The History of SNK

[Johnny]

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

[Rhydant]

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.

isnt that Reno?

[burgundy]

Yes.

Andrew, you've got no chance. I'll take him at Soul Calibur II and any other fighting game.

Snap!

[seen]

Great account of history. A lot of stuff I didn't even know. A lot of you kids would do well to learn it.

[Rocca]

Great account of history. A lot of stuff I didn't even know. A lot of you kids would do well to learn it.

[Johnny Undaunted]

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).

[Almaci]

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.

[Zerodash]

...I'm just waiting for the "SNK Sucks" statements to begin...

[Roufuss]

...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 decade

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).

[Recap]

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.