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.

Real Bout Fatal Fury Special(SNK): After the re-using of character sprites and limited stages of Real Bout Fatal Fury, Real Bout Fatal Fury Special raises the bar with a presentation overhaul.  Every character now looks better and more expressive than ever and the beautiful stages one comes to expect from SNK are much more plentiful, though most characters do share a stage.
 
It plays smoother, but the combat isn’t all that different from the previous Fatal Fury.  It can’t be understated how much the presentation adds to it, with the improved animations on characters adding more punch and weight to every hit.
 

You can see the flames billowing her clothes and hair up.

There’s no plot, but there’s such character.  All 19 fighters get big near full body pixel art renders, special victory lines against certain opponents and admittedly underwhelming endings of the character renders talking to each other, but those are still fun as brief little skits.  The English-speaking announcer brings further energy with enthusiasm that toes the line between legitimately being excited and intentionally being cheesy.  SNK made another slam dunk fighting game with this one.
 
Street Fighter 3(CAP): Apparently when this game came out, people hated it.  I don’t exactly hate it myself, but boy can I see why they did and no it’s not because of all the new characters, at least not directly.  It’s just that the only thing that wasn’t a downgrade from Street Fighter Alpha 2 was the graphics.
 
The characters are all animated beautifully and have several frames for their attacks, flinching and win poses.  Each one also has impressive looking full-body art for results screens in addition to their character select portraits.  Capcom regular Kinu Nishimura did a great job.  Backgrounds are a mixed bag, but most of them have a nice matte-painting look with fun details to look at, even if they aren’t exactly exploding with energy like previous games.  Capcom wanted to show off the power of their new CPS3 and by god they did it.  The game, on the other hand…

For starters, it’s my understanding that the plot of this game was left vague and unspecified in English.  We know that the game is about the Illuminati preparing for a prophesized apocalypse NOW, but at the time Capcom didn’t give players anything.  Even the manual for the console port of its updated version doesn’t tell you anything about the main villains and it’s not helped by the game itself lacking in any meaningful story.  There are no rival conversations like the Alpha games, endings are mostly short and plot-irrelevant and there are only 2 returning characters you could attach to based on their stories in previous games.  I know I just got done praising Real Bout Fatal Fury Special, which also is lacking in a plot, but that game had a big show built around what it did have, like a celebration of the franchise, while Street Fighter 3 is structured like a standard Street Fighter game with no added flavor.
 
Even if the plot was there, I would at least recommend this game if the gameplay were good, but calling the gameplay “good” is an overstatement.  Calling it “bad” is also an overstatement.  It doesn’t necessarily play poorly, but it feels loose.  Attacks have more windup this time, but they don’t have the right kind of impact to justify the startup times and there isn’t a feeling of snappiness that a fighting game should have.  There’s slowness, but there’s no weight.
 
Hit detection also doesn’t feel refined.  Several times there were attacks that looked like they should’ve hit or missed, but didn’t, or it felt like someone got hit a split second after the attack connected.  It’s never bad enough to make the game a mess like the first 2 KOF games, but it’s not as well-made as many other fighting games before it and it’s hard to get invested when there’s a consistent feeling of something being off.
 
It works as a fighting game and it can have its hype moments, but Street Fighter 3 is mostly… Meh.  I don’t think Capcom was aiming for “meh” with this one, to say the least.
 
Battle Circuit(CAP): Once again Capcom makes a beat-em-up masterpiece and this one is one of their best.  In an exaggerated cartoon-style action setting of super heroes and super villains, 4 players go on a quest to stop powerful technology from being used by the wrong hands.  Each hero has their own large move set that can be added to as the game progresses, making Battle Circuit a less button-mashing affair and putting it more in line with the D&D games by way of Megaman 7 upgrading.
 
