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GameSpot Recaps 25-Year History of SNK
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "GameSpot has offered up an amazingly in-depth history of SNK -- the company behind such classic games as Ikari Warriors, Fatal Fury, and King of Fighters, as well as the NeoGeo hardware system. The 39-page retrospective covers nearly every aspect of the company's 25-year history and includes an annotated list of key SNK titles, trivia, insider interviews, hardware comparisons, screenshots, promotional art, and more."
They simply made _THE BEST_ 2D fighting games, ever. :)
They were unique and stylish, as always.. SNK shall live on!
I think Crystalis was one of my favourite Nintendo games. It also never seemed to be very popular either. Maybe the company is cursed?
Sasuke Vs Commander, which was SNK's first color machine.
"You're getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic."
"Thank you, Master Control"
-Sark and the MCP
No, see, Duke Nukum was released in 1991, while Metal Slug wasn't released until 1996. However, if you are talking about Duke Nukem 3D, which was also released in 1996, albeit January 29th, you still could not say that Metal Slug X, which was released in 1999, was its its influence.
Same with the characters. Marco (one of the two guys you could pick in Metal Slug X, and the only character in Metal Slug), was invisioned way after Duke Nukum had been released.
So, either Duke Nukum influenced the Metal Slug series, or there was no influence at all.
somehow, the standard controllers that were given with the XBox on their launch seems very small compared to the original joysticks you got with the NeoGeo.
Well, that's probably because they were, but you can't directly compare them. The Neo Geo AES shipped with arcade joysticks, a fundamentally different type of controller than MS's (and the rest of the current industry's) gamepads. SNK also made gamepads for the Neo Geo systems and they were about the size of a Sega Genesis or Super NES pad (which means smaller than the Xbox gamepad).
I always loved the aesthetic design of the Neo Geo AES and its controllers, though. They're these sort of monolithic black slabs, very large but with subtle curves that make them look a lot smaller than they are. The system itself is so sleek that I thought it was about the smallest system I owned, until I stuck it on a shelf with the rest of my collection and discovered it's just the opposite - as large as an Atari 5200, much larger than a PS2, as deep and wide as an Xbox (though not as tall - unless it has a cartridge in it!). It's truly about the pinnacle of industrial design in the game console industry.
The NeoGeo actually felt like bringing the arcade coin-ops in your home , allthough it has never reached any recognition over here (the Netherlands).
Well it didn't get any recognition here (in the US) either. It's one of those things that nobody bought at the time but now that the company's got such respect, everybody claims to be major fans. It's really a bandwagon thing. But there are still relatively few of these systems out there and they're still quite expensive, so I have to always scratch my head at the sheer number of people claiming to have these vivid Neo Geo memories these days. I suppose the arcade machines were more ubiquitous but the home systems were never particularly popular. (I acquired mine through trade; I could have never justified the cost otherwise.)
Oh, and the Neo Geo AES didn't just feel like bringing arcade coin-ops home, that is in fact what you were doing. The home carts were exactly the same as the arcade carts except for the pinouts (in fact adapters exist to let you play the arcade carts on a home machine - they just adapt the pinouts). There's no technical reason why the pinouts were different, either, it was strictly so SNK could charge more for the home carts, as the arcade carts were quite cheap - the idea being to make the money in arcades on the machines themselves, whereas at home it was just the opposite.