Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 2000

At last we reach the turn of the millennium.  The big triple-0.  Home console gamers that survived the Y2K virus were eating good.  The Dreamcast had a solid library built up with Resident Evil: Code Veronica now added, the Nintendo 64 got Banjo-Tooie, a bigger and better sequel and all the Pokemon fans like me were playing Gold and Silver while they went to the theater to watch Pokemon the Movie 2000.

In arcades, things could’ve been better.  Third Strike was Capcom’s last game on their short-lived CPS3 board and at the time it didn’t get the kind of recognition it gets today.  Capcom put a higher focus on console games, like the aforementioned Resident Evil: Code Veronica, meaning arcade game production greatly slowed down and they largely switched development from their own arcade systems to Sega’s NAOMI arcade board, which made porting games to the Dreamcast easier, though it looks like they had just one or two more games on their old reliable CPS2 system in the pipeline to put out.

One of these games happened to be another game in which oursettle their differences: Capcom vs. SNK.  This time it was actually in arcades and developed by Capcom instead of SNK, but as much as I would like to include it, I don’t have any version of it nor does any arcade have it.  My local theater used to have it many years ago and I remember thinking it was awesome, but that’s too far back for a proper analysis.  I’ll make up for that with the sequel.

SNK wasn’t doing so hot thanks to the abject failure of the Hyper Neogeo 64 and various instances of overspending.  This resulted in them being bought out by a fairly vile company that wanted nothing more than to shut the company down and use their properties for pachinko games until SNK would officially go bankrupt the following year.

They weren’t out completely just yet though!  Before the original SNK could go under, they had a few games already in development they finished up and released.  That means we only have 2 games from SNK this year versus Capcom’s 3.  That these companies used to make 6-8 games a year previously shows how down bad arcade gaming was at this point, but that doesn’t mean the games themselves are bad.  Capcom and SNK were still going at it and now we will determine who was the best arcade company of the year 2000.

Power Stone 2(CAP): The first Power Stone felt like a proof of concept.  Power Stone 2 sees the potential of that concept fully realized and then some.  It takes the party game-like gameplay and turns it into a real party with 4 players playing at once!

To accommodate a higher player count, Power Stone 2 is a lot bigger.  4 new characters expand the character roster, there are now 7 power stones to go around (though you still need only 3), there are new items and there are even 2 boss stages against enormous towering opponents for players to fight.

The stages got a complete and total overhaul.  No longer are stages single rooms with some objects scattered about.  Power Stone 2’s stages are multi-layered adventures that see players escaping from an inferno, jumping between submarines and scaling falling elevators, fighting each other all along the way until two players are left standing to move on.  There are stage hazards to directly interact with instead of a bunch of crates and the ones you can’t directly control you can use to your situational advantage.  Stages like Power Stone 2’s are a lot like the kinds that Playstation All Stars: Battle Royale would have years later.

Thankfully the combat received some much-needed tune-ups as well.  There is no longer a kick button, which is no big loss because the first one didn’t need it and it means NO MORE DIVEKICKING!  Throws are now a universal one of holding the target above a player character’s head to throw them where the player wants them to go.  With 4 players to consider, super forms are not treated as much like the invincible rage of the gods mode they were in the first game.  There’s no longer a close-up when a player powers up, the music doesn’t change and players in super form can now be hurt and flinch rather than have their time limit lowered when taking damage.  This is good because it means a player in super form can’t plow their way through the other players that might not have the space or opportunity to dodge like in the first game due to the chaos of 4 players.

Some of Power Stone 2’s strongest elements came with trade-offs, however.  Likely because of how much more effort was put into the new ones, there are fewer stages than the first game.  Instead of being a globe-trotting adventure, Power Stone 2 takes place in a mysterious floating castle where space is warped and there are portals to different areas of the world inside, kind of like Gruntilda’s Lair or Castlevania.  This means characters don’t have their own stages anymore, which takes some of the personality out, as does the lack of endings.  Because the game can be finished with any combination of 1 to 4 characters, the ending is always the same.  The final boss gets some fully voiced lines in Japanese, but you get almost nothing for story outside of the initial premise.

It's an impressively large 3D model for 2000.

The gameplay is what you come for with this one. It’s easy to get the hang of and the crazy situational adaptability the game expects and higher character count keeps it from getting stale.  It’s the perfect game to have in an arcade and I imagine the later Dreamcast port got as much play as Super Smash Brothers did on the Nintendo 64.
 
Metal Slug 3(SNK): I said before that if you’re going to play one Metal Slug game, it should be Metal Slug X.  That wasn’t because it’s the best Metal Slug game, but because it’s a good jumping-on point and a self-contained story that goes into some wild directions toward the end.  Metal Slug 3 is the big grand finale that follows up on those wild elements as players fight zombies, mutant crustaceans, man-eating plants and yetis using newly armed animals as well as new vehicles and weapons.

Everything that made Metal Slug X so good is taken further in Metal Slug 3.  The bosses are all bigger and better than ever, there are now branching paths that lead to completely different levels and it all ends in one of the grandest finales you’ll ever see in a shoot ‘em up, all the while conveying a story purely through visuals and no dialogue with chase scenes and unexpected developments I dare not spoil for anyone who hasn’t played it.  The final mission is literally half of the game and mixes the level design and gameplay up the entire way, never being anything less than exhilarating.

"I am retreating to the one place uncorrupted by capitalism!"

