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Classic Games (Games) Entertainment Games

GameSpot Recaps 25-Year History of SNK 143

Posted by CmdrTaco from the celebrate-the-glorious-neo-geo dept.
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "GameSpot has offered up an amazingly in-depth history of SNK -- the company behind such classic games as Ikari Warriors, Fatal Fury, and King of Fighters, as well as the NeoGeo hardware system. The 39-page retrospective covers nearly every aspect of the company's 25-year history and includes an annotated list of key SNK titles, trivia, insider interviews, hardware comparisons, screenshots, promotional art, and more."
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GameSpot Recaps 25-Year History of SNK More

GameSpot Recaps 25-Year History of SNK

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  • nostalgy (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tuggy ( 694581 )
    i always love to read stuff like this. takes me back some years... oh the nostalgy :'(

    ikari warriors ruled!

    • Re:nostalgy (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Did anyone ever actually PLAY Ikari Warriors?!? That game was HORRIBLE! You couldn't save, it was buggy on NES and after playing for 12 freaking hours all you got for an ending was a thank you from General Kawasaki. The hours and hours of frustration I got from that game were rediculous. When I finally beat it I couldn't believe they wasted my time like that. I never played that game again after that day and it pains me that people call it a 'classic'

      /end rant

    • Re:nostalgy (Score:3, Interesting)

      by molafson ( 716807 )
      ikari warriors ruled!

      I always liked Time Soldiers [neo-geo.com] better. Those rotary joysticks [arcadiabay.com] were a bitch, though!

  • Good old times... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15, 2004 @01:38PM (#8287316)
    They simply made _THE BEST_ 2D fighting games, ever.
    They were unique and stylish, as always.. SNK shall live on! :)

    • Re:Good old times... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      So says you.

      The best Capcom fighters have play depth that can't be matched. SNK's unique play mechanics never evolved past timed-sequence multi-hit moves, hops, running, hit evasion, and combo interruption (which Capcom eventually incorporated as well), not to mention gimmicks like multiple planes (foreground/background). Meanwhile, Capcom has always (except in obvious exceptions, like the Marvel games) focused on character balance above EVERYTHING else. If, using any character, you can't get past Dhals
      • King of Fighters was never a technical/gameplay masterpiece, with the possible exception of KoF '98(which was quite good).

        Last Blade 2 rocks all. Samurai Shodown 2 is also quite good. Nothing Capcom has produced really matches those games(well, at least not Last Blade 2), though Street Fighter Alpha 3 is pretty damn good. I mean, it has Dan. Anything with Dan in it is automatically good.
    • Amen. SNK = My Childhood (That and Sega... and some Nintendo) The Neo Geo. Nuff said.

  • wow (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shadowkoder ( 707230 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @01:38PM (#8287318)
    To think a game company could consistently make and evolve a series of games for 25 years is impressive. My hats off to them.

  • 2 words... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The Beezer ( 573688 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @01:38PM (#8287320) Journal
    Baseball Stars

    Some argue it's still the greatest baseball game ever made. I'd say it's at least the best one made in the 20th century.

  • Always loved SNK games (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15, 2004 @01:39PM (#8287328)
    Some of the best games of all time have been on SNK systems or by SNK. The Metal Slug series is still fun to this day; few games hold up so well for so long. I remember playing Magician Lord for hours at the local pizzeria as a kid, while the Street Fighter 2 machine was always occupied. They didn't know what they were missing out on.

    SNK still makes great games. Garou: Mark of the Wolves was a revolutionary 2d fighting game, excellent in every aspect.

  • Licensing. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adun ( 127187 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @01:41PM (#8287348)
    Surely the wealth of talent that is/was SNK hasn't been depleted. Has no one considered tapping into them as a development house? Granted, their forte is the 2D fighting game, but the creativity and originality infused into those games is something that can be applied to any genre. With the crap being shipped out of studios these days, you'd think the more savvy publishing CEOs would be on top of this.
    • Maybe SNK should license its work out to the major producers, but do you REALLY wanna see what'll happen if Microsoft, Sony, or (god forbid) EAGames were to get their hands on the rights to develop and/or produce, say, the next King of Fighters?

