Like I said in the first King of Arcades competition, 3D
gaming was in full swing in the latter half of the 1990s thanks to the
Playstation and Nintendo 64’s polygon rendering abilities. As evidenced by last time, Namco was already
on that by this point, but for Midway, though they did dabble in 3D polygons in
the past, the usual pre-rendered visuals were their reliable aesthetic, though
even that started to change.
Both Namco and Midway were taking advantage of the new capabilities
offered by Sony and Nintendo’s consoles in the homes. I credited The King of Fighters 98 as being
the first “Dream Match” game, because it’s where that moniker came from, but arguably
Midway had already done the concept with Mortal Kombat Trilogy, a
console-exclusive game that took everyone from previous games in the franchise and
put them all in one PS1 disc or N64 cartridge.
Not only did Midway have Mortal Kombat Trilogy to maintain
Mortal Kombt mania, but they also released the sequel to their hit 1995 Mortal
Kombat movie. People didn’t like it. Personally I think it's a hoot.
Namco was also chugging along in the console space with PS1
ports of their arcade games, most notably Tekken and their new Namco Museum
compilations.
Since home consoles were catching up to the technical
capabilities of arcade games, they started taking the attention and arcade game
development started slowing down, resulting in this competition having fewer
games in both competitor’s arsenals and thus another double year round. I might’ve skipped 1996 altogether, but I was
able to find one game from that year and it’s a pretty important one.
