The SNK Thread

[Nester the Lark]

So, here's the compilation of Neo Geo Pocket Color games:



It includes all of the games released on the eShop so far, plus both Metal Slug games, Dark Arms: Beast Buster, and the one I hoped would get included, Big Tournament Golf/Neo Turf Masters.

It's labeled "Vol. 1," so I guess there could be another collection. Also, it's available digitally right now, with a physical release to come later. The price is US$39.99, which is half of what it would cost to by each game individually (if they were all available digitally, that is).

[nocturnal YL]

Too bad there isn't an option to play the system without a game!

I'm actually kind of serious. NGPC has one of the best system menu music, and the horoscope feature is pretty neat.

[Nester the Lark]

I haven't been keeping things too up-to-date here, but I just wanted to post the reveal trailer for Hibiki in Samurai Shodown.

I believe this is the first time she's ever appeared in 3D, but I think she looks great! Very faithful to how she appears in The Last Blade 2.

[Nester the Lark]

Well, a turn-based tactical Metal Slug game isn't quite what I was expecting.



Currently only confirmed for Steam.

[Nester the Lark]

News roundup:

- Effective August 1, SNK has a new CEO: Kenji Matsubara, former president of Sega, Zynga Japan, and Koei Tecmo.

- In other news, it was confirmed that King of Fighters XV is not planned for a Switch release. Not at all surprising, but still unfortunate.

- And on a personal note, the trailer for Athena was just released. She will be on "Team Super Heroine" with Mai and Yuri. I guess that means no Psycho Soldier team this time, making it the only other time since KOF2003. If that also means no Kensou, then that's really disappointing.

[Nester the Lark]

Update on the Saudi SNK buyout: the Mohammed bin Salmon Foundation now owns 96.18 percent of shares in the company. That's a lot more than the 51 percent initially reported.

[Nester the Lark]

In unexpected (and non-April Fools') news, SNK has announced The King of Fighters XIII Global Match for Switch and PS4.



This is pretty cool news, actually! Too bad I've given up fighting games. (And also still feel a little weird about buying stuff from SNK.)

[Nester the Lark]

Last year during EVO, SNK announced that they were developing a new game in the Fatal Fury/Garou Densetsu series. Just yesterday during this year's EVO, they revealed the first teaser trailer (though, it does not contain actual gameplay footage).



The game appears to be a direct follow-up to the previous game, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, released in 2000 for the Neo Geo. Based on the voice samples heard in the trailer, it seems that most of the characters are from Mark of the Wolves, with a few legacy characters from the older games, and possibly even Alice Nakata from KoF14.

Personally, I think it's pretty cool that a new Fatal Fury game is in development. Despite being the Neo Geo's premier fighting game series, it always seemed to take a backseat to more popular series' like The King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown, and is often dismissed as a Street Fighter clone. (Fun fact: both the original Street Fighter and the Fatal Fury series were created by the same person: Takashi Nishiyama.) But I think it has its own charm, and I have some nostalgia from seeing the original Fatal Fury so often in Neo Geo cabinets back then.

No platforms have been announced, but it's almost a given not to be coming to Switch.

What is coming to Switch, however, is The King of Fighters XIII: Global Match. A new trailer has been released for it, as well, and it confirms the release for November 16, 2023.

Of course, I don't play fighting games anymore, but I'm glad to see SNK still supporting the Switch in some capacity.

[nocturnal YL]

I was always under the impression that KOF is their flagship series even though FATAL FURY came first. And I also never thought the destinction was that important since everything that takes place in the various SNK games seem to happen in the same world. I know as games they're different, but I don't know how are they different. I don't play fighting games.

I imagine a new fighting game that just recently started development would primarily target PS5. That's where the genre's leader (SF6) is.

[Nester the Lark]

Well, you're right that King of Fighters is SNK's flagship series. (Ironically, I rarely ever saw KoF games in the wild.) Fatal Fury was just the first, and it led to everything after. Even the full title of the first game is "Fatal Fury: King of Fighters."

As a series, though, it maybe didn't stand out as much as some other games. KoF had team battles. Samurai Shodown was a weapons-based fighter set in 18th-century Japan. Even Art of Fighting had a unique mechanic for special moves.  Fatal Fury's only real gimmick was the multiplane stages where characters could sidestep between two, sometimes three, planes. However, even the series, itself, never knew quite what to do with it, as the mechanics changed a lot from game to game. Eventually, it just did away with it altogether for Mark of the Wolves.

Fatal Fury also followed the Street Fighter series' beats. Fatal Fury 2/Special very blatantly takes its cues from the SF2 games. Real Bout could be seen as the counterpart of the Street Fighter Alpha series. Mark of the Wolves directly takes its inspiration from Street Fighter III.

But like I said, the series still had its own charm.  Its got SNK's unique personality and character designs, and I like that most of the games take place in and around the same area: South Town.

It'll be interesting to see what the modern SNK does with it to make it stand out.