      One of the reasons why SNK made/makes such great games was/is because they stuck to what they knew, they made games which they knew were fun, and they didn't f**k up their gameplay formula just so the "casual gamer" could get into it. When you really think about it,

  • Crystalis ruled (Score:5, Informative)

    by Innominandum ( 453982 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @01:45PM (#8287386)
    I think Crystalis was one of my favourite Nintendo games. It also never seemed to be very popular either. Maybe the company is cursed?
    • Cursed? Samurai Shodown, King of Fighters, Metal Slug, Pulstar... that doesn't sound very cursed. ;)

      And for the extremely anal, yes I know SNK didn't develop a couple of those.
      • "Samurai Shodown, King of Fighters..."

        None of their titles became nearly as popular as their counterparts such as Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter II.
        • But all the games that I mentioned did well in the arcades. No, they weren't to the level of MK or SF2, but how many games ARE?
          • I can stil remember burning through twenty bucks in quaters back in the mid 90's at a bowling alley playing Samarui Showdown (4 I think). MK and SF2 were great for the first few weeks they were out but then everyone memorized all the special moves and they both became boring. Scorpion yelling come here every two minutes and the like... But no onw knew samurai showdown well enought o use any special moves so it rocked.

    • IT SURE DID! :D (Score:5, Insightful)

      by solios ( 53048 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @02:23PM (#8287671) Homepage
      Man, I love that game. I still own my second copy, though the box is pretty worn out. Got it for cheap at Ames in the middle of nowhere. The game was fun- like, easily as much fun as The Legend of Zelda or The Secret of Mana. I put it up there with River City Ransom on my list of favorite NES games.

      And for some reason, they never made a sequel, never made a SNES version, never made anything similar. :|

    • Re:Crystalis ruled (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bendebecker ( 633126 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @04:23PM (#8288530) Journal
      It may have not been too popular not becuase it wasn't a great game but becuase it was so damn hard to find a copy of it anywhere. I eventually found it in a used bin about 2 years after I first heard about it from a friend. It is a must for any RPG player. Saying you have never played Crystalis is like saying you never played the orginal Final Fantasy - instant sign of noob. It still has one of the greatest stories I ahve ever seen in an RPG. When you realize that what it was competeing against was The Legend of Zelda (a game with next to no story) just amkes it all that more impressive an accomplishment. Simply put: it rocked.

      I can still hum the tower music and whistle the cave theme...

      • Re:Crystalis ruled (Score:2, Insightful)

        by cubic6 ( 650758 )

        The Legend of Zelda (a game with next to no story)

        Explain. Unless my memory is horribly wrong, Zelda for the NES had a pretty damn good story for an adventure game. Given, it's a pretty standard "slash through the dungeons and rescue the princess", but it was done very well, and was head and shoulders above other games of it's genre. It wasn't an RPG by any stretch of the imagination, so it doesn't have the massive character development or arcing story. Saying Crystalis is better than Zelda is like s

      • I remember playing it on "THE END DAY" just because of that. (Oct 1, 1997, of course) :]

        But yeah, it had one of the best plots ever. Almost as fun as Earthbound... :]
    • I bought that at a game store a year ago. Battery backup is still going strong!

  • Neo Geo Advertisements. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15, 2004 @01:48PM (#8287408)
    I scanned in a few of the Neo Geo advertisements and promotional material a while back. Propaganda is fun.

    http://xodnizel.net/neogeo/ [xodnizel.net]
    • Love the bit about "4 dimensional graphics" in one of the ads.

    • Some interesting FUD in there. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @02:19PM (#8287631) Homepage
      Sound channels in http://xodnizel.net/neogeo/VideoGameWeenie.jpg

      Lists Neo Geo as 15, TG16 as 10, and Sega Genesis as 8.

      Yet http://xodnizel.net/neogeo/Specifications%20Sheet. jpg
      Lists Neo Geo as 15, Genesis as 10, SNES as 8, and TG16 as 6.

