Retro|Spective 127R: Street Fighter

[Neon Ignition]

It felt like the right idea but carried out by the wrong era of the team. SNK of before the 2000's or the SNK of today would do a better serving job

[endo]

Pretty sure the first time I ever played it was in the basement of Game Focus (RIP), and even from first impressions I was fairly underwhelmed.

First time I played it was on the battered cab in Game Focus too! This wasn't a bad game and I was fanboying SNK quite heavily at the time, so I played this a lot and imported the PS2 version. The core gameplay was solid, especially some of the combo-building, which was great. Overall, though, the presentation was a bit ****, frankly, and some of the backgrounds in particular clearly looked like they'd been knocked up quickly last minute to get the game out the door. SNK had died and reanimated by this point though, so not entirely surprising. But in the wake of the OTT Capcom games, this one was ultimately a little underwhelming. Would be nice to see what SNK could do with it now, but there again, it's not the same SNK (again).

[Neon Ignition]

Game 35 - SNK vs Capcom: Card Fighters Clash
Made for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, this game set aside the fighting action in favour of card battles using the characters from each companies. Released in two company focused versions, the game received a sequel branded third version which was really an expanded roster update following CvS2's release though this third version only saw release in Japan and the game was broadly very poorly recieved.







A good time on the Cards?

[Asura]

Game 35 - SNK vs Capcom: Card Fighters Clash
Made for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, this game set aside the fighting action in favour of card battles using the characters from each companies. Released in two company focused versions, the game received a sequel branded third version which was really an expanded roster update following CvS2's release though this third version only saw release in Japan and the game was broadly very poorly recieved.

A good time on the Cards?

Again, one of my absolute favourite games of all time, and definitely my favourite game on the NGPC. I had the Capcom version.

I had this during a period where I had a long commute, and it kept me sane morning and night on the bus for months. I went through so many batteries! But it's a fantastic game.

It's one of those games which received almost universal praise. Critics loved it; for years after you'd see critics casually drop it as the equal or better to anything similar on any other machine, even holding it in a similar space to Pokemon (it's just that good). That sprite art is gorgeous, even today, packing so much life into the card-art.

I still remember trading at my indie gameshop with someone to get Cyber-Akuma. If I remember, you had to get Akuma and Mecha-Zangief, and trade them backwards and forwards twice, and you'd get Cyber-Akuma too. Some great little touches like that.

Agreed on the sequel, it was a bit underwhelming, but it was hard to be sure as I only played it in 2021. Contemporary reviews are no kinder, though.

The worst part of its legacy, however, is the dire DS game which used the same name; honestly, I tried to get into it but just couldn't. It also apparently had a bug where it's unfinishable; they had to have a mail-in replacement service, and if you buy it, I think you have to look at whether the background art on the label is colour/monochrome to see if you have one of the broken ones.

[Nu-Eclipse]

Game 34 - SNK vs Capcom: SVC Chaos
A rare step again away from Capcom developed titles with SNK's own full scale attempt at marrying its characters and those of Street Fighter etc. Despite the inverted title it's a narrative sequel to CvS2 and adds a post-apocalypse spin to things. Playing like the King of Fighters games of its era, SvC focused on 1v1 fights and had a 36 fighter strong roster but the game was also thought to be a bit drab in presentation and the shift in gameplay styles threw some off.







Sheer Chaos after CvS2?

I got to know SVC Chaos a lot better, funnily enough, by playing a lot of it on the Neo•DS emulator that you could use on DS flashcards.

A flawed fighter for sure, but nowhere near as bad as some people make it out to be. It's pretty much "KoF: SF Edition" and I'm okay with that.

Kudos to [MENTION=3220]endo[/MENTION] & [MENTION=3822]fuse[/MENTION] for the Game Focus shout-out, because that's where I first saw it too!

(Man, I really miss the likes of Game Focus & CEX Retro in that part of Soho.)

[Neon Ignition]

Game 36 - SNK vs Capcom: Card Fighters DS
Additional characters were added to the game from both companies for this DS based sequel which famously has the game breaking bug. Even without that though the game wasn't on course to be that well received making it a down note for this pairing to end on.







Royally flushed down the toilet?

[Asura]

Game 36 - SNK vs Capcom: Card Fighters DS
Additional characters were added to the game from both companies for this DS based sequel which famously has the game breaking bug. Even without that though the game wasn't on course to be that well received making it a down note for this pairing to end on.

Royally flushed down the toilet?

Bad. Just bad. Textbook bad sequel, which was both entirely different to its forebear and worse in practically every way.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 37 - Tatsunoko vs Capcom
Released in two versions, depending on region due to localisation and licensing issues, the game came out and then when internationally launched edited and reissued with the new content. TvC simplified the battle system for the Wii and was quit well received but the licensing was so obscure it made it the hardest of these types to market.








