Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 2008

SNK had an overall good few years for the arcades while on handhelds and consoles it was more of a mixed bag and very few of what they were putting out, like the Days of Memories visual novel games, were coming out in English.  What's more, after Capcom's complete and total absence in arcades for a good while, they at last came back to challenge SNK this year in 2008.  Will their new arcade games be enough to make up for all the strides SNK had already been making while they were gone?  Let's find out.

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 2005 & 2006

2004 was the end of an era for arcades.  The Neogeo had an astonishing 14 year run, a true testament to its power, but after Samurai Shodown 5 Special, SNK decided that it was time to move forward in their arcade technology so they started using Sammy/Sega’s Atomiswave, an awesome system that allowed for an excellent fusion of 2D and 3D visuals, not unlike the NAOMI system.  Outside of the games SNK would make for it, it had games like Dolphin Blue, Arc System Works’ Fist of the North Star game and DIMP’s The Rumble Fish.  All in all it was a great home for SNK to make bigger and better arcade games.

What did Capcom have?

Capcom was doing very well for themselves on home consoles and came out with some of the greatest games of all time, like the Viewtiful Joe franchise, Resident Evil 4 and Haunting Ground.  The arcades didn’t get any of the action from them during this time, partially for reasons I’ve already explained regarding home console hardware catching up and partially because as much success as Capcom saw, this was also an era of Capcom idiocy.

“People didn’t like our half-assed asset recycle bin fighting game?!  Clearly the people don’t want arcade games!”
“People didn’t like our already mediocre game about Japanese warlords?!  But we edited the entire setting with no context to replace it, made the music worse, changed the gameplay and even cut content!  Clearly those stupid Americans don’t want it!  What they want is Beatdown: Fists of Vengeance!”
“Hey, Hideaki Istuno!  I have some stuff here left over from the guy who bailed!  Make a sequel to Devil May Cry in a few months, will you?”

SNK didn’t release anywhere close to as many games as Capcom did, but since games on the Atomiswave were able to be ported to the PS2 and Xbox very easily (not sure why not the Gamecube), this means they could cover both fields..  With the increased memory capacity of PS2 discs, SNK was also able to dip into their arcade game library and make compilations like the Fatal Fury Battle Archives and Art of Fighting Anthology.

Finally and most notably, SNK made the King of Fighters: Maximum Impact games, console-exclusive 3D KOF games with their own continuities that for once actually got proper advertising and merchandise in English.  Ads for Maximum Impact appeared in magazines, there were TV commercials, the Hong Kong comic was released in English (as was KOF 2003’s) and Maximum Impact 2/The King of Fighters 2006 got its own sets of trading cards for the Universal Fighting System card game alongside Samurai Shodown 5.

Capcom would eventually make a big comeback to arcades with one game in particular, but that wouldn’t come out until 2008, so until then we got 4 different games on the Atomiswave for SNK to build their portfolio with for this stretch of time before Capcom entered the picture again to challenge SNK’s arcade dominance.

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 2004

Capcom laid low in the arcade scene in 2002 and 2003, but in 2004 they came out with two new titles for the arcades.  This is Capcom's chance to beat the likes of KOF 2002 and Metal Slug 5 for the next point.  This is also the year with what you might call a closure of a generation.  This year had the truly very last game ever made for the Capcom CPS2 and the last game released for the Neogeo.  After this year, both companies would move on to new arcade hardware for future games.  I'll have officially played everything in both Capcom Arcade Stadiums and my entire (digital) library of Neogeo games.  It has been a hell of a ride, but even with all of those exhausted for the sake of this series, I'll still have a ways to go because my access to the games from these companies don't end there.  This era of arcade gaming will now have its send-off as I judge which company was the best for the years 2002 to 2004.

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.  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.

SNK vs. Capcom: The King of Arcades: Introduction (1979-1984)

In a truly massive sale from the Humble Bundle, I recently acquired a wealth of classic Capcom arcade titles and before that I had already amassed a wealth of classic SNK arcade titles.  To add to that, I have access to a wealth of various classic arcade titles through a chain of arcades all within driving distance and I have coupons for them to boot.  With such a massive collection at my fingertips, I thought I’d do something fun.