If the Metal Slug franchise ended with Metal Slug 3, I would be fine with that because frankly, it’s a really hard act to follow.  Metal Slug 3 is the 2000 game of the year and if it’s not the best arcade shoot-em-up ever made, it’s in the top 5.

1944: The Loop Master(CAP): Another war shooter.  You shoot at incoming ships and then you have to destroy a massive war machine boss under a time limit.  There are no surprises.  The titular looping just means the plane is invincible when it does its standard screen bomb attack and charged attack.  It’s by-the-numbers, just like most of these Capcom war shooters.  I can feel my neck hurting from the whiplash playing this after Metal Slug 3.

The King of Fighters 2000(SNK): Compared to The King of Fighters 99, this one has its ups and downs.  The ups are more characters, stronger super moves that can be used with a maxed-out super gauge, a practical use for taunts, the ability to summon strikers while attacking and of course the strikers themselves.

The big selling point for this game is that every single character in this big roster has an alternate character you can choose to replace them as a striker, with some characters even getting two of them.  These alternate strikers include everyone from past KOF games, unused character designs, former SNK mascots, previously-established NPCs like Lily Kane and lots of SNK characters from other games, including Metal Slug, The Last Blade, Kizuna Encounter and Buriki One.  Seeing all the things these characters can do as strikers gives 2000 replay value and a distinguishes it from other fighters.  A lot of effort had to have gone into making all those new sprites for them.

The downs are that the soundtrack isn’t as consistently stellar as 99, stages aren’t as striking and something about the story presentation in this one doesn’t hit as hard to me.  Also, while it’s pretty cool this game lets you fight the Pringles guy Freddy Mercury Shura General Han, he’s probably the least interesting final boss in the franchise.

The pros outweigh the cons for another excellent fighting game that shouldn’t be missed, even if I think 99 is just a smidgen better.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2(CAP): Easily one of the most revered games in fighting game history.  I have a lot of fond memories playing this game at Gameworks and gawking at the ludicrous prices scalping losers tried to sell the console ports for when I was young.  On the surface level this is the best of the best.  56 characters officially beats out KOF 98 for the title of largest character selection ever, bringing back almost everyone from the previous Marvel and Capcom collaboration fighters with a few welcome newcomers, including original characters.  I criticized the first Marvel vs. Capcom for barely having enough characters to fill an arcade mode with teams of two and now there’s more than enough for one with teams of 3.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 takes full advantage of the NAOMI arcade system and has striking animated 3D stages behind the 2D characters, the contrast of which surprisingly doesn’t make the character sprites look like cardboard cutouts fighting each other.  None of them are based on anything from either company this time, but they’re pretty to look at and are accompanied by smooth jazz music like you would hear in a casino.  Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has the best soundtrack of the year.

Some people think it's out of place, but I think the smoother music fits in well for the gameplay because it’s weightless and flighty.  All characters can super jump on a whim and players are encouraged to do long combos over landing powerful hits.  A heavy punch in this game on its own is nothing.

I wish I could say this made for one of the greatest fighting games ever made, but unlike some of the other lauded games I’ve gone over, this one is overrated as all hell and has some serious problems.  There are 56 characters, but character balance is fucked.  There are several characters that seem practically worthless with low-damage attacks and questionable hitboxes while others are objectively better with no downside to using them, not to mention all the infinites tier whores obsess over.

The game encourages long combos, but the problem is you seem to need to know some kind of meta to use your character’s specific attacks alongside your partner’s attacks to do anything beyond a 4 hit chain combo and every character has a different command for launching an opponent in the air for an air combo, which you need super speed to follow-up on even at the slowest game speed.  It is the most newcomer-unfriendly game I’ve played yet, which wasn’t the case with the first Marvel vs. Capcom.  If you just want to play around in MVC2 the game will kick your ass as punishment for not using an objectively better character.  The expectation of the long combos also means everyone has way too much health, which both reduces the gratifying impact of super moves and makes fights drag on.  Very rarely do I get a KO victory in this game.  The timer always runs out.

There isn’t even story or personality to latch onto here.  The story is that the new character, sky pirate Ruby Heart, is trying to defeat a great calamity called Abyss and that’s all we get.  Abyss is a great final boss, but there’s only one ending, understandably.  Every character has their own character portrait by veteran Capcom artist Bengus, who must’ve worked overtime for 56 characters, but there are no win quotes or flavor beyond what’s shown in the actual fighting, making it even harder to get into what’s on the screen.

The full body art is great, but they aren't expressive like in MVC1.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is at its absolute best when playing with friends.  With this many characters, colorful stages and energetic music, this is exactly the game I remember playing with other people at the arcade.  Playing it years later and after having played dozens of fighting games that have come before it, I see it’s not a timeless cornerstone of fighting games like people make it out to be.

The Winner

There weren’t as many games to take into consideration this time, but it was still tricky to rank the games with the exception of the unremarkable 1944.  As much as I went on about its problems, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is the best fighting game of the year, beating KOF 2000, which itself has more content and mechanics than Power Stone 2.  The decisive game for declaring the winner is Metal Slug 3.  It stands above every shooter game that came before it and it’s such a complete and content-rich package that it’s a better experience to play than anything else for the year.  Had Power Stone 2 come with a more stages and maybe a little more story, Capcom might’ve barely edged it out by having the second and third best arcade games of the year to make up for SNK having THE best.  Capcom didn't quite meet that height, so SNK is the winner of 2000.

Admittedly, if I am ever able to play the first Capcom vs. SNK, this decision might be overturned.  Trust me, you’re going to have to get used to a lack of games moving forward.