      Quite the difference!

      The other specs also change seemingly randomly. It's quite the bad-ol'-days FUD that video game companies slung around before they learned that all they had to do was release PR about how their new Emotio^WCELL chip would rock, and let their devoted fan-boys do the rest of the work for them.

      The proof's in the games, and these advertisements are the kind of things that cater to people who want to make up for a small penis with game console specs, not people who love games. Sad, really :(
    • My favorite is the last one [xodnizel.net] which is one of the most blatent comparison to the size of your gaming system to the size of your eh... stuff.

  • NeoGeo Nostalgia (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Peter Cooper ( 660482 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @01:51PM (#8287427) Homepage Journal
    Back when I was at school, no-one had ever played on a NeoGeo, but we'd all heard about it. It was the amazing 'latest thing' which was supposedly so amazing to play on that it'd beat your NES into a pulp, and was even better than the arcades. As young boys we drooled over this concept, but never came close to one as they were about $700 in this country. Several years later I tried NeoGeo on emulation, and while Street Fighter 2 was particularly well done, it was a bit of a let down compared to what we'd all been thinking as kids.

    Funny how it goes.. you grow older, and you don't have that whole excitement because you can just buy any technology/console you want to check out instead of dreaming about owning it 'one day'. Sadly it seems almost more fun dreaming about how incredible something is than actually getting to use it.

    I'd hesitate to say that 3DO was seen in a similar light to the NeoGeo, as they also had a mythical expensive console out in the early 90's (which was 32 bit ARM-RISC with a CD-ROM).

    • Re:NeoGeo Nostalgia (Score:3, Informative)

      by Stormwatch ( 703920 )
      That is wrong... Street Fighter 2 ran on Capcom's CPS, not SNK's Neo Geo / MVS. Aren't you thinking of Fatal Fury or King of Fighters?
    • I never knew that Street Fighter 2 was ever ported to the Neo Geo. Are you sure you aren't thinking of Art of Fighting or anyt of the Samurai Shodown games?

    • Re:NeoGeo Nostalgia (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Apparently you weren't the type of Kid who would drop $20 easy at the arcade.

      SNK had some of the best arcade games and arcade hardware out there. Their home console was overpriced, but hardly anyone remembers them for their home console.

      Who hasn't spent time in an arcade and not seen Metal Slug, Bubble Bobble, Bust-A-Move, those arcade that contained 4 games in one machine? Almost every arcade will have a Neo-Geo machine in it.

      Metal Slug is a classic game. There aren't too many other side scrollers that
      • When I spent my time in Korea, Capcom fighters weren't that popular. ... If they play SNK vs. Capcom, they're playing it for the SNK side of it, NOT the Capcom side.

        How many Korean characters does Capcom have? Around Asia they have Japan, China, and Thialand all represented by multiple fighters, but no Korean, Tae Kwan Do fighters.

        SNK has had Korean fighters for a long time. KoF has a Korean team.

        I don't play Tekken, so I can't say.

    • Re:NeoGeo Nostalgia (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Hodr ( 219920 )
      You should have been a more industrious kid.

      I remember buying the 3DO when it first came out (I believe I was 12 or 13) for $650 at the AT&T store, the only store in our city that carried it.

      I also purchased the NeoGeo console for $500 and several games over the years for around $100-200 a pop.

      But as a kid I was never given an allowence except for a $5 a week stint that only lasted a few months. And my parents stopped purchasing game systems after the NES because they didn't understand why I needed

      • my parents stopped purchasing game systems after the NES because they didn't understand why I needed a new one when the one I had still worked (and had hundreds of games I didn't own..)

        First explanation you should have tried: Because try finding one NES game at Wal-Mart after 1993. I'm in a similar position with my PlayStation 1; I can't seem to save enough money after expenses to buy a PS2, and Sony has terminated PS1 development.