I didn’t get to go to a lot of arcades back in the 90s and when I did, I was such a small kid that I could barely reach the controls.  Even when I could, I couldn’t really appreciate what was going on.  Now that I’m older and more experienced, I’m going back in time to the days of Capcom and SNK’s rivalry.  The days before Sengoku Basara 4 or Mohammed Bin Salman; the simpler times.  Both companies were innovating and making games of all types and genres, but now that I can assess the majority of their catalogues, I can answer the question of which company I would’ve considered the best of their day.

For this series of posts, I’ll be playing through both SNK and Capcom’s arcade games by order of release, year by year, and judge which company made the best games.  For each game I’ll be giving some of my thoughts.  Some brief, but some a little more in-depth as there are a few I have a bit of a history with to tell.  With over 100 of these games to play in total, I won’t be going in-depth on every single one and each one will be judged by how much fun I have, regardless of the time period.

NeogeoNow's King of Fighters: The Story So Far: Comments and Additions

In preparation for The King of Fighters XV, Youtube user NeogeoNow collaborated with SNK to create a trilogy of videos recapping the story of the games in the mainline KOF series, presumably to give possible newer players some background and older players a refresher.

The videos get the job done and the guy has played KOF even longer than I have so he knows what he’s talking about.  That said, it’s clear that he was trying to be concise.  Obviously he wasn’t going to go through every little plot thread, but even focusing on the important stuff he really sped through the story of those 10 games.  As a result, I think there are points in the videos in which casual viewers not in the know might do a double take and/or there is some context that’s skipped over I feel is necessary to understand the story better.  I also have a little criticism about the videos and some insights of my own, including a few parts in which I don’t want to claim the guy with decades of KOF experience working with the company itself is wrong, but it seems at odds with the official material.

I will go over NeogeoNow’s plot recap of each game from his videos in order.  I won’t be going over every little thing, because they’re largely fine and the majority of my reaction is nodding my head saying “yep.”  It’s not exactly bad enough to clown on.  There are other videos for that.

When I reach a particular part in which I have something to say, the quotation will be highlighted in bold followed by my comment.  Occasionally, such as for the first one, I will comment on certain parts wholesale instead of on a single line.  I hope this will at least partially act as a little supplementary piece to his videos for more comprehension into the KOF story because I too love it and want people to enjoy it.

The Wonderful World of King of Fighters Ports

The King of Fighters is my all-time favorite fighting game franchise hands down, but I’ve never been what some would call a purist. Some fans spend a fortune trying to get original Neogeo hardware to play games on, but I have always played pretty much anything but the original hardware unless I come across it at an arcade.  KOF 11 has a great PS2 port and 13 and 14 have solid multiplatform releases, as KOF 11 is when SNK really started upping their game in bonus content for home versions.  The games before 11, however, have been all over the place over the years, with many different ports that can give a player a noticeably different experience and range of content despite the core games remaining, be it in presentation or bonus features.

I very much want people to play all the KOF games that don’t make you want to ram a nail through your skull (i.e. not KOF 94 & 95) and there are so many different ways to get them now that it can be tricky to know which ones gives you your money’s worth and is the best way to play them.  For the sake of helping with such decisions, and for an interesting little look at the differences, I have written this little guide on a few of the different ports available for the KOF games before KOF 11.

Neogeo Arcade Stick Pro Review

Plug-and-play consoles are a great idea on paper: a quick, portable means of playing games right out of the box with almost no other accessories or game cartridges required.  Unfortunately, be it due to the limited technology of their time or just plain laziness, a lot of plug and play consoles aren’t that great.  Over the years the most common ones I’ve seen are the basic Atari and retro arcade games like Pac Man with the occasional Double Dragon or original Mortal Kombat.

