Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1999

In the real world, not a lot of note was going on in 1999.  I think there was a guy who said he did not have sexual relations with a woman and some kids shot up a school, but the big impacts were being felt with our friends/enemies Capcom and SNK.
 
Late in 1998, SNK put out the Neogeo Pocket, a handheld system of their design not unlike the Game Boy.  SNK had already done some portable work on Nintendo’s handheld with a port of Samurai Shodown as well as KOF 95 and 96, but this time they made their own system to put their games on.  By that point, however, the Game Boy Color was out so it wasn’t long before they upgraded to a color system as well, the Neogeo Pocket Color.  The Neogeo Pocket Color had a selection of miniaturized SNK games that were effectively ports of their Neogeo games, retaining the core gameplay experiences with only 2 buttons.

It had all the SNK essentials like Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, KOF and even a few sports games plus its very own Sonic game.  In fact, the Neogeo Pocket Color games are where the Japanese game developer Dimps got their start, who would go on to make the outstanding Sonic Rush games on the Nintendo DS.  That’s all great, but one of the biggest and best games on the Neogeo Pocket Color was the one that would finally let Capcom and SNK settle things personally.

For the first time, SNK and Capcom would truly go head to head, as M. Bison and Geese team up to run a fighting tournament where all their company’s fighters would fight as a part of their evil plan!  Finally you could show those Street Fighter peasants or KOF losers that your company is better and use your skillz with your favorite character!

 
Technically SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash came out first, but that game isn’t a head-to-head crossover of SNK and Capcom as much as it is a game where Capcom and SNK’s characters and creators come together in a friendly little card game where Capcom and SNK characters are able to support each other, which is just wrong!  Capcom and SNK are enemies!  I would review those crossovers, but neither were in arcades.  I will say both are absolutely fantastic games though.

This manpower being put into their handheld system is presumably why there aren’t as many SNK games for this year.  Capcom’s reason for fewer games was because apparently not doing as hot in the arcades and they put more effort into releasing just a few big games instead of the numbers they were pumping out in previous years.

That may have paid off because holy smokes is 1999 one hell of a year.  This year has both companies at their best and there is not going to be a lot of negativity  The year’s winner might be down to the wire.

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1998

1998 was another big year for gaming.  Some of the greatest games of all time that are still revered to this day were coming out.  Resident Evil 2, Banjo-Kazooie, Metal Gear Solid, Half-Life and Spyro the Dragon and of course The Legend of fucking Zelda the fucking Ocarina of fucking Time.  It was a great time to be a gamer, particularly a console gamer.

Near the end of the year, Capcom and SNK would be introduced to one of their best friends: The Sega Dreamcast.  The Dreamcast was an incredible machine for the time, capable of 3D and 2D graphics neither the Playstation nor Nintendo 64 could pull off.  It’s best known for Soul Calibur, but the Dreamcast was practically a fighting game machine by all measures.  While the Playstation would struggle to run certain Capcom and SNK arcade games, the Dreamcast was able to handle enhanced ports of those games, including some packages with 2 games in one!  It was the only console that could run Street Fighter 3 at the time and some of Capcom’s 3D games like Power Stone would also get their Dreamcast port down the line.

3D backgrounds!

I sure hope that doesn’t mean home console gaming is going to supplant arcade gaming because there are some great arcade games this year, mostly from SNK.  Capcom seems to have slowed down their arcade game production, possibly because of the cost of making games for that beast the CPS3, and were putting more manpower into their console games, such as the aforementioned Resident Evil 2.  SNK meanwhile was still chugging along with the Neogeo while the Hyper Neogeo 64 dragged its feet.  Let’s find out who put their efforts on a winning horse.

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 1997

In the real world, 1997 was the year of Princess Diana’s death and the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong from the U.K. to China, resulting in Bruce Lee’s relative Chin wiping out all 1.2 billion of the incoming Chinese immigrants.

In gaming, 1997 was cementing the dominance of home consoles and PCs in gaming.  With polygons and storage space further evolving, we got games like Diablo, The Curse of Monkey Island, Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy 7, one of the worst games I’ve ever played, but would become synonymous with the Playstation because I guess standards were that low.  SNK translations may be bad, but holy shit Final Fantasy 7’s is even worse.  IT WAS THE MOST EXPENSIVE GAME MADE AT THE TIME?!

Anyway, Capcom and SNK apparently figured they had to up their game with brand new arcade hardware, both of which… Could’ve gone better.

Capcom came out with the CPS3 system, an arcade board that would allow for even more sprites and higher capacity memory.  It was a super powerful system that could outclass the Neogeo’s ever-increasing cartridge sizes.  It came out at the tail end of 1996 with Red Earth, but of course what they really needed to sell people on this thing was a new Street Fighter, leading to one of the most fascinating disasters of the era.

SNK made the Hyper Neogeo 64, a 3D system to try and replicate the success other companies were having with this new dimension of play.  From what I understand it was only marginally more powerful than the Nintendo 64.

Both of these new systems had almost no games for them.  The CPS3 only had 6 games made for it (half of which are updated re-releases) and the Hyper Neogeo 64 only had 7.  Both their miniscule libraries were also difficult to port to home systems.  In fact, only one Hyper Neogeo 64 game has ever seen any re-release and it’s rare, so I won’t be able to play any of them.

 
Regardless of the quality of the games, the fact is that neither company got a lot of mileage out of their new hardware and they made safer bets continuing to make games for their existing hardware.  Which company came out looking the best as a result will now be put to the test.