    • Re:NeoGeo Nostalgia (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Kaboom13 ( 235759 ) <kaboom108&bellsouth,net> on Sunday February 15, 2004 @02:41PM (#8287822)
      Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think NeoGeo even had Street Fighter 2. All the Street Fighter 2 machines I've ever seen (or emulated) were for the Capcom CPS system. The emulator you used probably supported both systems, and you played the rom for the CPS Street Fighter. That said, if you want to experience the greatness of SNK, play Metal Slug, King of Fighters, and Samurai Showdown. The NeoGeo is the king of 2D arcade games, and SNK has made some of the best games of all time for it.
    • Dude, Streetfighter 2 was from Capcom and had absolutely nothing to do with either SNK or the Neo Geo. Get a clue. Now someone please mod the parent down, that comment is completely wrong.

  • I remember the NeoGeo (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 88NoSoup4U88 ( 721233 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @01:56PM (#8287464)
    somehow, the standard controllers that were given with the XBox on their launch seems very small compared to the original joysticks you got with the NeoGeo.
    The NeoGeo actually felt like bringing the arcade coin-ops in your home , allthough it has never reached any recognition over here (the Netherlands).

    • Re:I remember the NeoGeo (Score:5, Informative)

      by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Sunday February 15, 2004 @03:45PM (#8288280)
      somehow, the standard controllers that were given with the XBox on their launch seems very small compared to the original joysticks you got with the NeoGeo.

      Well, that's probably because they were, but you can't directly compare them. The Neo Geo AES shipped with arcade joysticks, a fundamentally different type of controller than MS's (and the rest of the current industry's) gamepads. SNK also made gamepads for the Neo Geo systems and they were about the size of a Sega Genesis or Super NES pad (which means smaller than the Xbox gamepad).

      I always loved the aesthetic design of the Neo Geo AES and its controllers, though. They're these sort of monolithic black slabs, very large but with subtle curves that make them look a lot smaller than they are. The system itself is so sleek that I thought it was about the smallest system I owned, until I stuck it on a shelf with the rest of my collection and discovered it's just the opposite - as large as an Atari 5200, much larger than a PS2, as deep and wide as an Xbox (though not as tall - unless it has a cartridge in it!). It's truly about the pinnacle of industrial design in the game console industry.

      The NeoGeo actually felt like bringing the arcade coin-ops in your home , allthough it has never reached any recognition over here (the Netherlands).

      Well it didn't get any recognition here (in the US) either. It's one of those things that nobody bought at the time but now that the company's got such respect, everybody claims to be major fans. It's really a bandwagon thing. But there are still relatively few of these systems out there and they're still quite expensive, so I have to always scratch my head at the sheer number of people claiming to have these vivid Neo Geo memories these days. I suppose the arcade machines were more ubiquitous but the home systems were never particularly popular. (I acquired mine through trade; I could have never justified the cost otherwise.)

      Oh, and the Neo Geo AES didn't just feel like bringing arcade coin-ops home, that is in fact what you were doing. The home carts were exactly the same as the arcade carts except for the pinouts (in fact adapters exist to let you play the arcade carts on a home machine - they just adapt the pinouts). There's no technical reason why the pinouts were different, either, it was strictly so SNK could charge more for the home carts, as the arcade carts were quite cheap - the idea being to make the money in arcades on the machines themselves, whereas at home it was just the opposite.

      • Re:I remember the NeoGeo (Score:3, Informative)

        by nuxx ( 10153 )
        Actually, I think you have the last bit slightly backwards. The MVS (the arcade NeoGeo) carts were new, they were a few hundred dollars a piece, as opposed to the AES (home version) carts which were around a hundred. The pinout difference was to keep arcade ops from putting AES carts in MVS machines. For the most part, SNK (like most other arcade game vendors) sold the game systems and carts for a set price, then the operators made money off the plays. That's why they cost so much.

        The reason you see so ma
  • Just got to thinking, what are the chances that Metal Slug X was the influence for Duke Nukem? I mean, rakish hero fighting alien bastards? Hardly an original plot premise, but Duke's "attitude" seems to be a natural progression of the Metal Slug Guy's tough-man image :)

    The thing I don't know is, what came first - MSX or DN3D? Perhaps the influence was actually the other way around?