The NES and SNES Classic systems caused a bit of a resurgence in retro plug-and-play consoles. After how much demand they got, I started seeing more of the retro Sega Genesis and Atari plug-and-play consoles as well as the PS1 Classic on store shelves.

The Super Nintendo Classic was the only one to catch my interest, but it wasn’t enticing enough to join the rabid fans in hunting one of them down, especially when I already had, or could easily get, the games on it off the WiiU eShop or other ports.  You’d have to put KOF on your retro game system to get me to want it.

Wuzzat.

Samurai Shodown Neogeo Collection Review

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love game compilations. They’re a bargain, convenient and sometimes have extras for added value.  There are a lot of great game compilations I can recommend starting around the time of the Gamecube, but in recent years game developer Digital Eclipse has been rising to prominence in this particular subgenre.

A not-inaccurate way to describe Digital Eclipse compilations is that they are the Criterion Collection’s game counterparts. Using their Eclipse game engine, they’re able to take the ROMs of older games and decompile them for modern systems at maximum efficiency, and using painstaking effort and resources from whoever hires them, they get every detail they can about the games included. That includes development history, interviews, high quality scans of whatever production and promotional artwork they can get their hands on, music galleries and explanations of each game’s central idea and what unique parts they play in the history of its franchise and gaming. It can almost make the games more of a side attraction there to let you experience the history the rest of the package lays out.

I recommend their Street Fighter 30^th Anniversary Collection, even if Street Fighter is obviously for peasants who can’t play KOF.  It not only has all the mainline games made before Street Fighter 4 (as well as the original Street Fighter nobody cares about), but it also has online play for the four most important games included and the aforementioned museum.

That's a lot of games.

After how well they pulled that off, I got excited for their new fighting game anniversary collection on the PC: the Samurai Shodown Neogeo Collection. It may not be as awesome as the fast-paced action of KOF, but Samurai Shodown has its own legacy as a series less focused on high speed combos and more focused on slower-paced fencing, where one strike from a weapon can do tons of damage and draws lots of blood to really make you feel the weight of the blades. With a beautiful aesthetic of the Edo period of Japan, it’s host to all kinds of warriors of old from around the world, from Prussia to France to Texas. It’s a great series well-deserving of such a compilation.  There was already a Samurai Shodown compilation, the Samurai Shodown Anthology for the Wii, PS2 and PSP, but more game compilations available on more systems is good to have and both the Anthology collection and Neogeo collection have their own quirks and upsides, regardless of what might be considered the better one.

This is one of the best pieces of cover art ever.  Gold star.

The King of Fighters: Allstar Review

Every big franchise seems to have a licensed “gacha” game these days.  There’s one for Senran Kagura, Fire Emblem, Marvel, Love Live and Castlevania.  While some decry such games for being exploitative and microtransaction-ridden, I’ve always thought the collection aspects combined with a solid core gameplay looked fun, but both the licenses and core gameplay didn’t hook me most of the time.  There just wasn’t a gacha game I could get into unless you count Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links.

KOF Allstar got all the hooks to catch my interest: it’s a beat-em-up with collectible characters utilizing the KOF license developed by the mobile company Netmarble.  Obviously I’m a huge KOF fan, I’ve enjoyed action mobile games with touch controls in the past and I’ve read both good and bad things about Netmarble.  The idea of a beat-em-up based on a fighting game franchise where only two fighters are going at it at a time may seem like an odd idea, but KOF has always had characters fighting gangs of enemies, it was just rarely shown.  I had some careful optimism.

In preparation for the global version, I played the Japanese version for a couple of weeks, both because I was excited to play and so that I could write about any possible differences between the two.  I couldn’t utilize every one of the game’s features as my Japanese isn’t expert level, but from what I can tell the only substantial difference is that the new content for the global version is coming out much quicker because it has a year of updates from the Japanese version to work with.  Now that I’ve gotten to play the global version, this review can be written proper.

SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy Review

SNK has always admired its history and legacies, no matter how old or forgotten.  This is the company that brought back Hwa Jai for KOF 13 after being in just one game decades before and callbacks to the first Art of Fighting game are omnipresent, both visually and in gameplay. With SNK, you never know what they’re going to dig up next and I can definitely say I did not expect a follow-up to SNK Gals Fighters.

SNK Gals Fighters was a silly fighting game on the Neo Geo Pocket Color where a bunch of SNK’s girl fighters compete to win a wish in the girls-exclusive Queen of Fighters tournament, spearheaded by the enigmatic-yet-familiar-looking Miss X.

At first I thought it was Iori in drag wearing Eiji's mask, but she specifically says "私は庵ではない!"

The roster was mostly KOF girls like Whip, Leona and Shermie, but with other SNK characters like Shiki and Nakoruru from the Samurai Shodown games and Kyo’s largely offscreen girlfriend Yuki.

Everyone in the game was drawn as chibis, there was a mechanic in which the fighters clashed in a big ball of violence not unlike the Persona games post-2 and the new characters Yuki and Miss X had moves that included hysterical slapping, tripping and tearing apart the opposition with a fork and knife.

Needless to say, it was not a serious game. It was fun and silly with simpler controls.  It’s a breed of game we don’t seem to see as much of anymore since most fighting games want to be the newest competitive affair. That’s why the spiritual follow-up, SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, being released on the PC was such a pleasant surprise.

The King of Fighters: Destiny (Web Series) Review

When The King of Fighters: Destiny web series was announced to complement the upcoming mobile game of the same name, I was very skeptical.  Web series don’t have a reputation for having the highest production values, 3D animation is hard to do right and it comes from a Chinese animation studio that was not a big name as far as I can tell.  I was prepared for the worst, but at the same time KOF material outside of the games have been enjoyable even at their worst, with the exception of the movie we need to try to change the title of and forbid from ever discussing.

Several months later the series has now ended its first season and animation studio Idragon has two more planned as well as a movie.  They have some serious confidence in this series and with the overall positive reception, it’s not unwarranted.

Since it’s a web series you can see for free on Steam or Youtube, the question isn’t if it’s worth your money, but rather if it’s worth your time.  That’s not as much time as it may look.  Listings show episodes as being 20 minutes long, but the truth is more than half of that is the overly long opening prologue about Orochi, the rather bad opening theme and an excruciatingly long credit roll.  Each episode is only 7 to 9 minutes long if you skip all that.  With enough editing they could make it into a movie.

The King of Fighters 14 Review

After several years, several app games and a number of betrayals resulting in said app games being taken down, SNK has finally come out with the successor to The King of Fighters 13, a tough act to follow since 13 is possibly the greatest fighting game ever made.

Originally released on a system that charges its users for a basic function after they already paid for the damn game system and game itself, The King of Fighters 14 has been released on the PC with a Steam edition just like 13 did.  After playing it since its open beta and after a number of updates and fixes, I’m ready to tackle this new KOF.

I can’t really call it a retrospective since it very recently came out and I’m still playing it, so consider this a review in the style of my previous retrospective posts.  There’s quite a lot to cover here and right out the gate KOF 14 breaks a tradition by having a vocal opening that intensifies the hype like you wouldn’t believe.

It's a new story with a new KOF, a while after that one KOF tournament where no one seems to know what happened.  A big burly badass Russian billionaire named Antonov buys the rights to The King of Fighters tournament and declares himself the King of Fighters champion by default.  I guess when the previous winners aren’t clear you have to start somewhere.  Like a wrestling federation, Antonov has made a lavish gold championship belt with the new KOF logo for the champion and challenges all fighters to enter the tournament and win it.

KOF Finales: 14

After defeating 8 teams in the tournament, yours is brought to the final challenge with the self-appointed champion, Antonov.  Antonov makes a grand entrance in a big fancy stadium, using pyrotechnics, smoke effects and a jumbo-tron as he rises out of the ground and the crowd goes wild.

