Retronauts - 684: SNK Vs. Capcom

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Now it's time to have the REAL answer: who is THE STRONGEST!? Diamond Feit? Kevin Bunch? John Learned? TheSeventhForce? We're ALL winners when we remember the SNK vs CAPCOM series of fighting games. Break up with basic browsers. Get Opera GX here: https://operagx.gg/Retronauts Sponsored by Opera GX! Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts 

This episode of Retronauts is brought to you by Opera GX. This week in Retronauts. This is a podcast for making. This is a podcast for making. This is a podcast for making podcast time. This is a podcast for making. This is a podcast for making. This is a podcast for making podcast.

Hello, welcome back to Retronauts, and welcome to this very special episode. It could not have started any differently than that. Yes. After our episodes last year, you're detailing the Capcom Marvel Universe, episode 608, and then the Marvel Capcom series 651, today we've arrived at the blockbuster, really, the series that took two different companies and said, you know what, let them fight, let us fight, because the two companies work together in this to agree to use each other characters in a magical crossover that I'm

calling S&K versus Capcom, because that's where my allegiance lies, sorry, sorry, spoiler for that one, but it's cute how each company made their own games, and in each company's games, they gave themselves top billing. It's adorable. It's adorable how corporations work that way. But, you know me, I'm Diamond Fight. Let's go on with our guests. So first, our returning guest from the great state of Ohio. Right on a Great Lake. Hi, I'm John Lernett, and a friend in need is a friend indeed. Thank you. And from the also great state of Maryland? Uh, it's Kevin Bunch and I'll stain my hands with your blood. Oh my God, don't know.

That's impossible to get out, Kevin. Don't do it. And joining us for the first time from New York, I think. Yes, New York City. Yes. Um, I'm Drew. I run a YouTube channel called The Seven Forest, and I mostly do retrospectives on fighting games, but particularly the Capcom versus games.

Wonderful. Thank you, George. I do not have a funny thing to say that I couldn't think of anything. Oh, that's the good thing about, like, podcasting about fighting games. You can just sort of cherry pick your favorite win quote as your weird pithy thing to say. Oh, man, I should... Well, I felt like I had like the wubbo-wob quote in mind, but I felt like that was a little too... A little too obvious.

You're in the pink today? Really? Yeah, right. Exactly. Hey, hey, I did that bit for a Fed of Fury episode. No, no copying. Anyway, we're here because as, as Capcom has been very generously, going back to their past catalog

and bringing things back from our audience is they've already announced Capcom Fighting Collection 2 which amongst its many titles includes their entries in the Capcom S&K series along with other games

that are related like Street Fighter 3 Upper and some Powerstones and Capcom fighting jam because I guess someone wants that and you know since we already had our episodes on the Marvel series last year

now it's time to talk about CapcomSXK I should also point out that we're this in early February 2025, Capcom has already announced a Capcom spotlight in the coming days where they might even announce the release date for this collection. So if the release date is a known property, we'll just add it in right here in like a robot voice as I hold my, you know, bottom from my mouth. It's releasing on May 16. Boy, I can't wait to play it. Yes. I'll be right there on day one. Same. Very excited.

I wonder what President Trump will say. So, how did we get here? How do we get here? Well, let's start with the tail of the tape. Whenever two companies fight, we need to talk about who those companies are. So, let's start with the blue corner, Capcom.

And for those you don't know, Capcom was originally founded in 1979 as IRM. And if you're saying, hey, that sounds like IRM. Well, guess what? Kenzel Tsuchimoto, the founder of Capcom, also founded IREM. So he had a thing. He had a thing that he was going on there.

Although apparently IBM didn't like the name very much, which is one reason why they eventually moved on to different names, because IBM's like, hey, three letters with an I and an M. I think we own that, sir. Anyway, the Capcom that we know officially started in 1983, and Capcom, by the way, not short for Captain Commando. No, that's a marketing gimmick. The actual abbreviation was for capsule computers. That's the official origin of the name. But whatever, they've been Capcom for 40 years now, so that's just what it is. I like the idea that they fouled themselves as Captain Commando, though, just right off the bat.

Like, this weird guy, this is our, this is us. It's based in Osaka. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a man walking around Osaka this very day who calls himself Captain Commando. Everyone's like, yep, yes, sir. Anyway, Capcom's first official game is Vogueous, which, you know, as was a style of at a time. It was a zvias-style shooter. I was very surprised to learn

that S&K actually published the North American version of Vulgus, so you know, a foreshadowing of future events. But really, I would, I guess I'd say, the sky's the limit for Capcom. I think that they've been on a basic trajectory ever since, like, growing over time. They had arcade successes throughout

the 80s. They started on consoles. They found great success on consoles. Like, Mega Man is 87. And they started, you know, at first they, like, outsourced their cop console games, But eventually, like, no, no, we can do this. And they start doing it themselves, and they start making their own console games. And all of a sudden, I think they realized pretty early on that, oh, the console game's kind of more money than the arcade game, isn't it?

But, hey, somewhere in there, they also invent Street Fighter 2, which radically, I want to say reinvents, but also kind of invents the fighting game that we know of. And also saves the arcade market for a little bit in the West, too. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the arcade market was already kind of fading a little bit at the end of the 80s, early 90s, and the next. Street Fighter 2 says, hey, you like this, right? And for another five, six years, everyone says, yes, we like this until the inevitable again. It's less of a shot in the arm and more of a punch buggy right to your... What's the thing that Phoenix does, where she gets really powerful, but then her life just starts draining faster?

It's like... She can't control it. X factor, yeah. She's back for a little while. But yeah, that's Capcom. You know Capcom. Everyone listened to this podcast has probably played at least three Capcom games in their lifetime, I'm getting. I think it's a safe bet, safe bet for me.

Meanwhile, in the red corner, because of their early cabinets were red, S&K. S&K for the record stands for Shin-Nihon Kikaku, which I would translate as New Japan Program, New Japan Progress Possibilities. Kikaku is kind of a funny word. However, they have been officially known as S&K since 1986. They dropped the Japanese long version in the early 80s. And like Capcom, the original, originally based here in Osaka. Actually, S&K was born in Sousita, which is a city right north of Osaka. And they had their HQ there right up until 2023.

Only recently did they relocate to the city proper itself. So these days, both Capcom and S&K are in the city of Osaka. I don't know how close the headquarters are. I hope they're very close. I hope they can throw paper airplanes at each other. That'd be really funny to me. Marvel and D.C. They were like across the street from each other in New York City.

Are they really? Oh, that makes sense. Well, at least they used to be. I don't think they used to anymore. Yeah. Anyway, as a case, first game is kind of asterisk minefield because they had earlier games that were just like breakout clones. And their first official game is Osma Wars, which is basically Space Invaders. It's very close to Space Invaders with like one extra gimmick.

Some of those things actually call their first game, Sasker v. Commander, which is 1980. I mean, that's also, it's kind of a more original game, but also it's kind of Space Invaders again, so. But it has boss fights, which is very unique for the time. Yes, I think it's safe to say that S&K invented boss fights, and they also never let us forget that, because, wow, S&K bosses are a thing, and we'll talk about that later. Oh, yeah. S&K doesn't have the success that Capcom does. They certainly have lots of arcade hits, but the console hits, I think, are fewer and far between.

They also do a lot of farming out. They don't make as many home console games as Capcom does. I think they do Crystallis. Crystalis is certainly a very unusual game for the NES that S&K makes themselves good on them and has its fans. I'm not entirely sold on the sword-switching thing, but whatever. You did baseball stars. That's good. Yeah.

I think for most S&K fans like myself, the Real Magic comes in 1990 when S&K says, you know what, we're going to make our own console and it's our own arcade platform. And the two are basically going to work together. So instead of getting home versions of arcade games, you're just going to get the arcade game in your home, giant ROM cartridge and all. And it's going to be stupid expensive. And, you know, spoilers, it doesn't really work out for them financially. But if you're there or if you pick it up on the cheap at the end of the 90s like I did, you are in for a really good time because I'm still, I'm still out here pledging my life to NeoGeo games. I love them so much.

And S&K as a company doesn't really last. They have serious problems throughout the 90s. They're bought out. They eventually go bankrupt to 2001, but immediately the original team forms a new company called Playmore, and they go over there, and they start to buy their old properties from the old company. So the S&K we know today is basically a rebranding of the S&K Playmore that was birthed in the bankruptcy of the original S&K. I don't know. It's kind of like a Cleveland Brown situation, except the other S&K didn't really. go anywhere. It just died, you know, so there's no Baltimore Ravens in this scenario. I'm sorry. This is a

mixed metaphor. I'm sorry, John. I don't like that it went this way. I'm sorry, John. I shouldn't mention that. But today, S&K is officially back. They're back in the game development game after a long time of just kind of like licensing out their stuff to like Bichinko makers and whoever wants to pay them for their licenses. But now, like, you know, K-O-15, or K-O-14, Kau of 15. As we record, this is a new, there's a new Fatal Fury on the way. There's a new art of fighting on the way, allegedly. They've released a new Samurai Showdown for the first time in like 20 years.

So, S&K. They announced the new Samurai Showdown, RPG, no less. Oh, my goodness. Oh, for real? Yeah. Like a month or so ago, they announced that's coming. I live under a large rocket. I think even before that, I think it was like a year or so ago.

They mentioned an action RPG Sam Show project. Like, I want to say like early 2023, late 2022. Sounds right. I think that now is like when they first showed like some key art off for it. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely coming. So both companies alive, I hope, are well, and they're rolling. So what better time to talk about? Capcom, S&K, S&K, Capcom. So I've made my bones.