    -JT

  • Gotta hate Gamespot on this one.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by mrseigen ( 518390 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @02:00PM (#8287497) Homepage Journal
    One of the most mainstream gaming review sites in recent memory is now doing a heartfelt article on SNK? I don't buy it for an instant. It'd be like IGN doing some actual research before they publish something (their "Nintendo DS" articles with web message board joke images springs to mind).

  • Gabe says it best (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15, 2004 @02:04PM (#8287528)
    "...see you at the crossroads" [penny-arcade.com]

  • They forgot to mention one early game (Score:5, Informative)

    by AtariKee ( 455870 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @02:14PM (#8287597)
    Sasuke Vs Commander [arcadeflyers.com], which was SNK's first color machine.

  • VIEWPOINT (Score:3, Interesting)

    by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @02:27PM (#8287697)
    Anyone remember that game?
    Was hyped as the second coming of the classical isometric shooter, produced only a few 1000 times and sold for more than a SNES+Megadrive combined?

    And after all, it was only an "okay" game, but who would admit after spending 200$+?
  • Baseball Stars, the game that started my love for micro-management in sports games. It was advanced for it's time. It had salaries and trading!
    Ikari Warriors - Responsible for my love for violent games :)
    and of course Crystalis, was one of the better rpg's of its time, oh the time I spent.
    • Crystalis, was one of the better rpg's of its time

      Forget 'of its time', Crystalis was one of the greatest RPG's ever. At the very least, it is without question the greatest RPG for the orginal NES. I still go back and paly it every couple of eyars. Haven't touched Final Fantasy or the Legend of Zelda since 1995.

  • SNK love (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kirby-meister ( 574952 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @02:53PM (#8287913)
    As I type this I am staring at my Neo Geo Pocket Color, a nice little handheld that unfortunately tried to compete with the Gameboy line. Needless to say, it was DOA, in America at least.

    I've been a fan of SNK since I played Fatal Fury at a local arcade. After that, I would purchase most of their SNES porting efforts, even if those ports sucked because of extreme size-reduced sprites. Then the golden days came along with my Sega Saturn, importing classics like the King of Fighters Collector's Edition (95-97), Real Bout Fatal Fury collector's edition, Metal Slug, etc. Dreamcast came, and so did Last Blade 2, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, and Capcom vs SNK, which was basically a dream-come-true for me.

    Nowadays, though, the talent looks like it is pretty much gone. No more sweet arranged music for the home versions of KoF, and they're only just now switching to the Atomis Engine (Sammy's fighting game engine, seen in the extremely popular Guilty Gear series) to hopefully abandon the woeful graphics the series currently suffers from. Compare KoF 2000/2001 for the Playstation 2 to KoF 97 on the Saturn - they look the same, but the 97 version just has that added detail of polish, in presentation, music, etc. The hits seem harder, the desparation-moves look cooler, and it just adds to a more fun experience while playing.

    Hopefully Playmore will remember that the little details help make a good gaming experience. Not stuff like giving Kim Kaphwan more frames of animation just because he's Korean [note: Playmore is Korean].

    Back to playing my KoF97...hoping for a return of SNK's former glory.

    • >Hopefully Playmore will remember that the
      >little details help make a good gaming
      >experience. Not stuff like giving Kim Kaphwan
      >more frames of animation just because he's
      >Korean [note: Playmore is Korean].

      Hah? Playmore is Japanese pachinko/slotmachine maker.
    • The 'Atomis engine' is just new arcade hardware, a la the NeoGeo. Nothing fighting game specific. I believe it is just a slightly modified Sega Naomi [system16.com] system (which powered the first Guilty Gear X, among dozens of other games like Crazy Taxi). In fact, it looks like it is just a less powerful (!) version [system16.com], roughly equivalent to a stock Dreamcast. Bizarre that they would use something like that - the Naomi can't be that much more expensive, especially now. Perhaps Sega didn't want to license something complete
  • The largest Genesis/MD cart (that I know of) was 5 MB, not 4. (I'm referring to Super Street Fighter II.)

