Farewell to SNK 161
pliew writes: "There's a good article over at classic gaming with a reader's digest version of the history of SNK. I'm sure all readers here have at one point experienced video games on the neogeo console."
Variables don't; constants aren't.
Re:Somehow.. (Score:2, Interesting)
This is just one more nail in the coffin of quality, hand-drawn, 2D arcarde style games. Many generes have benefited or even spawned from the switch to 3D, but I'll take Samurai Spirits (2-4) over Soul Caliber any day of the week.
Who is SNK? (Score:1, Interesting)
They should have done what Sega did to survive. Switch to game development only.
Exit: SNK Enter: Sega (Score:3, Interesting)
SNK survived mostly because of their arcade business. With the fall of the arcades, companies whos business relies on the arcades are dying.
SNK made very good arcade games, but good games arent enough to by profitable when you compete with Sonys and Microsofts.
Sega seems to be in the same situation SNK was in, and that Atari was in before SNK.
Can Sega survive on games alone? SNK couldnt do it, Atari managed to do it just barely, while Sega has good games, will people buy them?
IF people didnt buy them for Dreamcast Segas own system, will they buy them for PSX, Xbox, or Gamecube?
I dont know
Re:The Neo Geo (Score:2, Interesting)
King Of The Fighters? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ikari Warriors? *shiver* (Score:3, Interesting)
Their port to the NES of this rather classic arcade game was messed up. IIRC, you had a gun, four lives, and baddies ambushing you from everywhere. Sure, you could get into a tank - until it ran out of fuel. It was nearly impossible to dodge the flying bullets and IIRC, you died with one shot.
You thought CONTRA was hard? Ikari Warriors makes Contra look like Barney's Hide 'n' Seek in terms of difficulty. Levels are ridiculously long, to the point where the music is like sandpaper to your ears. If you didn't know the continue code, the game was IMPOSSIBLE to beat on a normal NES. And, to further insult the player, they made the continue code 'ABBA'
I actually slogged through this game. I fought through wave after wave of pallet-swapped enemies, entrenched machine guns, grenades..
I got to the third level, which consisted of cyan platforms and black water or oil. I slogged through it, and as I approached the end, I took a wrong turn and wound up at a dead end. See, SNK's programmers had learned how to make the screen scroll UP, but not how to scroll the screen DOWN.
so I was stuck there.
I still have the cartridge. It glows with an evil red aura.
Salude to an old friend (snk) (Score:2, Interesting)
My friends had nintendo's or sega's. I had a turbografx, then the really really luck ones (rich) got a neo-geo for christmas. Those bastards.
I remember walking into my 7-11 (yes kids in those days 7-11's had games in them) and seeing the neo geo for the first time. There was 4 games on it, magician lord, King of fighters, Nam75, and Super Baseball. My buds and I loved vids the way some kids loved baseball. We would buy every game magazine out there, hang out at the flea market trading games and then go home to play games. Games games games. We allways reminised about the good old days when America was the console king with Atari and the 2600/5200/7200. The great debate at the time was nintendo's decision to check games content before we here in america got them. We didn't care if there was a cross in the graveyard in castlevania.
Ok so I proved how deeply emotionally attatched I am to games, let me go on about the neo geo. So there was only 1 kid in the entire east side of san jose that owned one. He never let anyone near it. Our only recourse was to go down to 7-11 to check it out. 4 buttons, cool. Memory card so you could save your place in a game? whats that and where do I get one? Headphone jack? Why were all arcade cabinets built like this one? In terms of sound and graphics, neo geo was top notch.
For awhile there it seemed the neo-geo was going to die into oblivion, but alas a savior came in the form of metal slug. This side scrolling platform shooter showed just what could be done with the system if the artists were given enough time. The attention to detail is apparent everywhere in the game, especially when it came to animations of the different characters. It wasn't just someones helmet flying off when they got shot, their head, and hair flew back as well.
For a time after that, the fighting games started getting really popular on the NG with the release of samuri showdown. All of the sudden out of nowhere came neo geo (about mid 90's) with fighting games that were on par with rival fighting game producer capcom. Even sega's entry into the foray with the virtua fighters series did not get nearly as much play as the neo geo fighters.
15 years later, after being all grown up and looking back.. One of the big dreams me and my buds use to say as kids was, "Wouldn't it be great if we had a game system that could play ALL THE GAMES?!?!!?" I see that mame icon on my taskbar, begging to be clicked.
Unfortunatly this is the reality for the arcade now. PC's have gotten so fast, and so graphically powerful that any system can be emulated to a near %100 accuracy. What did the arcades do in response? They never really did anything, they went about business the old fashion way thinking that things like game houses and home gaming was just a fad that would pass and soon the children would be coming back eagerly slopping quarters down the chute.
Neo Geo, even though they never released new hardware outside of that newfangled 64 bit system, did everything they could to make games that were pleasing to look at, and pleasing to play. It didn't take a 32bit processor and 63 channel sound. Games like metal slug were "designed" and not just a copycat of some other game that was immensly popular.
Well, at least there is one arcade left [kaillera.com], I heard King of Fighters 2000 is pretty popular there.
--toq
Re:King Of The Fighters? (Score:3, Interesting)
Definitely. I've heard that many people didn't like SNK 2-D fighters like KOF because they felt too "Japanese," and because the control of SNK's fighters was not as lenient as Capcom's responsive controls, but I like them a lot. I prefer many games in Capcom's Street Fighter series, but SNK's 2-D fighters were great IMO.
< tofuhead >