Penny Arcade

There are parts of this dream that make no sense to me and then there are parts that are fairly obvious. It is no surprise that I am excited about SWG for example. Some people though have asked why in the hell I would want it to come out on the Neo. Well I don’t. I think the reason the Neo is in the dream is because I have spent a lot of time thinking about SNK vs. Capcom: Chaos lately. In case you have not been following this game it’s a vs. style fighter made by Playmore (SNK) for the Neo-Geo hradware. Playmore just released some new info about it the other day. Here are the character rosters for both the SNK and Capcom sides.

A couple pretty interesting choices I think. Earthquake and Shiki on the SNK side might seem like odd choices to those of you who are only familiar with the King of Fighters games. Earthquake appeared back in Samurai Shodown 1, 2 and then in the RPG. I think it’s cool they picked him for the roster but I think Shiki is the real treat on the SNK side. You would have to be a pretty hardcore SNK fan to really be into here as she has not made her way into many games. She first appeared in Samurai Shodown 64. This was one of the first games to come out for the doomed Hyper 64 arcade system from SNK. The technology was designed to bring their popular 2D franchises into the 3D world but it never caught on with gamers. She popped up later in Samurai Spirits on the NGPC and a couple other games. She is one of the coolest female characters in any 2D fighter with her twin Wakizashis and I’m really excited to see her brought back for SvC:Chaos.

On the Capcom side the surprises are Hugo and Tabasa. Now I am assuming that “Tabasa” is actually Tessa from Red Earth (A.K.A. Warzard, the first game for Capcom’s CPS III hardware) and Pocket Fighter. SNK must really like her as they also chose her for the Capcom roster in Card Fighters clash on the NGPC. If you aren’t familiar with her you should pick up Pocket fighter for the PSX as finding a Red Earth machine is all but impossible. Hell you should go buy Pocket fighter even if you are familiar with her, it’s a fucking awesome game. Just don’t ever play Tycho at it.

Hugo first appeared back in the day in a little game called Final fight. He showed up again in Street Fighter Alpha 3 in the background of Cody’s stage. He became a playable character in Street Fighter 3 Second Impact and Third Strike.  SF3 was a game that I missed in the arcade but really enjoyed when it popped up on the Dreamcast. Here is another game that used Capcom’s underappreciated CPS III hardware. If you still have a DC lying around I highly recommend picking up a copy. SF3 is a throwback to the good old days of SF. It has much simpler play mechanics, without all the flash and hyper-special-super stuff that the Alpha series ushered in and the vs. games beat to death.

The rest of the rosters are pretty standard. I mean there are certain characters that just HAVE to be there. You need Kyo, Iori, Terry and Mai on the SNK side and you need Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li on the Capcom side. They really didn’t have a choice there. The rest of the characters like Guile, Dhalsim and Ryo are cool picks but nothing out of the ordinary. I would have loved to have seen them make more choices like Shiki and Hugo. It would have been awesome to see characters like Ukyo, Galford, Guy or Rose show up in SvC:Chaos. I’m really happy with the rosters as they are though and I’m dying to see some screen shots of the game. If they Playmore can pull off a fighter that matches the overall quality of Mark of the Wolves they will have a real winner on their hands.  MoTW came out nearly three years ago and proved that the Neo-Geo still had the power to compete with modern systems where 2D fighters were concerned. No game since then for the Neo has looked as good or played as well in my opinion. Playmore has the opportunity here to breathe new life into the hardware. Let’s see if they do it.

-Gabe out