Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 2002 & 2003

I’ve reached the inevitable problem I expected to run into when I started this series was this point in time.  During the 7^th console generation, SNK was able to recover from their bankruptcy and continue making arcade games for a while longer in addition to some home console-original games and home ports of their older games.  Capcom went even further ham on the console games and set themselves up as quite possibly the best game company there was until they took to meth and thought making Devil Kings was a good idea.

"Y'know that cool Japanese game about Japanese figures in Japan? What if they WEREN'T?"

This means that in the arcades, SNK was largely uncontested from Capcom for several years, although other companies like Namco were still around with Tekken and Soul Calibur.  SNK did go uncontested for the first few years of this series before Capcom games started getting into arcades, but I obviously didn’t count those years as SNK victories because Capcom wasn’t there to be victorious over.  Now that we’re at the point where both companies are still around it’s fair game, but it wouldn’t be fair if I were to give SNK points for default because it’s possible a game company can use those years to make something so incredible that it’s better than any game the company made before it.

Therefore, for the rest of this series, I’ll be judging each company by a stretch of time between Capcom’s years of arcade game releases.  That means 2002-2004, 2005-2008, 2009 & 2010, 2012-2014 and then it will finish off with 2016 all the way to 2019 with the release of the arcade version of Samurai Shodown 2019.  Though they’ll have far fewer games, if Capcom’s games manage to be amazing enough to blow everything from SNK out of the water, they can get the points.  By the end of this, only one company will be declared the King of Arcades!  Now we’ll get started with SNK’s games of 2002, where they were still getting help from Eolith and recovering from bankruptcy.

Metal Slug 4(SNK): As I stated before, Metal Slug X and 3 are the pinnacles of arcade shoot-em-ups and making another Metal Slug game to match them is an insurmountable task.  SNK (or rather, Playmore) wisely decided to go in a different direction and deliver a different Metal Slug experience.
 
Rather than taking inspiration from movies like Aliens and Independence Day, Metal Slug 4 goes back to the slightly more grounded setting of the first game, but still with some sci-fi elements, particularly in the final level.  It’s a more modernized plot against advancing technology, where the main conflict is a  dangerous computer virus made by a high-tech evil organization and some of the bosses are man-made robots.

The less wacky feel also means the rideable animal companions are out and in their place are some repurposed enemy vehicles you get to ride, but apart from that and a few new enemies, Metal Slug 4 is more of the same and checks all the boxes for a Metal Slug game: fun chase sequences, varied enemy types (mostly re-used), pretty visuals, good music, tight controls, big bosses and lots of gratifying explosions.  It’s a solid game.

The King of Fighters 2002(SNK): It’s wild how much can be improved in just one year.  What KOF 2001 did wrong KOF 2002 does right.  KOF 2002 is one of the most polished KOF games yet.  The gameplay goes back to before strikers were introduced and has a much better sense of weight and tightness closer to KOF 99 and 2000.  The presentation is on par with the best in the series, with some great character artwork, changing backgrounds filled with cameos from other SNK characters and a great soundtrack that still has some of that synthesized techno feel 2001 had, but with catchy and mood-setting medleys that work very nicely.

Being a dream match game, KOF 2002 has a unique character roster with some old favorites (with the curious exception of King) alongside a handful of characters introduced in the NESTS saga and once again there’s a very difficult final boss with a couple excellently animated cutscenes.  There’s no ending artwork like the previous dream match game, but it does have funny little skits over the credits.
 
The King of Fighters 2002 has the quality expected from a KOF game and any fan will tell you it’s worth playing.  I think 98 is the better game and since there’s no plot to this one I wouldn’t lose any sleep skipping on it, but it’s a worthy entry to the franchise.

Moving on to 2003, SNK officially were back in business as they merged the former SNK staffers with the company playmore to form SNK Playmore and yet with how consistently SNK has been putting out arcade games up to this point, you might not have ever noticed.

SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos(SNK)

The first thing SNK Playmore did was come right out the gate swinging at their sworn enemy with their own arcade crossover game!  Whether theirs outshines Capcom’s is another story.

There is a lot I love about SVC Chaos and a lot that holds it back.  I love that there are characters from both companies that are usually overshadowed in crossovers who get a chance for their fans to use here, mostly on the SNK side.  All the must-haves are present, like Terry, Kyo, Geese, Bison, Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li.  Those are practically corporately mandated, but instead of the usual Haohmaru and Nakoruru, it has Shiki from Samurai Shodown 64 (and SNK Gals Fighters later), Earthquake and Genjuro.  Instead of Rugal, it has Goenitz.  Instead of Morrigan it instead has Demitri, instead of Zangief it has Hugo straight out of the Street Fighter 3 games and on the opposite end of the size spectrum is Choi, of all characters.