I want to start with, so John, John, where was your allegiance in the 90s, early 2000s? Gun to my head, I was pro Capcom in this case. You know, I had the NES, had a, I jumped from the NES to the Genesis pretty early on. and seeing Capcom games eventually finally show up in the Genesis was a like a heartwarming thing for me because like, you know, I was still pretty young. We probably bought our Genesis when I was like 11 or 12. And like I was already feeling like weird nostalgia. Like I remember those games from that company and they were good and Street Fighters good. I like that.

So, yeah, I really do love SNK. I always will and I would always sort of grab. toward the S&K fighting games after I had my fill of, like, Children of the Atom and ST and whatever. But if I had to choose one, if you're throwing me into a death match here, it's going to be Capcom. You're also wearing blue headphones, so I think we know. And a blue shirt. Okay. That's less evident on the cam, but I see it.

Literally wearing it on my sleeve, guys. Okay. Sorry. Kevin, I think, I don't know if I know the answer for you. I have a guess, but please tell us. It's probably an educated guess. So, you know, in the late 80s, early 90s, obviously I had a lot of Capcom exposure because I had an NES, et cetera. But as soon as I had my own income and could become an arcade rat, I became an S&K diehard.

And that has continued to now. I mean, I even have a Neo-Geo. I've got assorted bits and bobs all over the place. When these games were being announced, I was definitely more excited about the S&K side announcements than the Cap-Eau. com sides. So I know where I'm at. I know where my bread's buttered. And Gerald, please tell us, what were you in the late 90s, early 2000s? So I was definitely, I would straight up say I was a Capcom kid growing up. Not for, you know, disinterest in S&K or anything. It's just I grew up with primarily like Genesis and a Super Nintendo. I did have an NES and I did, funnily enough,

I did have Crystallus for that too. I didn't play much. but I did have that. But yeah, I was really exposed to just Capcom stuff on those platforms. I didn't really start getting in the S&K stuff until I started going like with Relatives Arcades and they would hog all of the Capcom machines. So I'd go to the big old red machine. I'll play this, this game with this guy with a heavy machine gun. And yeah, that's how I got exposed to it.

And then eventually like, I think a friend of mine in like 2001 got a NeoGeo Pocket color. And that, funnily enough, is kind of what put me on to, like, the greater library. And then I just kind of branched out to NeoGeo stuff from there. But, yeah, in my head, Capcom. Hang on, hang on. You had a friend that had a NeoGeo pocket color in 2001? Yeah, he wouldn't shut up about it. He got it like...

This guy's a hero. I think he got it on clearance. It came with, like, I forgot what they call them. Those big packs that came with, like, four games in like the really... Oh, the bundle pack? The blister packs, yeah. Yeah, the blisters. There we go.

And he wouldn't shut up about it. So I played it, and I see why he wouldn't. It was pretty fun. I had two friends in high school that had NeoGeo pocket colors when they came out, like 99, 2000. And you better believe they were extremely upset when S&K just abruptly said, oh, right, we're not only canceling all support for this, but we're like taking back all of our cartridges that we'd shipped to the U.S. to repurpose them for Japan. Yeah, I'd never even heard of it until probably like 0, 4, 05 at least when like some dude in a ratty, nasty Toledo game shop was like, ever see one of these, man? I'm like, I don't like where this conversation's going. But you should have.

It's an amazing piece of online. I, you know, it took retro knots for me to buy one. Like 10 years ago, we did an episode, we like, meaning Jeremy and Christian Nut did an episode about it. I'm like, I'll finally buy one of these. and I love it. It's great. I just wish I, I wish I listened to the advice of that ratty old weirdo. Oh, we've all been there. We've all been there. So, speaking of raddy old weirdos, how did we get here to the point where two companies decided to enjoy with another? Well, it starts as usual in Osaka, both companies have heard in Osaka, and they had a lot of crossover between them as far as people going from one to the other.

there were obviously some very high-profile departures. Takashi Nishiyama, who basically created Street Fighter 1 and Kung Fu Master and a lot of other games. He was an early S&K hire, which means he was the guy behind Fatal Fury, which is why Fatal Fury 1 looks so much like Street Fighter 1 and that Street Fighter 2. So at some point, Nishiyama on S&K spoke to Yoshiki Otomoto at Capcom, and he's like, hey, we should should do this. We should work together on this. We should, you know, license our characters to each other. And then they both went off to their respective bosses and basically sold them on the prospect. I suspect a lot of these guys were probably drinking together. I mean, it's Osaka. I really, I can't believe they wouldn't meet up at the same bar every now and then and say, hey, how's it going?

You're making any money? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because there's plenty of evidence that the two were aware of each other. Even though Capcom was a far larger company, you know, there were little seeds here and there showing that they were looking at the other company and seeing what they were doing and either trying those things for themselves or making fun of them. In the case of Dan Hibiki, who is very

clearly a Capcom character made to mock art of fighting in general based on his clothing and his ponytail and the fact that his moves don't go very far because he's out of spirit. And Kevin, you had a whole thing here that I didn't even notice about Yuri. Yuri turned to Nakumata point.

Yes, so Uri Sakazaki, Rio and Roberts, you know, third wheel, so to speak. So in the King of Fighters series, because they even made a new art of fighting in years and years, they've slowly been turning her into an Akima parody character, like, you know, giving her little moves here and there to the point where, oh, yeah, at one point she even had a raging demon for like K-OF 2001 that, if I remember, right, it was the official name. Yes, which was the same motion as the air inputs as the raging demon. And she'd charge up to him, the screen would flat, like, white out. You'd see all the hit sparks, and then she would pose.

But, yeah, it's at the point now where in the last couple of COF games. She's had, like, Akuma's dive kick. She's had his air fireball. Like, she had an air fireball before that, but now it functions the same way. And they even gave her a demon flip, which functions just like Akuma's demon flip. So she's, you could literally play her as like a rush down terror, like Akuma. And yeah, that's why she's continually been good. It's really funny that someone was like, you know what, this character's supposed to be a karate prodigy?

What if we, like, lead into that and just make her an absolute terror? I hope, like, if they do a Garo, like, art of fighting kind of thing where they just, they jump the timeline by like 10 or 20 years that she's actually a murderer or two. You know, I'm still calling Just really dig deep into it I'm still calling that the new Fatal Fury game needs to have her You know like 47 years old is the new like Ms. Karate Just a nightmare on the streets of South Town Make it happen S&K I need this

I'm behind this a thousand percent I'm really open for that As somebody that means year in like most KOF games I'm really hoping for that and I'm pretty sure One of the stages like I think it's the the gym stage I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be her gym So yeah, that could happen I'm pulling for it

We've also got some evidence that According to one of the many Oral histories over Polygon about this series and the Street Fighter series And all these games altogether That S&K staffers actually put Do you and Ken into QF98 While they were working on it

Just like as a joke But you know They were playing their own seats basically They're sort of just goofing off after hours A little other characters Not just Capcom characters They put Sungoku in there too, which is like, don't, don't threaten me with a good time, you know? That's just one of those things where like you probably, like, I'm sure everyone thinks that internally these companies are probably doing these things just to tinker with them and have their own little like what-of scenarios.

And that just confirms that, yes, they have been doing this. And I'm sure Capcom had probably put like, like, Rio or somebody else into like a street fighter game just just to test it out, just to. to kind of mess with it. You wish that those things continue to exist or not just on the cutting room floor, but, like, yeah, it's great to hear that a developer was actually doing one of those, something like that. That's just also heartwarming. Wasn't even the first fighting game to do that, if I'm remembering, right? I know Sega kind of did the same thing with Fighting Vipers, where there was like a board programmer

that just put Sonic and Tails in, and I think they showed it to the producer, then they showed it to use Suzuki, and then they showed it. showed it to Yuji Nak, and he's like, that's dope. If you guys do it, go ahead. You have my blessing. And that's how we got Sonic the Fighters. Awesome. Yeah, that's right. Jeremy here, if you're like me, you're old. And that means you probably use the internet the old people's way. Through a web browser on a computer, instead of being glued to your phone or in the surgically implanted Wi-Fi in your brain.

or whatever the kids are doing these days. But just because you're elderly and stuff doesn't mean you can't at least pretend you're young. That's why you should download Opera GX. The only browser that makes you feel like you're asking the internet, how do you do, fellow kids? It's the first browser that appears to have been made by Zoomers for Zoomers. Right now, OperaGX is offering a special deal

exclusively for Retronauts listeners. Download it and pretend that you're 20 years younger and hipper than you actually are. Opera GX is the only browser that makes you feel like you're surfing the web through the menu screen of a Battle Royale video game. I don't think that's an accident. It's a browser created specifically for video game fanatics.

It has an entire built-in feature called GX Corner, a custom site dedicated entirely to curating browser-based video games. Now, GX Corner isn't perfect. I looked and I couldn't find a single search result for the words Hanyankyo or Zevius. But if you're in the mood for interesting indie games of all varieties, GX Corner is a great way to stumble across new free games that you definitely would not have heard of if you relied on us old people at Retronauts for Discovery.

And it's highly geared toward current indie trends, not musty old ones that millennials like. There's entire tabs dedicated to roguelikes and card games, but not for Metroidvanias. Plus it gives you ways to trick out your browsing experience with tons of games. game-themed supplemental material, too, like custom browser mods and skins. Okay, so you've downloaded Opera GX and successfully camouflaged your browsing experience is that of someone half your age. Great. But at heart, you're still an old person, which means that you really just want to fill your day

with things that old people enjoy. For example, you probably loved a freebase video game history through the amazing NES works video series by your favorite retronaut, Jeremy Parrish. The great news is that Opera GX makes cranking up my viewership numbers to new heights easier than ever. You can take your current NESWorks episode with you everywhere you go on the web with OperaGX's video pop-out feature. Just click the GX button that appears at the top edge of a video, and you'll cause that video to break out the current tab and float in the corner of the screen, regardless of which other tabs you activate or which website you browse to.