  • Last Blade (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 77Punker ( 673758 ) <spencr04.highpoint@edu> on Sunday February 15, 2004 @03:51PM (#8288318)
    The article makes no mention of The Last Blade or its sequel. They're my two favorites from SNK's fighting lineup. Having the ability to reverse an opponent's attack really spices up the gameplay and makes it work like no other game I've played. Also, I didn't notice the Art of Fighting series, either. They're real good games, too. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great article and well worth a read for any SNK fanboy.

  • Guerilla War rocked (Score:4, Informative)

    by SpaceRook ( 630389 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @03:57PM (#8288367)
    This wasn't the most popular SNK game....but damn, did it kick ass. The level of detail was amazing for a shooter. The only point of the game was to blow shit up, a point driven home by the fact that it was trivial to respawn infinitely. The explosions often bordered on self-parody. Half the time, the NES would slow down as it strained to render them.

  • Good article (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mrshowtime ( 562809 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @05:00PM (#8288800)
    Where's the end? I wanted to know what the heck happened to SNK? Did they go out of business? Did they get bought out by someone else? See below for "The End" to this good story:

    Finally, not long after its first release, the Neo Geo Pocket was on its way to follow the Hyper 64 into the great void of defunct video game systems and was officially abandoned in late 2000.

    All these of SNK's adventures finally lead to a financial desaster. Unable to pay the bills, SNK tried to find an investor. At the same time, when the word of SNK's economical breakdown had spread throughout the gaming world, several third parties began to show interest in the companies' treasures.

    It has to be said that the company we all were referring to as "SNK" up to and until 2001 actually was the core of SNK ASIA LTD, the once proud corporation which also did most of their hardware construction themselves. In 1999, the inner sanctum SNK decidet to close all the Asian branches, including the hardware departement, and to get rid of the Neo Geo World merchandise, a chain of amusement centers with themes and artwork from SNK's universe in Japan. All the financially negative projects had finally taken their toll.

    On of these "interested third parties" were Aruze, a Patchinko company, one of Japan's most popular amusement machines. They signalled that they'd support SNK by taking over parts of their debts. It sounded too good to be true, but soon several SNK executives and Aruze managers confered about a possible "friendly take over" of SNK by Aruze. With lots of concern, but without a real chance to escape their kismet, SNK finally nodded, and Aruze jumped aboard.

    Dark day in SNK

    Aruze had promised to keep away from running projects and the overall SNK philosophy. As we know now, sequels to highly successful series like Samurai Shodown and Fatal Fury/Garou Densetsou were planned and partly under developement, but as it were, Aruze appruptly closed all projects and went to make their bucks with SNK's family silver, the intellectual properties of series like The King of Fighters or Samurai Shodown. It seemed that Aruze just wanted to boost their Patchinko biz by liquidating SNK's most valuable licenses. After a while, some SNK executives came to the same conclusion, and finally went into the boardroom, only to witness that the whole board had been fittet with Aruze-friendly staff.

    Although it was planned that SNK moved over to Aruze's properties, SNK suddenly stopped the process and returned to Osaka, while trying to regain control over the general direction of the corporation. Meanwhile, Aruze's share holders began to grumble about the way Aruze treated SNK and their funny little video game licenses. They wanted to see profits, but felt that parts of the Aruze board worked against the interest of SNK and thus against the share holders. It has to be noted that not only Aruze executives were suspected to work against the interest of SNK, but also about five SNK managers who rather wanted to sell all the stuff and retire than to fight against bancruptcy.

    The whole thing escalated with the filling of suit against Aruze by the share holders, accusing the company of a loss of more than 27.5 billion Yen. But the ship was sinking already. Throughout the whole year 2000 and the first half of 2001, SNK fought for their life, but it was too late; in October 2001, events culminated in the bankruptcy of SNK parent company. Requiescat in pace.