Aside from maybe Dan, Demitri and Mars Person, everyone on the inner columns are unbalanced.

I love how the game looks.  Capcom characters look consistent with their original designs, but adjusted to work in the new SNK/KOF style and some, like the Mars Person from Metal Slug, have impressive animation and shading.  The artwork for characters and cutscenes are also the sharpest and most expressive I’ve seen from SNK yet, further raising the bar in the quality of their pixel art. 
I also love the story, or at least the dialogue.  The actual plot is not conveyed and the comic adaptation is so stupid that I don’t think it’s an adequate explanation.  The best you can gleam is that the fighters are in some kind of parallel world, or maybe timeline, where the world is destroyed and they need to fight each other to earn the favor of either Astaroth from Ghosts N’ Goblins down in the demon world or one of the gods from Puzzled up in heaven in order to go back to their world.

The dialogue is where the real fun is.  Before every fight, the fighters have a brief conversation and there is a unique dialogue exchange between every single combination of characters, including against themselves and excluding the two true final bosses, who aren’t supposed to be playable.  By my math that’s 1,293 different conversations and a lot of them are good stuff.  Given SNK’s history of shaky translations, you’d expect a lot of nonsense, but apart from some questionable choices of translated words (Zero saying “irregulars” instead of “Mavericks”), they read very well and SVC Chaos has the characters on both sides down pat.  Characters know each other from their respective series to varying degrees, but KOF characters don’t know anyone from Samurai Shodown, Street Fighters don’t know Demitri from Darkstalkers, KOF characters keep mistaking Dan for Robert and NOBODY has any idea what is up with the tentacled alien.  These interactions make the single player mode a real treat and that’s good because the actual gameplay is a little lackluster.

They had so much fun with these.

It takes some time getting used to SVC Chaos because it doesn’t play like Street Fighter or KOF.  It plays like SVC Chaos.  It’s not too hard to get a hold of how Street Fighter characters play with 4 buttons because it does a good job of assigning medium attacks as command normals.  It’s the framework of the game overall that’s the sticking point.  It’s very simplified, with only 2 different kinds of jumps, no rolling and no countering.  The biggest mobility tool given is a short dash forward, which you can do right after you block an attack to make a defensive advance on the opponent.

Perhaps to make this feature easier to do, the game is slow for a fighting game.  Attacks often have more windup and recovery time than you’d expect and the most basic combos you can do will usually only do 3 hits unless you get your meter to level 3 and temporarily go into Max Mode, where almost everything cancels into everything for some crazy combo shenanigans.
The lack of mobility tools and slower pace makes SVC Chaos feel more sluggish and less snappy and it doesn’t help that a lot of the super moves just don’t have the same kind of visual flair and impact as they do in their home series, almost as if the game is holding them back.

I don’t like how the single player mode does things either, even though the aforementioned dialogue makes up for it.  SVC Chaos has the same problem as Mark of the Wolves with how nearly impossible it is to get its endings.  Like Mark of the Wolves, SVC Chaos slaps you with an abrupt ending after a penultimate boss if you don’t meet a prerequisite, in this case being to win without losing a round before reaching said penultimate boss.  Not only do you need to fight another powerful opponent before that one, but the game as a whole is pretty difficult.  I swear the computer opponents sometimes cheat in a way I thought we abandoned with KOF 95 and losing a round is practically an inevitability.  This can be circumvented if you lose and continue, because continuing effectively strikes the previous result of that match, but I shouldn’t have to exploit the game just to get a proper ending!  Then, when you do reach one of the true final bosses, you only get one shot at them and can’t continue if you lose, though thankfully they aren’t nearly as hard as the bosses before them.  It’s frustrating and there is no shame on playing this one at the lowest difficulty.

I like both companies using pre-established characters tapping into their true power as bosses.

SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos is a mixed bag.  There’s a lot to love, but also a lot that puts a damper on its stronger points.  It’s less a serious game you’ll keep coming back to as a refined competitive experience and more a fun diversion.  At the very least it’s a one-of-a-kind crossover experience you won’t get anywhere else and that makes it worth a play.

 
Samurai Shodown 5(SNK): Wow.  7 years since the last Neogeo Samurai Shodown game.  Of course, continuing the story from where 2 or 64 left off would mean certain characters wouldn’t come back so Samurai Shodown 5 is a prequel to every Samurai Shodown game to come before it, hence the Japanese title: Samurai Shodown 0.  Before the demon villains of the older games rise to prominence, Samurai Shodown 5 takes place during the great Tenmei Famine, which the story explains is caused by an evil otherworldly presence causing misfortune and consequently violence across the land.  Believing the ruling Tokugawa to be unfit to lead the country in this crisis (historically they kinda were), the Nobunaga lookalike Gaoh rebels and challenges the Tokugawa, along with anyone else, to show him their mettle.
 