There’s always something new being thrown at the players, with some wacky boss designs and a campy plot facilitating it all.  The only Capcom beat-em-up that tops it is Alien vs. Predator and that has to do with the sense of story progression.  As fun and well-designed as each stage in Battle Circuit is, this is another game where many of them are thrown in with only the flimsiest of excuses as to why you’re there, as opposed to the natural progression of Alien vs. Predator or even Robo Army, if I’m being honest.  That’s a little negligible for an arcade beat-em-up though.  The game at the heart of Battle Circuit is well worth playing and it’s a shame it would be the last one of its kind that Capcom would make.
 
Vampire Savior(CAP)

Darkstalkers finally got a true sequel with a new plot, setting, characters and a few changes to character movesets, but apart from that and a couple new combat features, Vampire Savior is mostly more of the same with the fast-paced chain combo gameplay largely untouched.

 
The new characters are great additions (I especially like B.B. Hood) and all the returning characters progress their stories from their previous endings, making playing Darkstalkers 2 and this feel like one complete whole.  Play them both.  They’re great.
 
The King of Fighters 97(SNK)

KOF 96 took most of the jank out of The King of Fighters, but 97 eliminated the last remnants of it.  The controls are tight, every character now has command normals for even more depth, a new super stock system allows the game to move at an even quicker pace now that charging meter is only an option and there are more super attacks to use that built-up meter with.
 
The tight combat gels well with the new computer opponents, which have taken a few lessons in taking advantage of openings.  KOF 97 is a good tool for teaching the player about the concept of “safe” moves and the importance of using quick attacks to poke the opponent because if you leave yourself open the computer will take full advantage of that, but they’ll almost never do anything a human player can’t in that regard.  Once you have that down it’s a satisfying challenge that’s not too difficult and you feel like a better player for it.

KOF 97 further progresses the story to keep players invested.  The cutscenes before the 3 boss battles do a good job at presenting the plot and concluding the storyline 2 games in the making.  Using a certain team piles on the story even thicker with even longer cutscenes and there are even some joke endings to get.  KOF 97 might be the ultimate example of how far ahead SNK was of Capcom in their storytelling.

There’s only one flaw in this game and that’s the music.  Or rather, the lack of music.  Only a few characters, the bosses and the team of new original characters get music and 4 of the tracks are taken wholesale from Real Bout Fatal Fury Special.  The songs that are there are absolute bangers, of course.

The problem is that with the exception of the new CYS team and bosses, the music only plays as long as its character is fighting, meaning you’ll only get to hear about 60 seconds of it or so unless they’re really kicking your ass.  The rest is ambient noises of the country you’re in.  It’s a neat idea presenting The King of Fighters as a televised martial arts tournament where the fighters are given silence, like real martial arts tournaments, but I’d rather have my tunes.

Questionable audio choices aside, KOF 97 is quite possibly the best fighting game thus far, taking an already great game and improving on everything about it.  The King of Fighters 97 is the game of the year.  If I were playing this in 1997 I would be getting hyped up every time The King of Fighters got a new game by this point because it had firmly established itself as a quality franchise after 2 awesome games.
 
Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix(CAP): With its cute graphics, 3 attack buttons, limited special attacks and throwable items, you would think Super Gem Fighter would be an easy game for beginners, but all the important mechanics of 2D fighting games like motion inputs, grabbing and spacing are still present.  What this game does is take those mechanics and goes crazy with the actual game.
 
It’s already pretty nuts when you can power up your special attacks to the point of projectiles being as big as your character, but the real zaniness comes from the presentation.  Characters briefly change into various costumes when they execute the new combo chain system and Capcom references are all over the game.  Chun-Li turns into Jill Valentine, Felicia turns into Megaman and when characters die they can turn into a pile of bones like Arthur in Ghosts n’ Goblins or explode into light like Megaman with the accompanying sound effect.  This game goes for silly Capcom fun and if you’ve been playing a lot of Capcom’s games up to this point, there’s a lot to catch.
 
Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix is the best-looking game of 1997 and I mean that sincerely, even in the face of Street Fighter 3 and KOF 97.  The fun costume-changing and big-headed expressive characters already radiate energy and personality, but the backgrounds are even better.  All your Street Fighter, Darkstalkers and Red Earth friends that aren’t playable are doing something in the background.

There’s no space in them that doesn’t have a Capcom detail to notice and there’s always something fun to look at, which I think gives the game some replay value.  It already has a funny comedy skit of a story for each character to keep players coming back, but every time I play I notice something new in the backgrounds I didn’t before or, since the last time I played it, I might have played more Capcom games and now notice something Capcom-related I wasn’t aware of before.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say Super Gem Fighters has the game feel and top-quality fighting game polish to match up with any of the series the characters hail from, but it’s fun and there was clearly a lot of heart put into it.

Street Fighter 3: Second Impact(CAP): It hadn’t even been a year since the first version of Street Fighter 3 and already they made a new one.  You’d be forgiven for thinking that means it’s just the same game with some new characters, but it’s much more substantial than that.  4 new characters (if we count Yun now being separate) does help with the content, especially when 2 of them are returning from previous Street Fighter and Final Fight games for some more familiarity.  It also helps that there are some much nicer-looking stages that are closer in detail to what Street Fighter 2 had.  However, the big changer is the gameplay.

The underwhelming feel of the original game has been fine tuned to make for much more enjoyable and well-made combat.  The addition of EX moves means there’s even more options in each character’s tools and the countering mechanic puts a major risk/reward on reading your opponent.  Countering was technically in the original, but it didn’t work half the time and even when it did it barely did anything other than nullify damage if you were that scared of chip damage so it wasn’t even worth mentioning.  Now countering can leave your opponent open for a counterattack and mastering it can completely change the game.  There’s nothing quite like knowing how your opponent is going to play and approaching them while invalidating everything they throw at you using a technique that requires precise timing.

Second Impact invalidates the original Street Fighter 3 with how objectively better it is.  Since it has the same endings, you aren’t missing anything by skipping the original beyond a few stages.  That said, much of my criticisms of the original outside of the gameplay still apply.  Dialogue for rival fights was added, but it’s only one phrase the characters direct at each other next to the character portraits, a far cry from the exchanges of the Alpha games.  The plot was still vague at the time, the endings are still mostly underwhelming and in either version of Street Fighter 3, the music is pretty forgettable.  It has graduated from being a “meh” fighting game to a pretty good one, but it’s still not up to par with the best of them.

I like the new stages.

Shock Troopers(SNK): SNK goes a bit old school by bringing back the top-down shooter.  Now that the rotating stick is out, Shock Trooper allows strafing by holding down the fire button to lock the direction you’re facing.  It works remarkably well since the game is designed around it by going at a pace comparable to the original Ikari Warriors so you aren’t frantically facing the wrong way in the heat of the moment.  Just like Ikari Warriors you’re running and gunning while dodging a hail of enemy gunfire except now you have a dodge roll for a burst of speed and invincibility so the slower walking speed doesn’t make you feel like your character is crippled.

Shock Troopers is another showcase for the Neogeo’s high capacity memory.  The graphics aren’t on the level of Metal Slug, but they ARE on the level of Capcom’s shoot-em-up offerings like 19XX.  It makes use of pre-rendered sprites to great effect for the environments and gunning down enemies by the dozens while setting off explosions is as gratifying as any game of this type should be.

Shock Troopers flexes how much Neogeo cartridges can hold with the amount of content.  There isn’t a lot of variety in the human enemies (these terrorists have a very strict dress code), but the different armored vehicles backing them up add a lot of spice and also make use of pre-rendered graphics to make them look especially slick.  There are a whopping 8 playable characters, each one has their own walking speed and unique thrown explosive and both players have the option to play with 3 of them to cycle through on the fly at the cost of less health.  There are also 3 different sets of levels to choose from before the final stage, practically making the game a triple feature, and to top it off there’s a story told through nicely-drawn cutscenes, including a few extra scenes if you use one particular character.

