When do you think SNK's Fighters started to become really good?

[SNK416]

SS1 and SS2

 

[Ip Man]

previous posts have already said it. fatal fury 2 was good enough to compete with street fighter 2. where as fatal fury special and samurai shodown 2 was arguably better then capcom's groundbreaking fighter. and even art of fighting 2 could of been snk's definitive fighter of the era if it wasn't for the crazy shit a i.

but for me snk fighters was always top notch from the start. love the atmosphere and the final fight style presentation of fatal fury 1.

 

[Xian Xi]

KOF94, changed the game.

 

[ysselcneogeo]

I think around 96 is when the Neogeo games really showed how powerful the hardware was. Early Neogeo games really look like snes games or games that could easily be pulled off on 16 bit consoles with special chips. Things like Samurai Shodown 4, Last Blade and Metal Slug are when you really understand how amazing the neogeo is and was.

Granted it makes you think that if the snes just had higher clock speed and ram would the neo of kept up? The mode 7 and transparencies of the snes truly did make for some beautiful games on weak hardware. All its late games look stunning as well.

 

[neo-geo-mvs]

For me it was King of Fighters '94, World Heroes and Fatal Fury Special. I loved these games bitd and still do. Classics!

 

[Samuray]

The first Fatal Fury game was pretty meh IMO

Well, to me the first "Fatal Fury" was absolutely magical, atmosphere-wise. Sure, it didn't play as nicely as "Street Fighter II" on SNES, but everything else about it was a dream come true. You could clearly see Terry Bogardvwaering blue jeans instead of some non-descript pixel pants!!! And the stages....the music....

Gameplay-wise things started to be pretty awesome with "King of Fighters '94" for me.....many many ours were spent on that by me and my friends back in the day.

 

[Wachenroder]

Arranged version is awesome too

oh that is bad ass. Thank you for introducing it to me.

 

[Yagyu Jubei]

Fatal Fury Special and Samurai Shodown 2 are among the best SNK ever made.

Another +1 on this. FFS is prolly one of the most balanced fighters I ever played.

 

[Missile]

Another +1 on this. FFS is prolly one of the most balanced fighters I ever played.

In multiplayer yes but the AI isn't very good. It reads your inputs *very* obviously. The only way I could beat the CPU was to use trick moves or the same sequences of moves. More of a puzzle than a fighting game in 1 player.

It is impressive how low a price you can buy FFS for now. At the time it was an exciting game, very sought after.

I agree with SS2 being when SNK started to peak. Also as a Street Fighter fan, I remember seeing AOF in the arcade and being blown away by how that looked - with the huge sprites and scaling. The gameplay wasn't so great as SS or SF but on a quick play you didn't notice or care.

 

[ebinsugewa]

If you judge the worth of a fighting game based on the single player I don't really know how to respond. Fighting game AI is like that in basically every early game. Try playing the CPU in the US version of Super Turbo and tell me how you feel afterwards. And that's probably the best fighting game ever made.

 

[ArcadeAlmond]

Seems to be a lot of mention of Samurai Shodown 2. My first thoughts of best early figher would have been kof 95 or SS2. Seems they came out around same year. My personal favorites are probably Garou MOTW and Waku Waku 7 as I just really like playing those. Garou is not an earlier release I think.

I believe Waku Waku 7 is one of the earlier ones, but it certainly didn't have the impact of a KOF or SS game.

 

[Electric Grave]

I think around 96 is when the Neogeo games really showed how powerful the hardware was. Early Neogeo games really look like snes games or games that could easily be pulled off on 16 bit consoles with special chips. Things like Samurai Shodown 4, Last Blade and Metal Slug are when you really understand how amazing the neogeo is and was.

Granted it makes you think that if the snes just had higher clock speed and ram would the neo of kept up? The mode 7 and transparencies of the snes truly did make for some beautiful games on weak hardware. All its late games look stunning as well.

lol, you really know nothing. Pair up Fatal Fury Special or any other Fatal Fury SNES vs the Neo counterpart, do the same for World Heroes or Art of Fighting...come on! SNES is awesome, I love it but there's no way man, you either don't know what you're talking about or you haven't been paying attention.

Now let's not even go with Samsho on SNES...lol.

 

[FilthyRear]

lol, you really know nothing. Pair up Fatal Fury Special or any other Fatal Fury SNES vs the Neo counterpart, do the same for World Heroes or Art of Fighting...come on! SNES is awesome, I love it but there's no way man, you either don't know what you're talking about or you haven't been paying attention.

Now let's not even go with Samsho on SNES...lol.

ARCADE PERFECTION!

 

[Electric Grave]

It should be called Samsho Jr. instead...

 

[evil wasabi]

Sam Sho 1 was amazing back in 1993. It took a flying shit over Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat 2.