Samurai Shodown 5 drops the slash and bust choice, but keeps bust mode in for a few characters in a clever way.  In Samurai Shodown 64, character’s bust modes had noticeably different looks to them beyond a simple color change and 5 makes those bust modes into their own characters with an in-story connection to their regular slash mode counterparts.  Haohmaru has the demon doppelganger Rasetsumaru (reference to the Japanese name of bust mode), Nakoruru has her inner personality Rera and the elemental brothers Kazuki and Sogetsu from 4 have the elemental demons Enja and Suija.  By the end of the game the absence of the new characters in future games is explained.

I think I saw this in Samurai Jack.

The story is the best part of Samurai Shodown 5.  It has lots of cutscenes, dialogue exchanges and satisfying endings that show the origins of characters a little better.  It’s both a decent place to start for the franchise and a satisfactory addition for the longtime fans that know where characters end up.

Whoops.  I was typing about the Japanese version there.  What I meant to type was it’s a game where absolutely nothing happens, you fight characters, get a win screen and then immediately fight another character with no dialogue, no map screen transitions like previous games and no context.  At the end you fight a final boss with no explanation as to who he is and then you get slapped with the credits without any kind of ending or closure.

FAIL!

There’s half-assing and then there’s not even trying.  It’s not that the core of a fun fighting game isn’t there.  The combat now utilizes a multifunctional action button for maneuvering that creates a whole new world for spacing and movement, the graphics are pretty and Gaoh is a great final boss in the Japanese version, but in English the combat is all you get!  The English version of the game has everything but the absolute barest possible minimum content!  It plays like a beta test!  There isn’t even any content that could frame it as a dream match game!  Samurai Shodown 3 had more going for it than the English version of 5!  It’s the single most disgraceful English release of a game I’ve ever seen from either Capcom or SNK!  WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!  The English version of Samurai Shodown 5 is a complete and utter waste of time!

This is also one of the worst bosses in fighting game history.

Metal Slug 5(SNK): Metal Slug 4 was solid, but Metal Slug 5 is my third favorite next to X and 3.  This time much of the game is urban warfare, going up skyscrapers, driving down broken roads and blasting through subway tunnels.  The enemies are all new, if more visually than functionally, the soundtrack is heavy on the electric guitar, there are powerful new vehicles to ride and all the bosses are both fun to fight and visually impressive.  Metal Slug 5 is always mixing things up from beginning to end and once again there are some alternate pathways for replay value.

The final boss in particular, though it comes out of practically nowhere, is the biggest and best-looking one in the franchise and after its absence in Metal Slug 4, Metal Slug 5 brings back a rockin’ rendition of Final Attack.  A rendition so good it’s the one Nintendo went with for Super Smash Brothers Ultimate and KOF 15 went with for its selection of Metal Slug music.  Just like that music track, Metal Slug 5 rocks.

The King of Fighters 2003(SNK)

Leaving the mess of the NESTS plot behind and starting over with a new storyline, SNK also brought a new approach to KOF gameplay.  Taking a cue from Marvel vs. Capcom, KOF 2003 has free-switching tag team action with just one round.  This makes the game a lot faster, with no breaks in between changing characters and the moves themselves slightly sped up so the match can be over in less than 90 seconds.

It takes some getting used to.  Pokes are far more important in KOF 2003, there are no more blowback attacks (those might slow the game down) and now there are leader super attacks that only one person on the team can pull off, adding strategy on when to break them out.  It isn’t hard to get a grasp on for series veterans because 2003 doesn’t get as weightless or as combo-heavy as the likes of Capcom’s tag-team fighters.  It’s still a KOF game, just faster.

As much as I prefer how KOF games traditionally play, I like this new play style because this means matches flow without stopping and there were already impatient people who skip character intros and outros in the older games who don’t need to do that for this one.  It had to have been an impressive feat to even make it work on the Neogeo, which was 13 years old at this point.  In previous games, the round changes allowed the game to quickly load in the next fighter, something that CD-based ports often took much longer to do.  Now in KOF 2003 it’s instantly loading in 6 different characters and their movesets on the fly.  I haven't dissected a Neogeo or anything, but that’s got to be some kind of achievement, right?

The music is a mixed bag, but the detailed and sharp character and cutscene artwork from SVC Chaos returns and this time getting the true final boss and proper ending is a simple matter, though both final bosses you can fight are ridiculously tough.  KOF 2003 is a worthy entry in the series and it starts off my favorite storyline, making it even more worth playing.

This is the best art since KOF 99.

SNK got two years without any interference from Capcom, but in the next post Capcom will strike back!  2004 is Capcom's big chance to show up all of SNK's arcade games of 2002 and 2003 with a big, epic one and secure their place as the king of arcades!

And this is my 200th post!  Woo!