GameSpot just put together a great feature on SNK's history, thought I'd let you guys know.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6089278/index.html
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GameSpot just put together a great feature on SNK's history, thought I'd let you guys know.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6089278/index.html
isnt that Reno?Quote:
The author would like to give credit to Andrew Alfonso, Chad Okada, Ben Herman, Shawn McCleskey, Kenny Perry Jr., Stuart Reynolds, Michael Shaver, and SnairDogg for their help with and input in this article, as well as to the fans of SNK and the NeoGeo all over the world who continue to show their undying love for the company's systems and games. Without these fine people, the story of SNK could not have been told.
Yes.
Snap!Quote:
Originally Posted by the Game Lord
Great account of history. A lot of stuff I didn't even know. A lot of you kids would do well to learn it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by seen
Nice article.
As for "Ikari Warriors thanking Rambo for it's success", the whole series actually owns it's existance to Rambo. The second Rambo film in Japan was subtitled "ikari no dasshutsu" (the angry escape).
Reno you bitch, why the fuck didnt you give me your hotel details for France.
Yah Reno was working on this, he told me about it.
This website believe it or not houses quite a few talents who will go on and make it big.
Some already have BTW.
...I'm just waiting for the "SNK Sucks" statements to begin...
A history of SNK: How to milk the same shitty hardware for over a decadeQuote:
Originally Posted by Zerodash
There ya go :)
I'm just happy they look to be getting their act together, and porting over their games to a console most people own (though i'm still a bit pissed there aren't anymore DC releases).
The article is not errors-free. The author missed some obscure (but relevant) details maybe due to the US focus. Some of them:
1989 also marked the release of two new home video game consoles in North America: the 16-bit Sega Genesis and NEC's joint project with Hudson, the TurboGrafx-16. Nintendo followed suit with a new system of its own, the Super NES, in 1991. Rather than choose sides and become embroiled in the so-called system wars, SNK chose once again to refocus its efforts on the arcade market, leaving other third parties, such as Romstar and Takara, to license and port SNK's future properties to the various home consoles of the time. The engineers at SNK had an idea on their hands that would revolutionize the arcade industry and could potentially mean millions upon millions of dollars in revenue for the company. That idea, stated simply, was the NeoGeo.
Unfortunately for SNK, the company didn't invest the resources it should have into the development and publishing of its own games for Nintendo's and Sega's popular 16-bit consoles. Takara's conversions were weak sauce compared to their AES/MVS counterparts and were only mildly received.
The most important one. The Neo is previous to the Super Famicom, and SNK themselves did handle an important number of the 16-bit ports (and even original games) under the names of KAL and Saurus. Oh, and Romstar never ported a single Neo game. I explained it all in this board time ago: http://www.the-nextlevel.com/board/s...22&postcount=1
Ironically, 330 megabits was just a theoretical maximum, because King of Fighters '96 broke that barrier in 1996, clocking in at 362 megabits. Today, games like King of Fighters 2003 and SVC Chaos are tipping the scales at over 700 megabits.
Before KOF96, Real Bout and Shin-Ou-Ken had actually broken the barrier.
Fatal Fury even had something Capcom's game didn't: twin background planes that allowed you to take the fight into the background for dodge maneuvers and cross-screen attacks
The author does mention this twice, but you couldn't dodge attacks by changing the plane by yourself in the first Fatal Fury.
It only makes sense that the two companies would ultimately join forces to make the Capcom vs. SNK fighting games that we enjoy in the arcades and at home on multiple consoles today.
Another repeated but non-accurate statement. SNK and Capcom did never join forces, they just licensed their respective franchises to each other in a move to save the 2D fighting games genre.
After purchasing Nazca, the game's original developer, SNK would go on to publish four more Metal Slug sequels
Actually, Nazca was created by SNK to group some ex-Irem members. Metal Slug was also published by SNK even if its name isn't in the title screen. That is, Nazca WAS SNK.
The Double Dragon series is an old and revered franchise for old-school gamers. Developer Evoga (with SNK publishing) decided to do a little revival with the series and released Rage of the Dragons in 2002.
Evoga is not a game developer. They actually owns (produced) the game, which was developed by Noise Factory. SNK Playmore just distributed it in Japan.
Magician Lord compares closest to Sega's Altered Beast, but with better level designs.
Magician Lord is as close to Altered Beast as Top Hunter is to Bionic Commando. A little gimmick doesn't make similar the games.
Otherwise, it's one of the best articles I've read from Game Spot.
I read bit more of it just now. Aside from the stuff pointed out by Recap, I also noticed this bit:
On a humorous side note, the main figure responsible for many of the later Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, and King of Fighters sequels in SNK's lineup was Takashi Nishiyama, who had initially worked on Street Fighter II for Capcom! It's no wonder that arcade-goers in the 1990s would get into heated arguments about which company's characters would win fights against the other company's characters. The same people were making these games! It only makes sense that the two companies would ultimately join forces to make the Capcom vs. SNK fighting games that we enjoy in the arcades and at home on multiple consoles today.
I could be wrong, but I though Nishiyama only developed the original Street Fighter (not SF2) and that Fatal Fury was already in development before Street Fighter II was released.
Actually Evoga was involved in developing the game, although they mainly did graphic design and debuging. Noise Factory did the coding.Quote:
Evoga is not a game developer. They actually owns (produced) the game, which was developed by Noise Factory. SNK Playmore just distributed it in Japan.
Indeed, Fatal Fury has a "prequel" called "Street Smart". FF was conceived as an extension of this game's concept.
Very nice article and interview.
I think Sasuke vs Commander and Fantasy also deserve mention among their early innovative games.
I was one of those two!!!!Quote:
In total, SNK USA sold two NeoGeo Pocket units between the months of April and August in 1999. Two.
I bought my NGP directly from SNK in May 99 along with all the games they had. :)
But ummmm.... it was a NGPC that I got directly from them. And I know it was in May because I brought it along with me for the Plane trip to Europe at the end of June in '99. So there's another error in their report.
No wonder the person who took my order seemed so lost at the time.
Nice article.
Have they done these developer histories before or is this the first one?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick
They did an article on Konami before, although it had bit more factual errors than this one.
aye. Zero is one of them! :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Almaci
Theyve been doing articles like this for years - mostly these long articles from a guy named Geoff Keighley who writes about a single game. They are very good articles. The one that sticks out in my mind is Daikatana's.Quote:
Have they done these developer histories before or is this the first one?
Anyway, yea, this sort of thing isn't anything new.
Now if SNK would just stop making games on the MVS everything would be fine.
Rather interestingly, one of the player characters in SS resembles (probably is) a younger Takuma Sakazaki. I doubt this is just a coincidence. If I had to guess, SS's story may be 20 years before AoF's timeline.Quote:
Originally Posted by Recap
That would place Street Smarts in the 50s, considering the original Art of Fighting took place during the 70s (before SNK retconned that idea for the KoF games).Quote:
Originally Posted by gameoverDude
Street Smart and Garou Densetsu / Ryuuko no Ken are not related in the story at all.
I was asking about developer histories specifically. It seems they did one before - in 1997. The ones you are talking about are the "History of Street Fighter"-type articles, not comprehensive histories of one developer.Quote:
Originally Posted by diffusionx
Yeah. That was a bad ass article.
Thanks for the link.