It's like the way videos haunt you as you scroll down the page on Tumblr, except it happens everywhere on the internet. So thank you to Opera GX for sponsoring this episode and allowing me to remember what it was like to be young and have good metabolism. Enjoy the rejuvenating effects of the world's youngest-looking browser by using the link in this episode's description to download Opera GX today. Get a browser that's literally better at everything. Go to OperaGX.g.g.g.org slash retronauts.

it gets the first strike here because they release Essegay v. Capcom, the match of the millennium for the NeoGeo Pocket Color. Yes, this crossover series began on the handhelds. Oh, Kevin's waving the box. Just let us know that he's got the actual copy. I studied for this podcast. So if you've never seen a NeoGeo Pocket, it only has two buttons. So with that in mind, it's a very simple game as far as controls.

You've got one punch, one kick, and, you know, hold the button for a longer, power, more powerful strikes. Otherwise, you're just mashing the button to do, like, quick jabs. And it's kind of based, I would say, on the KOS style, and that you're picking three characters. And, you know, basically you're making a team, and you're getting into the team. If you want to. And you're fighting off one other. Yes.

Because it has three modes. It has, like, a one-on-one versus mode, like a street fighter game. It has a tag mode, like a Marvel versus game. And it has the three-on-three-K-O-F style. Trying to appeal to all comers, I guess. With that in mind, they even have three different, what they call styles as far as how to control these characters. The first, the names are not really selling them, but the basic one is called average, which, you know, you build up a two-level gauge, you can hop forward. There's counter, which is kind of like extra mode in KF98, where you've got one level of gauge and you have to hold the buttons to charge up.

But then if you're low on health, you can do infinite supers, which for certain characters is deadly, and for other characters, kind of like, well, good luck with that. And instead of a role, you have like a dodge, which is from KOF that sort of like, that throw their hands up like, oh, you can't hit me. I'm standing out of your way. You can't hit me. Then there's Rush, which is basically the KOF 98 in advance mode, where you actually build up stocks, and you can spend the stocks whenever you want to use a super. you can run. But yeah, so all three modes are basically like other games, but they have to sort of generic names.

And as far as the lineup goes, I think the character lineup is a decent spread of faces you know and faces you're surprised to see. You know, I think no one expected Akari from the last play to show up in this crossover game. I really appreciate their lineup for this game because it's compared to the, especially the Capcom released ones.

It's such like a weird spread of characters. You know, you've got your street fighter representatives, but then you've got like multiple Darkstalkers characters. You have, you have Evil Ryu from, you know, Street Fighter Alpha 2, I think was his first appearance. Yes. Right. Yeah.

And then on the S&K side, you've got like K-O-F characters. You've got Fatal Fury. You've got Artifighty. You've got Akari, like you mentioned. You have Athena and Nakurur. Halmaru. Like, it's a pretty great lineup, a really good mix of playable characters. They also have some really fun cameos. I also think that because of the pocket color, as with most of the pocket color games, the sprites are sort of, you know, downsized with big heads and tiny bodies,

and it's a really just adorable look that works for basically every character and every game. I think it's a shame we don't see more of this. I know there was a game a couple years ago, I think, called, was this called Pocket Fighter or Pocket Rumble? That was just like... Pocket Rumble. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds right. It's very good. I think there's another one, too. I think it's Pocket Bravery, if I'm remembering. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Also, good. So, yeah, but I want more. I want more games that are just like, look, we like that style. We're just going to take that style and in room with it. Because it's so cute. It's adorable. And it looks good on this both screen. Agreed, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It does this thing, like, almost all

of the, I don't think the, um, the last blade game does this, but all the NeoGeo Pocket fighting games do this thing where, yes, the characters are super deformed, but like when they perform attacks, the limb gets bigger too. So like on that small screen, it sounds very ridiculous when I describe it. But like on a small screen like that, it makes it really easy to parse what's happening. And it, in motion, it looks great. You can find plenty of videos of people doing like combo exhibition and stuff like that. But I'm super impressed with how much they crammed into this game, given the size of those cartridges,

the ROM size of these cartridges, because they're pretty small. And this is a pretty sizable cast. It's like, what, 15 on each side, give or take? That's a lot. That's, it's pretty awesome. Mm-hmm. And you get your S&K story mode,

which I think they did a pretty good job with. And actually, since you were talking about the sprites, I really appreciate how the hitboxes are also just very chunky too to go with the chunky limbs because it lets you get some very ridiculous combos off or and I just want to say

that if you like Zan Geef, this game is the best he's ever been. They will never let him be this good again because not only does he get his chunky hit boxes, not only does he do Zan Geif damage, but he can combo into his spinning pile

driver and other command grabs like it was a K-O-F game. And they continue to do, spinning pile driver damage, even when you combo into it. So, like, he gets a good hit on you. There goes, you know, half your life. It's truly remarkable. That's how you know S&K made this game in that Capone. S&K cares.

S&K cares about grapplers. Right. Yeah, grapplers is super good. Yeah. But speaking of combos, not intentional, I don't think, but there is a weird bug that only affects Chunli, Felicia, and Dan, where somehow if you set it upright, you can basically juggle them forever, essentially, like they have, like they still,

like their hitbox remains active even as they're following, which isn't the case for other characters. So if you go on YouTube, you can find people doing just just in nuts, nuts, like, you know, 20 hit, full life combos on these characters just because the game says, okay, go for it. I also like that, the basic, the basic layout of the game is like, okay, we know. you're coming to this game from other fighting games.

So all the backgrounds are kind of reminiscent of other backgrounds from other games. With the major exception of one of the Japan stages, which is set right here in Osaka, down on Dothombori, which is a major tourist area. It's a lot of electric signs. And they're fighting on a bridge, which is called Ebisu Bridge. It's just a very major tourist area, even today. So if you ever play the game, you see that one stage where there's a big ad in the background of a guy, like, raising his arms, that's the Glico,

I don't think they call him the Leco Man because that's a copyrighted character. But, yeah, in real life, it's a Leco Man. He's a mascot of the company that makes Pocky. So it's a real place. And for the record, for the record, if you have the collector's edition of the recent re-release of this game on Neo Geopocket, and you have the booklet that came with it, you can see a picture that I took in Dottombori of my Switch with the game on it in the real place with a stage. It's a fun picture that Jeremy convinced me to go downtown and pick the picture, so I took that picture, and it's in the book. Nice.

That's cool. Yeah, I feel like if I had any one real gripe regarding this game, it's that unlocking the hidden characters kind of sucks because, yeah, of all these characters that we've talked about, four of them for each company are secret characters, and you unlock them by finishing the game and depending on whether or not you continued and what the difficulty level was you'll have just like this portrait of them that's like covered by blocks and randomly it'll explode some of the blocks and it sure loves to explode blocks you've already blown up oh no and this keeps increasing a number of blocks for each character so when you finally get to evil riu and dorochie yori uh has like 12 or something and yeah it's it's wretched i think and the reissue code mystics tweak to the game code so that it only ever pops the blocks

that haven't been exploded yet which is thankful but you're still expected to go through the motions right me and me in college did not have a great time unlocking those last few characters let me tell you that actually kind of leads into both my favorite and least favorite thing

about the game because one of the other unlockables you can unlock special move alternative special moves for the entire cast, but getting that requires you to get like Olympic points and you can get them through, I believe, the Olympic mini game mode. I think if you like transferred points with like Capcom versus ZSK on Dreamcast, you got them too. But it's, it's, it makes the character grind look like easy. Um, I don't think I've unlocked all of them like legit before. It takes like months. It's, it's crazy. But you get these new special moves for characters. Like, I forget the name of the move

I can never pronounce it but you get like Akuma's third strike move where like he slams down the ground I think it's like one of the KKC Yeah I think it's one of the only games He ever got it in outside of third strike But he gets that It's nice but it just takes too long

Some of them are really like Super busted I know Evil Ryu gets a beam Hudokin From Marvel versus Capcom Chun Lee gets her Her aerial super from Marvel Capcom one. The kick, yeah. The kick. My favorite is Zangif gets a Cossack dance. That's canon. That's canon. He danced with Gorbachev.

He did. I can never forget that. But, you know, the Olympic mode, it is kind of a time sync, but you can tell they had a lot of fun with it, because this is where they throw in a lot of their other cameos. Like, your team coaches are Karin, Kanzuki, and Rimuru, from Samurai Showdown, and, you know, you have different events based on which team you're playing on that time. And the events have, like, Yagyu Jubei, and I think Marco and Mars people are there, Felicia. Oh, yeah, Arthur from Ghosts and Goblins has his own mini-game. And it's called Ghost Trick.

Like, Capcom took notes. Yeah. You don't throw away good ideas. Yeah. Like, yeah, it's a time sync, and it's kind of annoying when you just want to, like, play against other people with all this stuff unlocked but like, I don't know

I think it's a pretty good way to keep this interesting for a portable fighting game especially given how many other people have NeoGeo pockets and copies of this. I think I've only gotten to play this over link cable a few times over the years. Yeah, same.

Yeah, never. Yeah, when it comes to handheld games you have to really, you have to keep in mind that most of your players are not going to have someone else to play with. That's just It's going to be an exception, not the rule. So you've got to load it up with other stuff you can do and just, you know, entertain yourself. So you can shoot down UFOs or slash strawmen or I think, I think Felicia just has a rhythm, basically like a rhythm game where she's like dancing or whatever.