It’s a crying shame I don’t see Shock Troopers get referenced in future SNK games because it deserves recognition.  It’s the best top-down shooter either company has made up to this point and anyone with even a passing interest in the genre is doing themselves a disservice if they don’t play it.  It must’ve been a great game to hold people over with the absence of a Metal Slug sequel this year.

Capcom Sports Club(CAP): Capcom must’ve seen how much SNK was dominating the sports game scene in arcades and decided to take their own crack at it.  After Neo Turf Masters, Baseball Stars 2 and a number of soccer games, I imagine SNK responded to the very idea in the following way:

They would not be wrong to do so because this game is as mediocre as it gets and you’d swear it was made in 1994 by some company nobody has ever heard of.  Each of the 3 games in this package are dirt simple to the point of being boring and maybe they knew the gameplay doesn’t keep your attention for long because matches are made to be extremely quick (though you can adjust that in the settings).

There are barely any stages, no major flair to the presentation and once you beat a few palette-swapped characters with your own palette swapped characters you get a little recycled animation and that’s pretty much it.  Nothing about this game brings the hype like a sports game should.  Capcom Sports Club has nothing to offer and as a result there isn’t even much to say about it.  It feels like it was made and thrown out the door for the sake of meeting some kind of quota.

The Last Blade(SNK): This is going to sound crazy, but this game almost feels like it was designed to be better than Street Fighter 3.  It has almost the same number of characters as Second Impact and like that game, each one has several frames of smooth animation with noticeable details on cooldown and recoil, even if it doesn’t have as many frames as SF3 does.  Also like Street Fighter 3, there’s a parry system, except in this game it’s on a dedicated button and is far easier to use while still being a major risk if you can’t read your opponent right.  Parrying and the animations complimenting the game flow were the two most distinguishing features of Street Fighter 3 (or at least Second Impact), so once The Last Blade matched those features, all it had to do to be the better game is do everything else better, which it does.
 
Last Blade has one of the more involved stories, taking place in a world led by the 4 Chinese guardians reincarnated into humans, in which the reincarnation of Suzaku is attempting to open a portal to the demon world.

Before every fight there’s a dedicated animation depicting the ambience of the stage and the cutscenes are some of the best yet.  Close-ups and detailed artwork gives it all a spectacle even better than KOF 97 and that carries over to the endings, which are noticeably more substantial in their storytelling than Street Fighter 3, if not quite as much as KOF 97.  Character-specific winquotes give adds to the world building and relationships as well.

The gameplay sets itself apart by practically having two playstyles in one.  You can choose power mode, where combos are near-nonexistent, but you do more damage and can use a big super power move, or you can use speed mode, where you do less damage, but attacks cancel into each other easily, allowing you to rack up big combos and you also get the hyper wombo combo rush mode from Street Fighter Alpha 2.  In other words, you can be playing Samurai Shodown or you can be playing Killer Instinct and that means this game has both the hype for landing a big combo and the hype for landing that one decisive blow.

With Samurai Shodown’s new game stuck on the Hyper Neogeo 64, SNK went with something different for their Neogeo weapon-based historical Japan fighting game and it paid off.  The Last Blade does everything right and it’s the second best fighting game of the year next to KOF 97.  What a great game to send off 1997 with.

The Winner

Capcom didn’t have a bad showing this year.  Battle Circuit is among one of their best beat-em-ups, Street Fighter 3: Second Impact was pretty good, Super Gem Fighter: Mini Mix charmed the pants off me and Vampire Savior was their best fighting game this year.  It’s just that SNK had quite possibly their best year yet.
 
KOF 97, The Last Blade and Shock Troopers are all master classes in their respective genres and Real Bout Fatal Fury Special was a great time too.  The only games from Capcom I could call a master class this year are Battle Circuit and Vampire Savior.  The rest of the games from Capcom ranged from mediocre to slightly above good, making SNK’s lineup edge them out as the victor.  Capcom’s fancy new hardware wasn’t enough to put them ahead this year.