It’s an entrance that brings to mind the flashy entrances for WWE wrestlers and I’ve seen people compare Antonov to Triple H.  I can’t confirm anything, but with Raiden being based on Big Van Vader, Gai being based on Kazushi Sakuraba and Ramon being inspired by Tiger Mask, it’s well within the realm of possibility a designer had Triple H or another pro wrestler in mind.

Antonov congratulates the your team on making it this far, but that you have to defeat him and he’s not going to hold back.

King of Fighters Retrospective Bonus Round: KOF: Maximum Impact

We’ve gone over the main King of Fighters titles in my long retrospective, but there is still some ground to cover.  The King of Fighters has had some spin-offs, the most prominent being The King of Fighters: Maximum Impact and its sequel, Maximum Impact 2 (bafflingly renamed KOF 2006 in America).  These were the first King of Fighters games to be made specifically for the PS2 and utilized full 3D characters and environments long before KOF 14.  I remember seeing advertisements in magazines and was skeptical.  It isn’t in the series colorful 2D style, the story is completely unrelated to the main games, there were no teams and there was Mortal Kombat’s not-that-well-received transition to 3D around that time.  For years I would forget the Maximum Impact games existed, but after getting my hands on them, I think they’re worth giving a fair shake.

The Rhythm of Fighters Review

When SNK Playmore announced that their next game would be a rhythm-based smartphone app, fans got a little agitated that they were spending time on something not related to The King of Fighters 14.  I meanwhile was excitedly imitating Hibari’s victory pose.  Recall in my review of Theatrhythm Final Fantasy when I said that there should be a rhythm game like it, but with KOF music.  With The Rhythm of Fighters, SNK Playmore gives us just that.  It’s like making a Rock Band game all about the Beatles; it's a good idea from the start.  Up until The Rhythm of Fighter’s sudden release onto the app store (with little fanfare, I might add), all I asked for was for them not to screw this brilliant concept up.

My prayers were answered.  For the most part, it’s just what I wanted.

The Finale of the KOF 13 Finale

I hope in the time it has taken me to get my laptop back up and running, everyone has played The King of Fighters 13 and sent me piles of money for recommending it to them, because with this post, I will be diving straight into spoiler territory!  It is time to finish this retrospective once and for all!

Even after hacking away at Saiki's ankle like a kung-fu lumberjack, he doesn't seem to be in pain.  I suppose Mukai's "that battle didn't count" status is in effect.
Saiki is troubled though.  No matter how much you fight him, there doesn't seem to be enough power to open the gate.

"Maybe you should try hitting above the belt!"

In fact, the thing starts closing!  If Saiki doesn't go through that gate, bad things will happen... To him.

What's happening is that the door is lacking power.  There isn't enough to hold it open.

You can see there's clearly a sphere there, but remember that the spheres harnessing Orochi's power are below the stadium.  Someone must have removed them from there, but who?  Like an instant answer, Saiki is impaled through the back by a sneak attack.

So he never let his guard down ever before?  You had to wait until he got this close to succeeding?

Finally Ash Crimson starts doing something resembling something heroic by killing Saiki and taking what appears to be his powers/essence/soul/something, much like he did Chizuru and Iori.

With the villain defeated and the gate closing, the day is sa- NOPE!

The name of this new form of Ash is never confirmed.  Even in the character voices gallery it's distinguished from the playable Ash by simply having its name in red.  Some people call him Evil Ash, some Dark Ash, and others.... Bad Ash.

Using Saiki's time-stopping power, Evil Ash makes a huge white field that stops time even further for everything not living inside it (I think).  He is somehow stopping time while time is stopped!  Whatever it is he does, it stops the gate from closing.  He is the true final boss of The King of Fighters 13.  Live and let die!

FIGHT!

Sounds like a final boss theme to me.

Evil Ash is essentially a souped-up version of Ash with two of Saiki's super moves.  He's very difficult the first few times you fight him, but after a while you can catch on to his AI patterns.