Like, sure, okay, why not? Use the sprites. Use them. My favorite, like, my favorite little addition to those Olympic games, it's super minor. I don't even know why they did it. But if you hold, I think, like, the start button as you. you're loading up the, uh, the Mars people, metal slug game. Um, you don't even see like the character you're playing as. You just see like a portrait of them up there. And it's usually

Marco. But if you hold start, I think it changes to Fio, which is like a super small detail, but they just threw it in just because it's like maybe just a handful of people on the planet that's going to appreciate that. But I still love that they did it. You're one of them. That's the important thing. Yeah. I think it's sick. But that is the through line I think of this entire podcast is that like whoever was making one of these games, whether it was Capcom or S&K, like those little details were sort of sprinkled into all of these games. They're very lovingly made. And it definitely started right there. Yeah. I think that's definitely going to be a common occurrence that even if some of these games don't match our expectations or didn't

match them or don't match them today, if you go back and you play them and you actually look at what's there, you have to respect what's. there. You have to look at this like, oh, wow, they put, they put it in the work. None of these are quick, quick cash grabs. You know what I mean? There's no, like, you know, they reuse assets when they reuse assets, but no one is just phoning this in. Absolutely not. Yeah, I mean, even no phone calls. Even this game, like, most of the S&K sprites are from other NeoGeo Pocket fighting games and, like, no one's going to complain about it because they look great. Yeah. So S&K had made several pocket fighting games

basically using this engine and this is kind of the apex of it like the Fatal Fury games that run on the Neo Geo Pocket Color are basically the exact same thing the K-OF games too but just with the amount of stuff that's in this game just like with the

mini games and what's the amount of characters packed into it like this is clearly I SMK was probably thinking that this was going to be their killer app for the machine for the Neo Geo pocket color when it came out in the West. And sadly, it just didn't pan out that way. But probably no fault of theirs. But like, there's a lot of love in this game. It's very, very cool.

Mm-hmm. And hey, like everything else in this podcast, you can finally play it again. Exactly. Right. I'm really, I was really happy when they reissued this because it actually does hold up very well. And it is a lot of fun with two people. You'll probably find that a couple of the Boss characters that you can unlock are super broken against other human beings, but, you know, that's to be expected out of Geese Howard. Let's, let's be real. Yeah. Yeah, 2021, that they re-released it for Switch and Steam. So you can, you can buy and play this game right now. You don't need any NeoGeo Pocket Color. By all means, you should have a NeoGeo Pocket Color in your house because it's a good idea, but you don't need it. And, you know, the Steam one, you can always just go online, find a save file. It's already got everything unlocked, and just skip the middleman. Yep, that's kind of exactly what I did. And a funnial new thing about the Steam version you can do because of Steam's ability to remap buttons through Steam input, you can actually set it so that the long presses you usually have to do for heavy buttons are their own buttons. So you can make it a traditional four-button Neo Geo game.

Oh. And it makes it way easier to do combos. It's really fun. I never thought to do that. That's really great. I think there's a config you can just like when Steam usually just lets you download other people's configs. I'm pretty sure there's one already preset for, like, a standard dual shock or Xbox controller. So, yeah, go nuts.

I'm investigating this after this call. So anything else for the pocket? Or shall we move on to the Capcom side? We should say that, like, the card games for card game for the NeoGeo Pocket Colors, kind of like outside of the purview of what we're doing here, right? S&K also made Cardfighters Clash for their own system. And years later made a Cardfighter clash for the DS. which no one liked, and it was broken.

I literally own the broken copy right here. It doesn't know that work. But we're not talking about that because they're not fighting games. Those are card games that are basically born in the wave of, let's make a digital card game and sell it on two cartridges, so people buy twice as many games. And it's just not part of this conversation. But yes, it is technically AsaG versus Capcom,

in that you've got lots of Capcom characters and lots of SIGA characters, and they all have little cards with little art. And it's, again, very impressive. and my friends were diehards of the NeoGeo game, the NeoJocket game, but that's it. You know, I'll make a note that you can link cable this SVC mark of the Match of the Millennium to Cardfighters Clash to get points to unlock like special moves and stuff. So that's another way you can take that approach.

Yeah. Yeah, I would say S&K was really good. I don't, again, I don't know what sorcery it took. to give us a dedicated NeoGeo Pocket to Dreamcast cord. I feel like it sank both ships, but there are so many games that you can connect on the Dreamcast to the NeoGeo Pocket that mutually benefit both games, and I don't know why they did all this stuff,

but it is amazing. At the time, I had a friend who was playing, like, KOF to Parodies, the sort of board game to unlock, like, character points in KOF 99 on the Dreamcast, and vice versa, and he was, like, he barely spoke Japanese this point, but he was, like, putting in the work, I'm like, God bless you. God bless you for figuring this out, because I would not learn Japanese for several years, you know? But let's move on to the next big event, and arguably the bigger of the two, because it actually hit arcades, is Capcom versus S&K Millennium Fight 2000. And it's a Naomi game, which means it came to arcades, and it came to Dreamcast like a few months later.

They were not, they were, you know, they were in a rush here. And Capcombe S&K is all 2D. You got 2D backgrounds, 2D sprites, although there's a lot of 3D effects going on. I know in the sort of the quote unquote final fight stage. Like, the characters' shadows are very dynamically placed on backgrounds, like at different areas. Like, it looks, it's a really cool-looking effect. Not just the usual, like, fighting game shadow on the ground kind of thing. Like, they're, they cast large shadows depending where they're standing in the stage based on lighting effects.

It looks so cool. Yeah, it's super cool. Now, obviously, it's a Capcom game. So this time around, most of the Capcom characters are reused from other Capcom games, but some of them have new sprites, you know? I think they're a new sprite in Capcom S&K is. original, I believe, right? It's not Alpha, it's not Alpha you. It's

Yeah, it's original. Him and Ken, yeah. Right. And Akuma and M. Bison, they didn't want to use Fat Bison for this from the Alpha Games, so he looks more like his Street Fighter 2 self. Is this the origin of the sort of the, sort of jerkin it, bison?

Or is that... You know what? I see. It's not that you said it. It's the hand motion, too. Look, he's posing. I'm sorry. It's a pose he does in some of these cases. The listeners look out on that one. But, yeah, I think this is the one that they stuck lovingly all the animation frames to his arm movement.

Also, Morgan, Morgan, 1994 Morgan Sprite, still here, still working. Don't worry about her. She's doing fine. She's vibing, you know, in her really, like, trippy stage. Right. I think this is probably the first time, this is probably the first layer of Vaseline they've applied to that sprite to sort of make it look a little less edgy on modern screens. Probably, yeah. It's all going to get worse in Capcom.

Sorry, Marvel Capcom, too. It's got even more. All they really needed to do was just like trim down the giant black outline her sprite has. And she would have looked fine. And they just, they didn't do it in this. They didn't do it in CVS2 or Marvel. And they're just like, eh, it's fine. We have all these other sprites we need to animate.

We don't have time to mess with this. Yeah, just put her in there. Who cares? Yeah. I think that's honestly why they didn't bother, considering she's, you know, a Darkstalker's character. And they have, like, a lot of frames of animation, even just, like, getting hit. So I can understand they wanted to prioritize, you know, because the S&K cast, obviously, it's all original. So priorities, I get it.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, lineup-wise, I wouldn't, this is a lot safer. You know, the Capcom side includes all original, all the original 12 characters from Street Fighter 2, and then a couple extras like Akima and what have you. The S.K.S.K. side is a couple surprises. Obviously, you know, Nakoruru is not unprecedented, but it's definitely unexpected, given that most of the characters from K.O.F. Riden is probably the biggest surprise. I don't think anyone expected Riden to show up. At least, certainly not as Riden. Like, Big Bear, maybe, but no, he's riding again. You know, I guess Wild Ambition had just come out in 1999, and they're like, you know what? This is the Ryden comeback tour. Let's get him back out of that.

I mean, does S&K have an anti-Zangif, I guess? Is Ryden the closest option? That's the only reason I can think that he would be in this game. Yeah, he's just like a basic pro wrestler character, so I'm guessing. Yeah, as close as analog I can think of. I mean, there are other grapplers in K-O-F, but they're also kind of. They're more mobile. Yeah.

Like, you could do Maxim, but Maxim's not really a different type of guy. I'm picturing them to just throw and Cher me up against Zandgeath and him just getting completely shredded. I mean, there's, I get, well, I forget. I'm pretty sure CVS1 was like either just after or just before Mark of the Wolves, right? Well, I was a little after. Markle of was thinking, because it'd still be too soon for TISA because that's the other analog I can think of, but yeah. Yeah, I imagine this was in development when Mark of the Wolves came out in, what, November 99 or thereabouts. Yeah, that's what I was thinking, yeah.

And TZoc, Griffin Mask, whatever, would eventually fold the K-O-F, but not until, I think, what, 2002, 2003. It took a couple years before. I think it was three, yeah, 2003. It took some time before they went Mark of the Wolves in K-O-F, which doesn't actually make sense, but whatever. It's fine. It's a different timeline. Don't worry about it. So, how does the game work?

