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Farewell to SNK
pliew writes: "There's a good article over at classic gaming with a reader's digest version of the history of SNK. I'm sure all readers here have at one point experienced video games on the neogeo console."
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No mention of Crystalis, one of the best (only?) action RPGs for the NES. Zelda was good, but Crystalis was different in that it actually had a storyline with dialogue, something USA gamers wouldn't really see again until Final Fantasy 2 for SNES. At the time, it was surprising to see the game coming from SNK, whose past games were nothing like it (read: Ikari Warriors).
I was always hoping SNK might do a follow-up version for Neo-geo.. oh well.
If you had actually played games *other than* the ones on your Atari, you may have heard of them. :)
SNK survived mostly because of their arcade business. With the fall of the arcades, companies whos business relies on the arcades are dying.
SNK made very good arcade games, but good games arent enough to by profitable when you compete with Sonys and Microsofts.
Sega seems to be in the same situation SNK was in, and that Atari was in before SNK.
Can Sega survive on games alone? SNK couldnt do it, Atari managed to do it just barely, while Sega has good games, will people buy them?
IF people didnt buy them for Dreamcast Segas own system, will they buy them for PSX, Xbox, or Gamecube?
I dont know
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
what is TBFD?
Sure, all companies - like all organizations, teams, governments, clans, and so forth - are ultimately temporary, no matter how long they do last. It is sad to see the good ones go, but like (current) people, they do eventually die. But that does not mean their lives must be in vain.
Support the ones you like. Let the lessons they demonstrated be applied to new forms. Find out why they died, and if you are ever in a similar position, learn from their mistakes and their sucesses.
Celebrate the dead, perhaps. Does anyone know the legal status of SNK's games now? If they are now abandonware, then play those and encourage others to do likewise instead of playing the worst of what's new, such that SNK's products may set an eternal minimum quality bar for all future games of that nature. (No, I'm not advocating ripping them off to drive them out of business, just saying what we should do now that they are. If they were still in business, they could keep improving. It's kind of like harvesting fruit and wood from a tree that has been knocked down.)
Death is a part of the cycle of life. But make sure it is a cycle, and not just a one-shot: recycle its bits into new births; don't let its death erase the good in it from existance. The degree to which it can live on is the degree to which it will have mattered, and the degree to which it is immortal...
That game would have to be one of SNK's worst.
Their port to the NES of this rather classic arcade game was messed up. IIRC, you had a gun, four lives, and baddies ambushing you from everywhere. Sure, you could get into a tank - until it ran out of fuel. It was nearly impossible to dodge the flying bullets and IIRC, you died with one shot.
You thought CONTRA was hard? Ikari Warriors makes Contra look like Barney's Hide 'n' Seek in terms of difficulty. Levels are ridiculously long, to the point where the music is like sandpaper to your ears. If you didn't know the continue code, the game was IMPOSSIBLE to beat on a normal NES. And, to further insult the player, they made the continue code 'ABBA'
I actually slogged through this game. I fought through wave after wave of pallet-swapped enemies, entrenched machine guns, grenades..
I got to the third level, which consisted of cyan platforms and black water or oil. I slogged through it, and as I approached the end, I took a wrong turn and wound up at a dead end. See, SNK's programmers had learned how to make the screen scroll UP, but not how to scroll the screen DOWN.
so I was stuck there.
I still have the cartridge. It glows with an evil red aura.
I think SNK was a dream for a lot of people back when it came out late 80s. Unfortunately, 500 bucks for a home system and up to 250 dollars per game was waaay out of many people's budget mine included. However, SNK built the system to last, and last it did. I just bought Mark of the Wolves for DC, one of the greatest, last, and largest of the SNK games. The mvs cartridge will still run on hardware that is 13 years old. I found one of my really old gamepro magazines, and they have a picture of the old home system. (right next to a pic of the 'new' sega genesis) I'll never forget how I felt looking at that machine, and that feeling never went away.
Goodbye SNK, goodbye terry bogard
The Neogeo wasn't intended to be owned by consumers. Originally it was only a coin-op platform. When demand.. demanded it, they released hte home version, but even that was intended to be rented out to consumers rather than sold to them. $600 is not so much for a rental place. Unfortunately who the hell wants to do that, so they would up just selling them.
It amazes me that as of 2000 people were still making new games (KOF2000, for instance) for this 10 year old hardware. And that they didn't look all that dated!
Though I have to say my favorite game for the neogeo (and really any platform) is Money Puzzle Exchanger. Such bliss!
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Sega is in a slightly different situation in that they are now (arguably) the world's biggest third party game development company (EA being the other candidate). This will be a great financial move for them. There are a lot of parallels to IBM. IBM started to lose it's dominance over the industry, and what saved them was, in effect, giving up on certain things.
IBM is now a stablizing force in the computer industry. They don't face as many risks as they used to by having all of their eggs in their own baskets. They've got their eggs in various baskets, not siding with the same company all the time. All they have to do is try to make sure no one gains too much power and watch their stock value climb. Let the others take the risks.
Granted, the rewards for them are smaller this way, but so are the risks, since there is less at stake for them.
This works the same way for Sega. Before, they had to try to push their own console, and compete with other companies in this arena. They had to compete in hardware and software. Also, if they made software for other consoles, they're simultaneously generating revenue for their direct competitors (through licensing fees) and making the appeal of their own consoles (great Sega games) smaller. And to top it all off, they were starting to get a bad reputation in terms of supporting their own hardware.
They don't have to worry about any of these things any more. They just have to focus on making great games. Let the other folks sweat that Microsoft is getting into the game industry. Sega's potential user base is huge, now (with all the different consoles they are supporting). As long as one console doesn't win and create a monopoly, they are on a good course. And they can take actions to prevent this from happening.
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
Definitely. I've heard that many people didn't like SNK 2-D fighters like KOF because they felt too "Japanese," and because the control of SNK's fighters was not as lenient as Capcom's responsive controls, but I like them a lot. I prefer many games in Capcom's Street Fighter series, but SNK's 2-D fighters were great IMO.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.