More than anything, he loves standing the the corner, continuously spamming Ash's flame shot like crazy.  Unlike Ash's move, which can only send out one flame per attack, Evil Ash can send out two, and fire them at a much faster rate.  A lot of the fight will have you guarding in a corner while he hammers away at you with them.  After every few shots though he stops and takes a moment to walk back, giving you a good moment to nail him with a projectile (possibly a Neo Max) or close your distance with him.

When you get close, Ash starts using his close-ranged attacks, one of which is a deadly new move in which he dashes past you, deals a chunk of damage, and disables all your special moves!
Obviously the purely offensive approach couldn't be a dumber idea.  Getting close and counterattacking with patience is essential in fighting Evil Ash.  By counterattacking, I of course mean...

Leg Sweeping.  Yep.  Evil Ash inherited Saiki's Achille's heel.  The difference here is that Evil Ash tends to walk away from you, whereas Saiki eventually got close enough to leg sweep, which means you need to take measures into your own hands and get up close yourself.  Since Evil Ash is also more offensive than Saiki, you'll have to do more guarding this time around as well.

In arcade mode, I usually suggest the coward's way out by using a continue bonus to get his health down to 25% and timing him out by guarding constantly.  In story mode, however, there are no such bonuses, so you'll have to beat him fair and square.  Always remember to sweep the leg with proper timing, be patient, and he'll eventually go down... If you're playing at a low difficulty... After 12 tries.

I must say, this isn't as grand a finale as I'd like.  Instead of fighting some brand-new character like Mukai and Magaki were, we just fight what's little more than a stronger version of a regular character you have to use cheap tactics to beat.  It's a bit of a letdown to a great saga in the King of Fighters storyline, even if the story arc itself is really quite good.  Even Kyo knows it.

After Evil Ash is defeated, the game practically ignores your victory and has Evil Ash get ready to enter the gate.  However, he stops.  Apparently there's an argument going on inside his head.  Have you ever had one of those?  I have.

Saiki tells the boy that he shouldn't resist.  After all...

I guess there's no wardrobe in the center of the mind.

And that one comment is the big revelation.  Saiki looks like Ash because he's Ash's time-traveling immortal ancestor.  All this time, through all his betrayal and deception, Ash was just trying to get close to his ancestor so that he could stop him from going through the gate and changing the future.
You'd think he could have told someone about his little plan so that everyone wouldn't be against him, but he must have thought that taking the sacred treasures would get Saiki to trust him even after playing both sides to stay unpredictable.

In the end, Ash finally succeeds.

The gate closes, leaving Saiki and Ash both stuck in the present time.  As Ash tells Saiki about how Saiki doesn't know anything about him, a furious Saiki panics about a time paradox.

This is where things get really confusing, so here's my interpretation: in the past, Saiki traveled to the future where this whole shebang started.  Ordinarily, this Saiki of the future would replace him in a time loop to write the new future with the knowledge he has.  Since he didn't pass through the gate, now there's no Saiki in the past.  With no Saiki in the past, there's no Saiki in the future, no Those From the Distant Land (organized, anyway) and... No Ash.  If anyone has a better explanation, I'd love to hear it.

And with that, the tragic hero vanishes.  What essentially happens next, as described in many endings, is history rewrites itself to exclude Ash, Saiki and Those From the Distant Land.  It's the textbook definition of a cosmic retcon.  It's like God just threw out the book on time travel logic and took all that nonsense out entirely. The game hints that it's more like there's a gap in each character's memory where the erased characters were, which just makes things even more confusing if you think about it too hard.

This does possibly explain why Ash acted like such a jerk: because no one would even remember him acting that way if his plan succeeded.  He had nothing to lose.  It's kind of sad, really.  With the hero and villain both wiped from existence, there seem to be no more conflicts (that aren't usual, anyway), and Chizuru and Iori both have their powers again.  Everything is right with the world.

Or is it?!

Get every scene in King of Fighters 13's story mode, and you'll get one extra stinger!  It's a great note to end the game on and I couldn't be more excited for the next King of Fighters!  Thank you all for joining me on this epic retrospective, and may you enjoy The King of Fighters for years to come.