Well, this game work, it's all about the groove. Okay, when you play this game, you start up your character and it says, okay, what groove do you want? And you have two choices of groove. You've got the Capcom groove and the S&K groove. And what this does is, it basically determines how your gameplay works and the characters you see. Because if you pick the Capcom groove, all the characters you're going to see on the screen are from Kinu Nishimura, long-time Capcom artist. If you pick S&K groove, then you see all art from Shinkoro, who, of course, was traditional. with S&K, but by this point, he had been hired by Capcom, so it's kind of, it's a fun

nod to the fact, hey, you know how there's, you know these characters, you've done these characters for a decade now, man, just go for it. And I think he's still, maybe not a full-time employee, but you still see a lot of Shinkero in Capcom these days. I know he did, he drew a, he drew a load screen for fucking Fortnite when they did, when, when, when, when, do you and Chun Lee join Fortnite? Excuse my language, but, but, he did new art for, uh, the Capcom fighting collection, too. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, he did the box art.

Yeah, that's Jingerow art right there, absolutely. Yeah, I think they sort of, like, dig him out of his crypt every couple of years and throw him some cat. I mean, I don't know what else he could possibly be doing because they only really hire him for, like, fighting game stuff at Capcom. It's not like Capcom's cranking out of fighting game every year anymore, so... Didn't he do art for Monster Hunter? They used to bring him out for, like, other games.

I know he did, like... Damn, it's almost 20 years ago, but he did most of the key art for, like, the DS port of Resident Evil. Yes. There's a couple more I'm thinking of, but after a while, I think from, like, Tatsunogo versus Capcom onwards, they've purely just had him doing fighting game art. Right. And that was forever ago. Yeah. I think he may have actually done some portrait work for Resident Evil 4.

I think there's a, like, if you look at the Resumable 4 cover, that might be him, honestly. I think it is. Yeah. I got his style. Yeah. And, you know, Nishimura, she's the goat. And I wish she had done the Capcom character art for the Capcom Roof, because that is just like, they all look awful.

I don't think any of those ones look good. But all the, like, S&K characters in Capcom groove look immaculate. Just, like, super dynamic, super, like, detailed. Like, she is a master of what she does. I can't remember if it was CVS 1 or 2. but she actually spoke because she goes on Twitter sometimes about it I think she's one of the people in charge of the art account

they have on there I believe I can't remember it was the first game of the second but a lot of the Capcom side art that looks like hers is based on outline she drew but was finished by somebody else I know she I know for two

she specifically said Aideon who does like most of the rival schools art did some of them she said she focused mostly on like the women for CVS 2. And I think she said something about the first game that I can't remember. But if some of them look odd, that's probably why. I believe that because Nishimoto definitely, like, goes all in on all the female characters

and basically anything she works on, like, oh, you've got a, you've got a type. Yeah, I believe the Chunli porch from Capcombe Sake 1 is, like, she's standing there and, like, her, like, one leg is on the ground and one leg is completely vertical. I believe is the pose. I think that's CVS 2. That's a 2. That's her work. It's a memorable pose. But yeah, so Capcom Groove, S&K Groove, again, Capcom

Com Groove is basically Street Fighter Alpha style, you build up meter over time, you have three levels, you can choose, you can either use, like, one level to use some of your meter, or you can use a level three super to empty all your meter, and of course, there are moves, like, you know, like Akamuz Shungokatsu, which is, you know, a full meter super. Meanwhile, the S&K version, again, you're holding buttons to charge up, you only have one level, But again, at low, if at low health, you can do infinite supers. And if you're infinite, if you have low health and you charge your meter, you can do an extra big, you know, what they call max super special, which is especially dangerous. It's a level three.

But you're at low health, so it's very risky. Yeah. God. Capcove just seemed like underpowered to me because it does not build meter very fast at all. Whereas S&K groove, you can just hold the button down for like two seconds and you've got a full bar. And level one super's in this game are so, so good. Yeah, they juggle into each other, right? They can.

Yeah, depending on the character. This game has some really ridiculous juggles. Like, uh, the classic is, uh, sweeping someone as Ryu and then comboing that into Shinshore Yucin, getting the full damage. Great. Yeah, just fantastic. It's a, it's a very ridiculous system. And, uh, yeah, Capcom groove, there's like a bug with some cases.

characters where if you hit someone with a heavy attack and they block it and your next like attack against them as a grab, all the hits of the grab will build meter as though you were connecting a full heavy attack. And that way you can build a lot of meter really, really fast. But that's about it. Yeah. It's a, it's a very funny game. Like to actually play. I love this game, but it is very dumb. very um benny maru in particular has this glitch where um he has like a he has like an original super in this game it's not like in any of the kofs fryer and if it collides with a projectile at the right time it disappears but it still lingers in front of him invisibly so if you just walk up to

like the opponent they'll just get hidden comboed by it and funnly enough s and k took that and that became the basis for his um desperation move in i think 2002 where he gets one. It's not invisible. You can see it there, but it acts the exact same way the glitch does. So I always thought that was really cool. Awesome. Yeah.

Ben-Morrow only growing stronger. He'll never be bad. They'll just always make sure he's good. They love him. CBS, too. Yeah. So let's talk ratio. Ratio is the other new term that popped up in this game, and it's very important

because instead of the traditional games where you're picking, you know, oh, this is a two-player games, the three-player game, the ratio is what happens. So each team has a maximum of ratio four, and each character is assigned a specific number. So some of them are ratio one, some of them are two, some of them are even three, and then some of the hidden characters,

like the super bosses, are actually four. Ratio four characters are over themselves. So depending on how long you've been playing the game, you can unlock more characters and unlock access. I'm sure the upcoming collection, I'm sure they're probably all unlocked by default. But whatever the case is, your team can only have up to four points, essentially.

So it's up to you. Do you want to have two point characters? Do you want to have a three character and a one character? Do you want to have four ratio one characters? You're allowed to do this. It's up to you, how you want to spread your points. And the downside of this... A round seven fight.

Yeah. The downside is that the ratio is predetermined. So if the game says your character is ratio one, then your character is ratio 1, which will put them at a disadvantage because they have less life and deal less damage. And the ratio 4 characters on the other end, of course, deal crazy damage and are very, very fast. Now, it's not like, you know, it's not written in stone. Obviously, a ratio 1 can beat a ratio 4.

Of course they can. But generally speaking, they're not going to be equal footing most of the time. Yeah. Yeah, more or less. I mean, the funny thing is a lot of the generally considered best characters in the game are ratio ones. But ratio one's and twos, but yeah, you can just kind of gang up on like one ratio four. And it'll take a lot of doing, but it is doable.

Or you can run the clock because, you know, whoever wins around is not based on, you know, the point total of all their life, but rather who has more bar on their life bar. And it's obviously ratio fours can drain a lot of life out from just a couple of hits against like a ratio one or two. But if you end the round with more life on that life bar than the ratio four has, they lose the round. And with that, they lose the match because they're flying solo. There's no other character to save them. I have to wonder if this maybe influenced Capcom. Excuse me. I have to wonder if this influence S&K for KOF 2001.

Because 2001 also had a sort of surprise how many characters do you want to choose, system? Do you want to have one super character with a bunch of strikers? or do you want to have a full team with only one striker, and that affected your strength of your character? And I wonder if that was influenced by this game at all, maybe. Although I don't know who actually made KF 2001, because I guess it was like a team that was half Eoleth and half S&K play more. I guess that's a story.

It's a podcast of itself, 2001. Yeah. I think it was mostly Aeoleth. And, yeah, I've got their distinct impression from O1 that had a very abbreviated development cycle, so I would not be shocked if they just look. looked at a K-OF-2000 and were like, that's a fun idea. Let's just do that.

Right. Give Yuri the Shungoku-Satsu while we're at it. Also, rip off Akira. Well, it's, you know, it's pretty obvious at this point that, like, both companies were looking at each other and, like, pulling ideas from each other. So that, it makes perfect sense if that were to happen that way. Mm-hmm. I should add that most characters also have an X version, which have altered mood sets.

Not every character does this, but most characters have an X alternate. There's also a code. I forget how you enter the code, but there's a way to set the game so that everyone is ratio two, so that you can always play 2-1-2, if that's how you want to play the game. I think, is it this? No, the next game has the ratio select. No, it's set for this game. As far as the lineup goes, I don't know, any of the surprises here? I think it's pretty straightforward, as I said.

I feel like Yamazaki's kind of interesting because he's clearly based off of his, like, Fatal Fury, real bout. rendition rather than his K-O-F-1. Yeah. I do like that. They include advice. I think that was a really nice inclusion on their part. But, yeah, I think for the most part, it's pretty safe. And they look great.

The S&K characters drawn by Capcom artists is a real treat. And especially at the time, because you always think in your head, I wish X person would make this game. And you kind of got that in this case. So, like, you know, seeing Kim drawn by Capcom artists, for example, it's, it was a real treat that, like, I think Geese looks awesome in these games. I think Yamazaki is sort of a bland-looking character, but he looks great in these games, too. Yeah, I know it's a little superficial, but just seeing Capcom artists make these characters, draw these characters as well, pretty awesome. I feel like the only real miss was Rio, because, like, K-O-F redesigned Rio to look super cool.

Yeah. And this game has him with, like, his basic art of fighting in one stance, and he looks like he has a five o'clock shadow. But I think it's actually supposed to be shadow. It just, it doesn't really read very well. Yeah, he, he doesn't look cool in any way, really. Like, none of his normals look, like, I don't know, like, again, it's very superficial. And he's fine in these games. He's not a great character, I don't think.

But he just looks dopey. like bring back the tiger stance yeah that's the word i'd use bingo yeah especially after all the work that like s nk did to basically make him a like a killer looking character over time like he's in bariki one like years after the art of fighting games are supposed to have ended and he's like the super boss right or something like that like rio i think he's just a regular playable character because he enters yeah he enters that tournament is like mr karate too so right right or rio You know, I'm going to be able to be.

