting 3(SNK): You can really tell SNK was taking notes at what those hip new kids Tekken and Virtua Fighter were doing because this one has all the spacing, gravity, air juggling, pre-set combos and even the motion capture of a 3D fighting game through rotoscoping.  At the same time though it retains the spirit meter, taunting mechanics, command moves and story detail of its predecessors, making it a very unique beast.  There’s no other 2D fighter that looks or plays quite like it and it’s a fun, albeit different combination that takes some getting used to.  Like the 3D fighters at the time, knowing your array of individual punches and kicks makes a big difference and jumping isn’t nearly as good, but the original Art of Fighting had a bit of a more grounded, less jump-heavy, close-quarters game flow to begin with so it doesn’t feel out of place for the series.
 

Thankfully nothing came at the expense of another fun adventure.  The story sees Robert traveling to a place called Glasshill Valley in order to help deliver research material one of his childhood friends has to deliver to another childhood friend.  The plot picks up from there with some twists as everyone seems to either want Robert or the girl he’s traveling with.  Ryo even books a flight to Glasshill Valley with Yuri to chase after him because Robert didn’t tell anyone where he was going, explaining why he’s the only other playable character returning from previous games.
 
It’s yet another fun fighting experience from SNK with plenty of story, though mainly if you play as one of the original duo.  With every other character you just fight all the others until you get some dialogue in the final couple of fights, much like the Street Fighter Alpha games, but that’s still more than most fighting games at this time.  Art of Fighting 3 has everything I liked about the first game with a new 3D-esque twist on the gameplay and a new cast of memorable characters from outside of South Town.  I love it.
 
Metal Slug(SNK): If there are two franchises the Neogeo is famous for, it’s The King of Fighters and Metal Slug.  Metal Slug is one of the big mamma jammas of all arcade shooting games and possibly the most revered.  Unlike with KOF and its “worst fighting game ever made” award, Metal Slug does everything right with this first game.
 
The most standout part is the graphics.  Every animation on the enemy soldiers and the playable characters Marco and Tarma are super smooth and expressive, with little details like reloading the default pistol when you stop firing a volley for a moment (even though it has infinite ammo) or enemy soldiers at a campfire before you bust in and they sound the alarm.  Stages are lavish and full interactive or destructible elements like cars, cliffsides and even enemy boats you can board before they fully sink.  The shooting is a big part of the game, but there’s just as much importance to the jumping and platforming aspect, dodging enemy fire, jumping from footholds and getting the jump on enemies for a risky close-up assault.
 

I'll save you ZZ Top!

Lest we forget, this game perfects the art of explosions.  Michael Bay must’ve played this game in 1996, thought it was the coolest thing he’s ever seen and brought copies of it to his special effects team as study material.  You’re armed with grenades, you can get a fast-firing rocket launcher and enemies pack their own explosives.  Buildings, tanks, planes, big barrels of flammable material and enemies soldiers all go boom and the top-notch visuals on display showing the shrapnel and blood clouds make it supremely satisfying.  If something is not exploding in Metal Slug, you’re probably losing.  The game is so explosive it set one of the test units on fire!
 

From the visuals to the music to the sound effects to the level design, Metal Slug excels in pretty much everything, making it an exhilarating action ride from start to finish, but I have to admit, even if I pretend there are no sequels yet, it feels a bit like a proof of concept.  There’s little sense of escalation beyond the final stage throwing bigger swarms of enemies at you.  It’s almost as if you could play the stages in any order and it would work just as well.  The final boss is the villain, but his vehicle isn’t particularly imposing or any more difficult than the bosses before it.  It’s still a banger everyone needs to play of course, but there’s just a feeling it could be better.
 
Ninja Master’s [Secret Ninja Scrolls](SNK): Even the biggest SNK fans barely talk about this game and after playing it I can see why.  It’s not that it’s a bad fighting game.  In fact it might be the best one ADK has made, mechanically.  Every character can switch to a weapon as a sort of light stance system and there are rush combos similar to Art of Fighting 3 or Real Bout Fatal Fury.  The animations and combat are both very smooth, the controls are tight and on the AES version there’s even a big menu screen that lets you customize the controls (which you really REALLY want to do if you’re a KOF or Fatal Fury player.  Trust me).
 
The problem with Ninja Master’s is that it doesn’t go the extra mile on anything.  It has the fighting and that’s it.  The story is that Nobunaga has been possessed by a demon named Hao (this was before Shaman King, right?) and you have to go through everyone else and Ranmaru in order to stop his rampage.  This is never conveyed in the game at all.
 
A lot of things aren’t conveyed in the game.  There is only one static win screen with one quote for each character and no cutscenes, character interaction or even endings, if you’re playing on too low a difficulty.  Even if you do play on a higher difficulty, the endings are short to the point of dissatisfaction.  There’s just nothing that stands out for Ninja Master’s.  Backgrounds look nice, but don’t have anything to distinguish them as anything other than generic locations.  Character designs also look nice enough, but don’t have the color and flash of a game like Samurai Shodown, nor the personality.  Super attacks also lack distinguishing impact.  All you have is a game that’s fun enough to play, but swiftly forgotten unless you’re fascinated by how a game can be so kicked to the wayside.
 
Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo(CAP): Much like how Metal Slug is a quintessential run & gun shooter, Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo is a quintessential head-to-head puzzle game.  The innovation of special gems that break gem blocks of the same color adds a yet-unseen level of strategy by allowing for combo setups.  You need to always be thinking ahead and improvise when the opponent drops the timed blocks because they don’t turn into regular gems until a set number of yours has already been placed.  The tides can turn in an instant in this game and it’s always a push and pull match until someone eventually caves in, as opposed to puzzle games where both players stay on their side of the screen and race for a higher score.  It’s a brilliant puzzle game setup that brings some of the excitement of a fighting game to the genre, including character diversity, marginally.
 

The graphics are the second best part.  Now that it’s a less-strenuous puzzle game, characters are in new cutesy forms with animations signaling the puzzle battle’s circumstance and the music is more low-key and relaxing renditions of each character’s theme set to the musical stingers of Street Fighter Alpha.
 
It’s easy to understand for even the most casual player and every game can play out drastically differently so it never gets stale.  To this day people have wanted a sequel to Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo to the point that some made their own unofficial ones.  Well-known Street Fighter player David Sirlin made the board game Puzzle Strike and Nicalis made the video game Crystal Crisis.  Over 2 decades later the impact of Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo can still be felt.

Stay posted for part 2, which will kick off with a game very close to my heart.  So far this year is anyone's game.