Otherwise, it wasn't until 1995 that KoF gave SNK another fighting game series that was worth playing.

 

[Electric Grave]

All over MKII for sure, SFII not so much. Samsho had this very stiff kicking, it's alsmost as if the kicks were useless, I know, I know, why kick when you...have a sword? but yeah the whole kick system in samsho 1 was rather odd, it did get better on samsho 2 but I feel SNK finnaly figured out no one is kicking on the series 'cause we have a freaking sword and hey I don't blame them, all samshos should have the button config from samsho 5, that D maneuver button it's the shit!

A: Slash
B: Heavy Slash
C: Kick
D: Dodge

I guess they took on cue from Samsho 3 and 4 but 5 it's just great on the button layout, not saying it's a better game, it isn't, 2 is still the best, even with the kick shenanigans 2 is so damn good that it doesn't matter. The fix made for Samsho 3 was awesome though, it makes the game so much better, Samsho 3 feels like a real sword duel (Not that I would know what a real sword duel is like anyway but at least in a the video game scheme of things that how it should feel...) Samsho 3 is so awesome...The whole series is awesome, really brought something different to the table and gave Capcom a run for their money.

KOF 94 was a dream come true when it was advertised...it wasn't until '95 that I felt they hit it on the nail, I love '94, really do, it's fantastic but '95 is just a pinnacle in every single way.

 

[FinalbossNYC]

many sink titles were fantastic before it but KOF 94 is when no fighting fan could dispute SNK was making a better fighter.
Also MK games always were just shock and gimmick fighters to me even when I enjoyed them.

 

[Vigormortis]

Samurai Shodown was the first Neo Geo game that could attract my tokens away from the Street Fighter II cabs.

 

[Xian Xi]

Play Sam Sho 2 as a 6 button fighter and it will blow your mind.

 

[Electric Grave]

I'm gonna have to MAME it up to make that happen. I've done it before out of curiosity, even before I joined this place or we talked about it years ago. I still remember Rainbo's cab. I've done it for a few games, even World Heroes Perfect. I should spend some serious time with it though.

 

[oliverclaude]

Play Sam Sho 2 as a 6 button fighter and it will blow your mind.

This should proof to be excellent, thanks for the counsel. Maybe it was a compromise from the get-go, as only four buttons were at disposal.

 

[Xian Xi]

This should proof to be excellent, thanks for the counsel. Maybe it was a compromise from the get-go, as only four buttons were at disposal.

You just need 4 diodes(2 on the 3rd and 6th buttons) that connect to A+B and C+D. It's not hard to do.

 

[Vigormortis]

You just need 4 diodes(2 on the 3rd and 6th buttons) that connect to A+B and C+D. It's not hard to do.

Oooh, I'm definitely gonna try this if I ever find a 6 button panel... or if I give up and sell off the Neo Candy to buy an Astro City.

 

[Missile]

If you judge the worth of a fighting game based on the single player I don't really know how to respond. Fighting game AI is like that in basically every early game. Try playing the CPU in the US version of Super Turbo and tell me how you feel afterwards. And that's probably the best fighting game ever made.

I don't but in those days the single player experience was very important too. You can't say it wasn't - especially if you had spent $150 or whatever it cost on a home cart, unless you want to get your buddy over every day to get your money's worth. I used to play SF2 on the Jap SNES for hours in single player. I had friends over sometimes but it was once a week at most. I never actually thought that SF reading was inputs back then, but with FFS the illusion is not there at all - it's just obviously reading your inputs and the CPU will just do the same move every time in response to a particular one of your moves. I'm not disagreeing it's a good game otherwise.

I think around 96 is when the Neogeo games really showed how powerful the hardware was. Early Neogeo games really look like snes games or games that could easily be pulled off on 16 bit consoles with special chips. Things like Samurai Shodown 4, Last Blade and Metal Slug are when you really understand how amazing the neogeo is and was.

Granted it makes you think that if the snes just had higher clock speed and ram would the neo of kept up? The mode 7 and transparencies of the snes truly did make for some beautiful games on weak hardware. All its late games look stunning as well.

I understand what you're saying. Many of the early Neo Geo games didn't use a big color palette (they often just stuck to more or less the same 16 colors for a whole in-game character) . SNES games however made more use of the machine's palette and often had more colours on screen (e.g. check out a still from Super Ghouls + Ghosts, it can look beautiful at times and often better than the arcade original). So I agree that in some case stills from SNES games can look more impressive than Neo Geo games. But then you are ignoring the superior animation and larger sprite size in Neo Geo games, even in those early games.

 

[bravojohny]

With the launch of Fatal Fury Special and King of Fighters 94. SNK nailed it since.