I'm going to be able to see. You know what I'm going to be. I do like some of the stages this time around. The stages are not necessarily based on other stages. They're just kind of original ideas, but they're sort of vaguely reminiscent of other things. Like Terry has like a train station, but it's not like the Rushmore thing.

It's just like it's just a train station. Like, Geese is a big rooftop stage. It's not the exact same stage, but it's what you expect geese to hang out. M. Bison, Vega, Dictator, whatever. Like he's got a whole like sci-fi thing. and there's a big screen behind him that shows all your, like, the player data going on. It's kind of this neat animation.

And once again, you get an original Osaka stage, this time based of a Shinsakai, which is a real neighborhood downtown, and it's unfortunately been in the news lately because of a big fire that destroyed a really cool arcade that was in the neighborhood that I'm really still upset about

Zadigani. It's either gone or it's going to be gone, it's going to be out of commission for a long time because it was a huge fire that just yeah really really terrible yeah uh i think we already talked about how great the the final fight stage is because it is probably the standout but i have to give credit to uh there's a there's a stage where you're like fighting at night in front of i think a temple or something is just like a fire behind you and it outlines the characters and like the sprites will flicker a little bit

as though they're being lit by firelight it looks really cool um the knockeruru stage and a blizzard looks super cool and the stage where you're in, I think it's supposed to be London or whatever, but you're fighting outside of an arcade and if you go too far to the left, you're just like, you enter the arcade and there's like some

kids playing behind you. Like there's all sorts of neat touches. This was really like the height I feel of Capcom's 2D art extravaganza. I know a lot of people will say third strikes that had all the animation frames.

But this has such inventiveness to the characters and the stages. I think my favorite thing about the stages is Capcom actually kind of took a book out of S&K's approach to stages, where every stage has like an animated intro before going into the stage. So you get stuff like my personal favorite stage aside from the Final Fight one is, so it's like the dojo for, it's the Sakasaki Dojo and it's like under construction. so like the stage starts and you see like the under construction sign but it's like rattling because somebody's you know hitting it with a with a jackhammer and the more you fight on the stage like the more you sweep somebody and like they they fall down like logs will come from the top of the screen and just like start eventually the whole thing collapses but if you look to the left there's also like the stage from street fighter alpha one where it's like kind of fighting outside like the lawyer friendly lawson's in the background there and I always thought that was a really neat touch I think that's like one of the only stages in the game that takes like an actual S&K and like Capcom location

and kind of matches it together but I've always really enjoyed just the way they approach stages in this game compared to like I think every other crossover really I know there's a stage that is probably supposed to be Tokyo it's basically like a big car crash

but before the stage starts it like has a few seconds of what looks like it basically like a racing game and then like there's a crash and then you're fighting and front of the crash. There's a big fire behind you. And you can see the signs. It's like, you know, this traffic signs up on, you know, out of view. And it's just, it looks really neat. Looks really cool. Even, I like, outline the characters on this stage with like a little

yellowish orange outline just to show that, yeah, there's a fire going on back there. I love it. And that seems to sort of be the legacy of this game, too, is its presentation. Like, what you were saying, a second of Gojo Ro, it's like, not a lot of people still sort of play this in tournaments, like not compared to the other game in the next. again that we're going to talk about. But, like, there was a big sort of renaissance of this game showing up on Twitter and stuff like that a year or two ago. Like, remember how good this looked? Why don't we have this anymore? And it's true. It's just a neat looking game. And the music's great, too. Yeah. Everything about this, everything about this game hits,

except for the fact that it's, you know, a kind of slight package in terms of actual game mechanics. but like it's a lot of fun I really really like CVS 1 Yeah it's a really fun game It doesn't really have much of a competitive legacy But the one thing that That is kind of fun about it is like the best character in the game Is an S&K character

Nakururu like if you talk to people that played This game back then Like they will tell your horror stories about Nakururu Like she pretty much ran that game for the short time She's a nightmare She's just ridiculous in that game. I think nerfing her was, like, one of the big selling points of, I don't know if you guys going to talk about it, the re-release. CVS Pro.

Yeah. They kind of nerve her in that, but she was ridiculous. She was absolutely insane in that game. Oh, yeah. I think the best description I ever saw about Nakaruru in this game, it's like, you know, how most characters have like a left-right mix-up. Nakuru has like four ways she can attack you after a mix-up, and you just have to guess. And if you guess wrong, she gets to knock you down again and do it all over again. She was the original Vortex character.

That's exactly it, because her forward dash is just a little hop, but she could do that as you're knocked down and switch sides. So she can make it incredibly ambiguous as to what she's going to do once you wake up. And like you said, you guess wrong. You're just in the vortex. You've got to guess again. It's insane. Or she could hop on her bird and come down Because she recovers super fast off the bird

And she gets on the bird super fast It's incredible This game is what made me like pick up Nakaruru Because I was a filthy little bastard in high school And was like, yeah, I'll pick the best characters in the game Well, since you brought up, that's a good point So a year later, 2001, we get Capcom versus S&K Millennium Fight 2000 Pro

Which is arcade and Dream castes to know me again, but also in 2002 for the PlayStation there's a period there, not PlayStation 2. They made a 2002 port of the revision of this game

for the PS1, which is a very strange choice because by the time that comes out on PlayStation 1, the sequel to this game is already out in arcades and on the PS2. I don't know. Maybe they had too many disks.

Maybe it was too many this problem. Like, we've got to sell these discs. Here, quick, putting him in these things. And that PS1 port sucks. I'm sure. I almost appreciate the audacity of it, but yeah, it's not great. But pro, the basic changes pro is they add two new characters. They add Joe Higashi on the Sakei side.

They add Dan Hibiki on the Capcom side. Those two are the canon winners of the tournament. So when you play the original game, every ending has this sort of newscast. and they tell you that Joe and Dan won the tournament. You're like, oh, were they even in this game? They weren't in the game, but they're in the pro version. Yeah. And then it's some rebalancing.

And Kevin, you had a note here about the rebalancing because of the grab glitch. Yeah, there is a game fax file about like all the known changes between this and CVS1. But like the short version is that they did make Nakuru have a little more recovery on her moves. So she can't just bully you. endlessly. She's still super good, and I think that just is a testament to how good she was originally. They removed the grab glitch that let

Capcom Grove build meter faster, but they tweaked it a little bit, so it does build meter a little bit quicker. They tweaked how the ratios give everyone health and damage output a little bit, so the ratio threes and fours

can fight a little bit better, and the ratio ones can fight a little worse. And yeah, then the They did a bunch of tweaks to every character, really. It's all the laundry list. I do suggest taking a look at that, if only because for whatever insane reason, this is the version they're reissuing on the Capcom Fighting Collection, too, and not the one that people actually played.

Because, like you said, this came out in 2001 in the arcade, like two or three months before CVS2 came out. Nobody touched this game. Yeah, I think by the time I heard of this game, I had already heard the sequels coming. So, like, I was, you know, I was importing a lot of games. I had a lot of disposable income. But I was like, no, I'm just going to wait for this part two.

I don't need this pro version. I don't need a half step. Yeah. It's just so weird that it came out on the PS1 at that point. Like, if any developer knows that the PlayStation should not be running games like this on the PlayStation, it was Capcom. Like, what are you guys doing? But what do I know?

I don't work for Capcom. And talk about a power imbalance, too, between, like, the new characters, like, Dan and Joe Higashi. Like, I know they're both supposed to be sort of joke characters, but, like, Joe is traditionally pretty strong, and Dan's traditionally pretty lousy in every game. Like, it just seems like a funny, I don't know. I think it's because, like, Joe is generally, like, when they put him in, like, Fatal Fury games, he's, like, the goofy, not serious, protagonist character. and I'm assuming that's why they threw him in with Dan, who is absolutely not a serious character at all. But it's still like a very strange pairing.

Yeah, that's always what I thought. Especially in K-O-F, where they kind of play up Joe's goofiness a little bit more than in Fatal Fury. I always thought, yeah, it makes sense, I guess, to pair him up with Dan. I mean, I don't know if they would ever, like, you know, pair him up with, like, you know, but, you know, considering what he's a barity of. But, yeah, Joe checks out.

That makes sense. Joe's mouth is massive in this game. It's so weird. They really had fun with his mouth and, like, reuse mouth. Yeah, it's bonkers. Like, you can fit that whole sub sandwich that Terry's eating. In Joe's gaping maw. We'll just, like, fold it up and just, like, neatly pack it in there.

Right. Sorry, that was a weird aside, anyway. Speaking of weird asides, like, you mentioned Dan teaming up with people and how it's weird, But, like, that's something I forgot about the NeoGeo Pocket game is that if you're playing one of the team modes and you pick specific character squads, you'll get, like, a special team name. And I remember Dan has one with Rio and I think Yuri as well. He has one with Yuri, yeah. Huh. Another cute little touch that S&K put in.

Yeah, it doesn't really seem like S&K was that offended by Dan, you know? Like, clearly it was a swipe against them, but I think even in Matt Leone's. oral histories like they they just seem like oh that's all right whatever they Sempai noticed me and and that's where we are so it seems like they were pretty cool about the whole thing they they went out of the way to include Dan and all their versions of the crossovers so yeah they must have been oh yeah Well, mouth to score. I guess it's time to talk about Capcom versus S.K.2, Mark of the Millennium, 2001,

aka Capcom versus S.K.2, millionaire fighting 2001 in Japan, which I think is kind of a funnier your name, because who's a millionaire? Not many of these characters are millionaires, but whatever. The point system, I think, has been changed to put more points on the board. Good for them. And this time around again, Naomi, Arcade, still on Dreamcast. I think the Dreamcast version never comes to America, because this point, Dreamcast is dead dead.