    Aruze, unwilling to go to court, tried (and prolly still try) to find a compromise. Yet, all of a sudden, two of the possibly sold SNK IPs of Metal Slug and The King of Fighters licenses showed up - Eolith announced their King of Fighters 2001, while the Korean company MegaKing all of a sudden opened a Metal Slug 4 web site. Looking through the tears of despair about the death of SNK, the Neo fans couldn't believe their eyes. The synergy that resulted from this however lead to a new frontier. BrezzaSoft, about to develop a new ar
  • I don't particularly like beat-em-ups, but I've got to admit that SNK had the balls to release the arcade PCB for the home market. At the time I prayed for SEGA to release a sprite scaler console for the home (which they didn't!!! they were masters of 3d sprite scaling games back then!!!), SNK came out of nowhere and made us dream about playing arcade-quality games at home!!! (the SNES and Genesis were cool machines, but nowhere near as powerful as Outrun, Space Harrier, Afterburner and other Sega milestone
  • This was how I found out about the demise of SNK-- in a review of this Dreamcast rhythm game that was reported to be their last game. It seems that the rhythm game genre is kind of a weird one for SNK to have taken up, but the music is good, and supposedly the game itself ain't too shabby either.

    I'm thinking of starting a collection of import DC games... Cool Cool Toon's one of those at the top of my list.

    • I'm thinking of starting a collection of import DC games...
      An excellent idea. I haven't yet played Cool Cool Toon (soon I will), but the DC has some amazing Japanese-only games, just like its father the Saturn...
  • After reading 39 pages of Gamespot coverage on SNK, it is safe to say that while we love the games, the garbled, translated-from-Japanese storylines of some SNK releases are better written than this article. Please, Gamespot--write for the fans, but do it coherently and edit it for clarity before publishing.
    -m

  • Ikari Warriors (Score:3, Funny)

    by Froggy ( 92010 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @10:34PM (#8290751) Homepage
    Those were the days. There was an Ikari Warriors machine in the Union Building at my university -- we also had Ghosts and Goblins, and der Asteroidenmaschinen (which had been nobbled by sparkers so many times it was stuck in German mode, or so the story ran).

    Ikari Warriors was performance art. You'd throw a grenade as the enemies ambushed you, and if you timed it right you'd get half a dozen of them evenly spaced across the screen, all going into their spin-around-and-fall-over death animation simultaneously. We used to call that one the North Vietnamese Formation Dying Team.

    Ah, nostalgia.

  • People who are saying SNK produced some of the best games of all time are just plain insane. They made great games, and they lasted thru so many bit wars. Hats off to SNK.

    But given the technology of Neo Geo at the time and the price they were charging, the last thing we want to see is a street fighter clone. This machine should have destroyed the competition.
    Instead it didn't remotely come close.

    The scaling effect was the most over utilized effect I have ever seen. A system with this advanced of a c

  • They forgot the MSX port of Ikari Warriors! (Score:3, Informative)

    by quibus ( 652993 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @04:52AM (#8292307) Homepage
    I just wrote the following e-mail to the author of the article:

    Hello Frank,

    I just read your SNK article on GameSpot.com. A very nice in-depth article!

    Although, I think you forgot to mention that SNK also produced software for the MSX system, which is virtually unknown in the USA, but used to be very popular in Japan and certain parts of Europe, as well as Brazil.

    For some more information about this home computer system, you might want to check out these sites:
    The Ultimate MSX FAQ [msxnet.org]
    The MSX Resource Center [msx.org]

    The only MSX product of SNK I know is Ikari Warriors. For some information about the game, see this page: Ikari Warriors on Generation MSX [generation-msx.nl].

    In short: it was released in 1987 for the MSX2 system (the second generation standard of MSX). It's a 2Mbit game.

    Some scans of the cover in a higher resolution: front [funet.fi], back [funet.fi], side [funet.fi].

    I'm also in posession of this game myself. :-)

    I hope you will update the article!
    (At least pages 2 (near the bottom) and page 31 should mention the MSX port of Ikari Warriors, I think.

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