Great stuff or a stretched addition?

[Asura]

I never played this one; just because I didn't want to get a specific controller for the Wii.

[Neon Ignition]

I know it has its fans but this was a short lived one for me. Didn't care at all about the Tatsunoko side of things and though they'd simplified it well it was none the less simplified. It's more a Wii curio than something worth sinking time into too much

[fuse]

I consider myself among its fans and even I will admit I didn't play it as much as I should've. Having to get a stick for a system where there weren't many other reasons to have a stick, and in turn a low number of online players meant this got majorly overlooked. Would love for it to get ported elsewhere, but given the licensing costs involved I can't ever see it happening. Forever gutted for it.

[Nu-Eclipse]

I enjoyed playing TvC for the short time that I did play it, but [MENTION=3822]fuse[/MENTION] pretty much nails the reasons that the interest waned.

The coin-op was basically equivalent to Wii tech so that makes the Wii port understandable, but yeah Capcom messed up by not making it a multi-format game and the limited sales of both the original Japanese and the Western-adapted Wii games don't warrant the re-licensing to re-release it or make a sequel so it's easy to see why Capcom were happy to let TvC die.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 38 - Street Fighter X Tekken
Now ten years old and using the tag system, this was a more notable crossing of fighter franchises and planned as part of a two game project even if this would be the only one of the two to see release barring the rpg games. The game was broadly well received but drew criticism for the sale of on disc DLC and it underperformed commercially. In total the fullest version of the game held a healthy roster of 55 fighters.









Xcellent or just made you Cross?

[Asura]

Game 38 - Street Fighter X Tekken
...
The game was broadly well received but drew criticism for the sale of on disc DLC and it underperformed commercially. In total the fullest version of the game held a healthy roster of 55 fighters.
Xcellent or just made you Cross?

Mixed throughts about this one.

Firstly, there were two DLC issues. The first was, as you've said, that they charged for DLC that was present on the actual disc. While I understand the production concerns that can lead to this kind of thing happening, this was a huge PR blunder for them, because most people outside the dev bubble just see it as being charged for something they already "have". Secondly, there was something; I don't remember exactly, but some sort of consumable DLC you could buy? Gems or something which socketed into characters, and you needed to unlock them. I don't remember the terminology. You could do it in-game and I think buy it outright but it led to a problem where, if you play this at a fighting game tournament, you can't easily cater to the options people might want to choose (this is one of the reasons why any serious competitive fighter will have a Versus mode where everything is unlocked from the get-go, save for non-tournament things like AI-only-bosses).

Secondly, even putting aside the "on-disc DLC", Capcom were up to their old Morrigan Sprite tricks again. They insisted that the character models, animations etc. weren't the same type as in Street Fighter IV and weren't transferred over but remade; however this must've been a miscommunication to a PR person as very quickly, players unpacked the game and could compare them, and yes, while they'd had shader and texture work and some anims were changed, the bulk of the SF fighter content had been ported from SFIV - a fact that was kinda nailed to the mast when Poison was brought over into Ultra Street Fighter IV along with several of the SFxT stage backdrops.

I don't think it ever escaped its biggest issue; that Street Fighter IV was out, and was popular with fans. When X-Men Vs. Street Fighter ushered in the Vs games, those titles had really wild mechanics that made their experience very different to playing Street Fighter Alpha. They might've re-used many of the older game's assets but they added so much to the core gameplay that few people (that I can recall) complained of them being new money for old rope.

Street Fighter x Tekken had that problem. It felt like we were being sold a game where we already owned half the content. Then, some of the additional content was on the disc, but we had to pay extra for it. Then there was a mechanic which seemed like it had been created to manufacture a reason for them to ask for more money with minimal effort (essentially the equivalent of what Team Ninja did, asking for real money to unlock hair colours for fighters in DoA6, where each colour is likely to be as simple as 2 colour values and an artist could crank out 5000 colour combinations in an day with a spreadsheet).

If you got past all that, the game was fine. Actually pretty good. I played a fair bit of it, and I loved Capcom's interpretation of the Tekken characters. But I was pretty hardcore into competitive SFIV at the time and felt playing something so similar but different would screw up my game.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 39 - Cannon Spike
We dance a little around Japan mobile titles and the next game is itself a tenuous entry as a top down shooter action game, albeit one with Charlie and Cammy in lead roles. Characters from several other Capcom titles and one original character made up the rest of the roster and the game focused mostly on boss battles. Being an arcade game though it is a short length title and arriving on Dreamcast at the very end of its life meant few played it








An all-star hit?