But also many home ports, which we'll get to in a minute. So this is definitely the bigger one, the bigger of the two games, three if you count pro. One of the first crossplay games ever, too, actually. Dreamcast, PS2 version had crossplay in Japan. I don't know if it was the first one ever. I think that might have been like a Dreamcast racing game that had like PC and Dreamcast crossplay, but I think it was the first console of the console crossplay game. Yeah, I think Dreamcast also had like a quake arena crossplay with PC.

But yeah, console to console. And it's funny because up until like a couple days. ago, honestly, folks, just the common wisdom was that like, oh yeah, the PS2 version runs a little bit faster than Dreamcast. And I always thought that was funny because it's like, well, they had crossplay. So, like, how would that have manifested? And it turns out someone finally tested it. And they're like, no, both these games run at the exact same speed, like a tick or two faster than the arcade board. So, yeah, that tracks because, yeah, most of the, most Naomi ports ran just slightly faster on Dreamcast. So, and the PS2 version was always generally considered to be

Pretty decent, so that makes a lot of sense. So for this new game, they've done a lot of, then a lot of changes up front. First of all, every stage now is a complete 3D background, kind of like Marvel Capcom 2, but the characters remain 2D sprites in the foreground. I personally enjoy this approach, at least because for this game, they put a lot of thought into like, okay, what can we do with this thing? Where can we make these matches take place? And their answers were, we got some wild ideas.

We're going to go to, like, the Arctic Circle. We're going to go to, like, the middle of the desert. We're going to go to, you know, there's multiple Osaka locations that aren't, like, real Osaka locations, but, like, you're near Osaka Castle. I think it was a stage where you fight on top of Osaka Castle. And there's one where, like, Osaka's burning and the castle's in the background. Like, it's really, they had a lot of ideas here that I really appreciate. And I think in general, the audiovisual.

work here is a real step up. I don't know, by all means, shout me down here. But I think in general, it's a big level up from what, like, definitely, there's some really great stages in Capcom. It's like, one. Yes, CVS1. But CVS2, I feel like, you know, I always think of the Al-Mori stage, where you got, like, the two giant, like, parade floats

of Halmoru and E-Honda, like, facing off one of it. And they're, like, they dance back and forth throughout the fight. Like, it's really... Did you see the... Amazing. Did you see the... video that came out, like, a year or two ago about that stage that's like, oh, yeah, there's also all these other floats in the background that you just barely see, like, Bishamun and Kiyosurro, and there's another one who I'm blanking on. I'm like, wow, that's some interesting deep cuts from Capcom, like, put into positions where you will never see them unless you're, like, very much looking for them. I think, as far as presentation goes, one of my favorite things is that they kind of, like, the first game kind of, like, does the same thing, but they double down.

on the framing device of it being like a news station covering all of these matches. Yeah. So you kind of get like, you know, the little transition is like a kind of news network eye catch with like, you know, the yellow diamonds and whatnot. I always thought that was a really, really cool way to kind of frame, you know, the events of a fighting game. I mean, nothing's really happening in the game story-wise or anything, but I still think little touches like that are important.

Yeah, it's got a unified look that the previous game didn't really have. And I think that that really gives it, like, if a lot of people kind of look at the persona games as having a sort of similar sort of unified look to them, like CVS2 really does that kind of early, like before persona three, we'll say. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of tournament organizers and stuff like that, like to call back to like the yellow diamonds when they promote tournaments and things like that. So like that sort of unified look has persisted. over the years, too. It's very, very cool to see. Yeah, I love the CUI. That's for sure. I love it. I think it's really cool. I was going to say, I did, years ago, I won a tournament called Live and Let Die.

And one of the games they had in this was CVS2. One of the games they had was CVS2. And, you know, they had the diamonds. They had True Love Macon on their, like, interstitials. It was cute. And, you know, only four people signed up for CVS2, but dang it, I won. That tournament was still six hours long. I beat the pants off those other three. Hey, hey. If you have enough setups, this game doesn't run any slower than K-O-F.

It's just, you know, I was there in the time when you would run a bracket on one arcade machine and you would be there for 10 hours. That was a miserable time. Yeah, I remember going to locals and whenever, like, we would want to, like, people would rise up and want to play CVS2. Like, the Tos would just, like, look at each other and just groan, like, oh. Fine. You guys can have that one PlayStation over there. Just, you know, whenever you're finished, you're finished. Just get three setups. That's all you need for a CVS2 bracket. I can say this, having been a part of many of them over the past several years. We've winnowed it down. The formula has been cracked. But yeah, Kevin, you said it, and I sang it at the top of the show, the background music.

for the London stage, this is true love we're making. I feel like that should be at least as famous as going to take you for a ride. I am bitter. I'm bitter that more people don't know the song because it is a goddamn jam and a half. It is fantastic.

Put that on 10 hours. I'll do it. Do my homework. Someone found recently all of the sample albums that this game pulled from. Sure. And yeah, someone found the original

sample of true love making, or all the original samples. It's fascinating how they put them together. That was Capcom's thing at this period, though. They were making crazy sampled soundtracks, and that's why we're still talking about him, I guess. As in Gade, too, because I remember there was, up until, like, maybe a year ago, nobody knew what the sample was for the K-OF-98 intro where it's the guy talking, and then it, like, kind of just, like, fizzles out in the static. Like, somebody founded recently, and it was from, like, a really obscure, like, sample library from, like, 97 or something. It was, it was, it was, it was, it was nuts. But I think that was just the, I think it was just the Japanese development thing at the time just to use sample libraries a lot for your compositions.

Mm-hmm. Because I know, um, the New York stage in CVS2 uses the same exact sample as, like, a level from Sonic Adventure. Mm-hmm. Um, it does randomly, but, uh, it's very clear. Like, if you know both games and you know both tracks, then, you, you can point it out instantly. It's, yeah. playing it safe. But CVS2, this is definitely Freaks Rise Up territory. They're like, okay, we had a game.

We had a game. The game sold well. Here's part two. And we're opening the floodgates. Let's get weird. So right off the bat, oh, yeah, your grooves? You like the grooves? Okay. Now there's six goddamn grooves. Okay. Now there's CAP and S NK. Pick your fave. Or on the home version, there's a groove edit mode that make your own goddamn groove. You think you're so good at it. go ahead and they're like they're wild you know like

obviously some of them are very similar like the C groove is basically the Capcom groove and the S is basically S and K the N is sort of

98 advance mode but then like the K groove was like Samurai showdown with like a rage meter and P is like it's kind of like

third strike because they introduced parrying but also there's only one there's only one level super like it's we like A is basically Vism from Free Fighter Alpha 3

which is the weirdest one. Yeah. It sits super good. What I find fascinating about the K-Groove one is that they're mashing up Samurai Showdown's meter system with Mark of the Wolves' Just Defend system. Yes. And evidently, that seemed to go over really well because when S&K released Samurai Showdown in 2019, they basically used that as their system because there are Just Defends in that game

as there have been in basically all of their recent games and are about to be in the next Fatal Fury and in that game you can use them to build meter as well without taking damage, just like Kay Groove. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. This is Capcom's, this is their kitchen sink kind of approach to design. And this is not the last time they'll do something like this,

but this is the most emblematic of it. Like, we're just going to throw everything that you want into this game, everything that you've previously done, it's all in here. And just like Third Strike on the Dreamcast, like if you want to break it yourself, we're giving you the tools to do that with the X, the X grooves,

which is pretty awesome. It's pretty smart on Capcom's end because like, you know, one thing that we didn't really talk about too much is that, you know, both companies were not doing great at this point. That's one of the reasons that probably this crossover happened because like S&K was going through bankruptcy.

Like the fighting game boom was long over for Capcom. and a lot of these games were sort of on life support at this point. So they're like, you know what? We're kind of doing this because we want to get new people into it. Sure, but like we're also really doing this for the fans. They've stuck with us for this long. Here's everything. And that's, that is basically this game.

Yeah. I think you could, you can connect this with like also Marvel Capcom too. Just kind of like, here we go. We have all the stuff. Please enjoy this. You know, they didn't say it out loud, but like we're kind of not going to do this for a while, which is what led to our whole episode we did about, you know, the fighting game doldrums or 2000s because, like, you know, you have these games coming out, and then there's

a period of, you know, about six, seven, eight years where Capcom is making very few fighting games at all, and S&K is not making anything because they're on bankrupt, and, you know, other companies are kind of filling in, but not on the same scale, of course. So, yeah, that gives this game an extra life because there's really nothing to replace them for a long time. Yeah, this game feels to me, both at the time and looking back at it now, it's like the celebration of the fighting game movement of the 90s, and like this is really putting down the marker.

It's like, all right, this is the end of that. I hope you all had fun. Here's way too much stuff that's going to make it hell for anyone to pick up this game who's not already into fighting games. But if they're into it, like, boy, oh, howdy, do we have plenty for you? I remember we would do the research. for the um the the the tvs episode with like tvs two or um marvel versus capcom two like some of the um the interviews those guys were doing that had been recently translated by like schmufflations

and places like that were saying you know the developers were like there are no bad ideas just throw it all in there and that is definitely this too like there are there are really no bad ideas in this and um you know for good or for ill like not all of this stuff really panned out. Kevin, I think, is going to probably really lash on to the P, or the, yeah, the P groove here, but like, it sucks. They'd stretch awful. But some stuff worked better than others, but like, it's just cool that they tried anyway. Because this was really putting a period on a whole era at this point that they just tossed it all in there. I think it's great. I think CVS2 in particular feels like the logical endpoint of a through line that kind of starts with Alpha 3. I'm glad you

mentioned like kitchen sink fighting game design because alpha three definitely kind of feels like the start of that with like all of the isms and then you get the console port and there's like even more secret ones with just wild stuff and then you get to marvel two where it's like nearly everyone that's been in the game then here's this whole system where like half the game is team building with assists and whatnot and then you get to CVS too and is here's like every major mechanic Capcom and S&K I put in the fighting game all match together here's a couple dozen characters have fun. And it just feels like what Capcom was kind of building to in far as fighting game design goes. It's really, like you said, it's a good punctuation of like

that fighting game boom. Yeah. So part of the work in revamping the system for CVS2 is that they've changed the ratio system in that there's still four ratio points, but now the characters no longer have a predetermined ratio. So you pick your roster and you decide who's ratio for and whose ratio to, and you do it yourself. So, again, the system is still basically the same thing. Like, do you want to have one strong guy, or do you want to have a bunch of weaker guys? But you get to choose who's strong and who's weak. It's all up to you.

You assign the points yourself. The only downside is you can no longer have a quartet. Quartets are out. So the max size of any team is three, but that can be, you know, a two and a one and a one, or two twos or a three and a one or just a four. You want to have a beast? Go ahead. Make a beast. I feel like that was them throwing a bone to arcade operators who didn't want to have a CVS1 matches going on for 12 minutes long.

I'm like, here, let's just trim this down to a nice, you know, regular six minutes. And expanding the roster, they added a lot of new characters. Now, again, some of these characters are, you know, pre-sing sprites, but most of them are not. Most of them are new sprites. You know, certainly all the new SKK characters are Capcom drawing S&K characters for the first time. Some of them are barred from, some of these new characters are borrowed from Alpha, but not all of them. Who wants to talk about their favorite additions to this roster?

Go ahead. Just go for it. Oh, well, go ahead. Kevin's got a sticker? This game, I got a sticker from a friend of mine. Yeah, Hibiki Takane from Last Blade 2, which, you know, not the most, I wouldn't say it's most the high-profile S&K fighting game that they'd done, and she was not the most high-profile character in it.

But for whatever reason, Capcom was like, this character right here, we want the Swords Woman who may or may not end this game as a bloodthirsty maniac, and we want to slap her in our crossover game and make her so friggin' cool that, like, 20 years later, S&K is going to have to bring her into the new Sam show game because she's like the only last play character. or anyone gives a crap about anymore. Sorry, Kai De and Yuki and all the rest. Like, this game made her. And I think this game made Rock Howard as well because he sucked so bad at Mark

the Wolves. But he's so cool in this game. And like the custom intro with Geese Howard, so cool. Yeah, Capcom, they really, they really found some good deep cuts here. Like, just like, if you're looking at this list, it's really head scratching. Because, like, they brought in Toto from Art of Fighting One, who super sucks. And S&K, for years, we're, like, getting, like, they introduced a Toto's daughter as a character for, like, all of, you know, if there was going to be a character like that, it was her. So why'd they choose him?

That just seems like such a head scratcher to me. And I had not played Mark of the Wolves before playing this. So that was my first experience with Rock Howard. And I was like, this guy kicks ass. I want to use him all the time. And like little did I know that he was in a, you know, a different game prior to this. But even still on the Capcom side, I think that there's some really great deep cuts, too, that I wish that they would still do stuff like this. Eagle, and we're going to talk about him in a second, I'm sure, but like Maki from Final Fight 2, I just thought that that was the greatest thing ever when this came out.

And I don't like using her really in this game, but like it's cool that she's here. and she talks relentless shit, and I think that's hilarious. Yeah, but, you know, Relentos on the roster, they pull him from the alpha games. That was like an easy get. But, like, kioske from the rival schools games and the other rival schools characters

come in for his level three. Just, I love when companies kind of like cherry pick those deep cuts. I think it's great, but Maki is actually best girls, not Habiki. Whoa. Hands up. Whoa. I was actually about to...

I mean, I like Haviki. She's actually what got me in the last blade, but Maki was going to be my pick, too. That's just a really good pick. There's even some lore about how she got into the game, because it was not actually supposed to be Maki initially. It was supposed to be Linco de Sauer from Alien v. Predator, but they don't own that character because that's technically... Well, now it's Disney, but it was Fox then, and they couldn't get clearance for her.

So the next idea was they'll put... Mackey in, but they'll give her a Lynn's move set. And then they realized that that doesn't really work. We'll just make Mackey her own original character. So that's how we got her. There was another character that was supposed to be into, but they shot it down pretty early because they thought she was too niche for this game, which is saying a lot. Rain from Plasma Sword was tossed around as a pick for this game, but they thought that was just way too niche. Which, I mean, I I guess that's honestly pretty fair but this game's roster

I just love the deep cuts Toto is the one that just still makes me go wow I Has he even been played with anything past this In like anything? No No right yeah They have never brought him back It's just art of finding one in this right?

Yeah Yeah So weird So weird And like the Chang and Choi mashup Yeah I love how they implemented They're one character So good

That yes I want to say Toto was so out there because I feel like he showed up as, I think, a striker in 2000, K-O-F-2000, but he's not even named. He's literally called Unknown, because, like, we forgot this guy exists. Yeah. Because he sucks so bad. The man has one move. And, like, earlier, his daughter kind of superseded him after a while, so.

Yeah, she, uh, I think she has, like, an ongoing story where she's, uh, trying to find her dad. So I think that's why they just never put him anything. But, uh, it's going to be really funny when they, they do this new art of fighting game and Toto is not there, but Kassumi is. So, among the new characters, you mentioned John. We talked about Eagle. Eagle is from Street Fighter 1, which is already a pretty deep cut because he hadn't been in anything since Street Fighter 1, and this is, you know, this is 2001, so Street Fighter 1 is

what, like 14, 15 years old at this point? And in bringing Eagle back, someone, I've been trying to find research on this, but I don't know reasons, but someone decided, you know what, Eagle? I think Eagle is gay. And you don't get this to the English version because English version basically simplifies the text. Oh, I know where this is going. CVS1.

CVS1 had some of this too, but CVS2 had even more of this, where, like, lots of characters have specific win quotes against specific people, you know? Uh, Joe, I know you've done a lot of stuff on your channel about the Marvel games and how certain characters mouth up to certain people, and like, there's all sorts of win quotes and all this stuff.

And that gets preserved in the English. In the English version of Capcombeck 2, that's gone. Everyone basically has generic quotes. Yeah. Eagle does not. Eagle has very specific quotes, and the things he says to women and men strongly imply that he is gay.

Even, and specifically some of the younger men, like Rock and Kiyoske, his win quotes against them are wild. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's very heavily, you know, it's innuendo-laden. You know, I would say, like, when he talks to Cammy, like, literally, you translate literally when he says to Cammy, it's like, I'm not interested in you, and he calls her Ojo-San, which is like, you know, a very polite way to call, like, a woman you don't know. But it's also, like, you can interpret that as saying, I'm not interested in women, because, you know, Japanese doesn't really plural.

It's like, oh, oh, Joe's suddenly, kill me, nah. Like, well, I'm not interested in you, ladies. Um, or he tells Morgan, like, oh, don't flirt with me, Morgan, it's useless. Like, don't ask stupid questions. You know, it's pretty obvious what he wants to say. And that gets cut for the English version, which is kind of a shame because that's, like, You're bringing a character back for the first time in a decade, and you're giving him an actual personality, and you're creating a gay character, which is like, are there any other gay characters in 2001 in any video game? It's a short list, if any, like, really short.

Yeah, not unless they were, like, parody characters, like the, a lot of, like, the wrestlers or the shopkeepers in the Shadow Hearts games. Sure, yeah. Or it was super icky. Yeah, I don't know. Again, I don't know if necessarily, is this supposed to be a joke? Because Eagle doesn't seem like a joke He just seems like a really... Yeah, he seems like a fancy gentleman

Who happens to like other gentlemen Yeah Was it like that in his appearance For in Alpha 3 Upper? Did they, like, mess with his win quotes? He has some... He has some quotes in Alpha 3 that are also flirtatious.

Yeah. Yeah, in Upper. Like, he's in Upper, right? Because he came... He's in Max. He's in Alpha 3 Max, yeah. Okay. Well, because it's weird

because Upper has like the regular Naomi arcade release. And then there's the Game Boy Advance version, and that's technically the first version that he got into. And they call that upper. But the first, like, traditional version of the game that isn't, like, on a

platform that isn't, like, compromised is, um, out of three max or double upper, I think it's called in Japan. And yeah, I think he still has a few of those, one quotes there. Huh. In Japanese. Also, Maki is there being... Mocki's in there. Yeah. Completely overpowered.

Anyway, it's also relevant to the conversation. because this, the Street Fighter 3 Alpha Upper is also in this upcoming collection. So you can, I guess if you want to change the language options, you can see the quotes for yourself. I don't, I've not found a lot of English language documentation of this online. Most of it's kind of like, because even me, like, you know, 20 plus years ago, I didn't, I barely spoke any Japanese, even though I was studying at the time. And so somehow I heard about Eagle might be gay now, but like, I didn't really think much about it. And let's be honest, it's 2001, so it's probably, you know, more than a little homophobic. But, you know, now that

I'm looking into it and I can read the quotes for myself. I'm kind of really interested. So I hope that someone can do a deep dive or, I don't know, God forbid, interview someone and like find out what the story is because it's fascinating to me that they would go this far because it's pretty, it's pretty overt, you know, it's pretty overt in Japanese. If I ever get a chance, Neoji Isisawa is the guy that, that I think, led this game. And one of these days, like, someone's going to have to sit him down and talk to him about a bunch of different characters because I bet he's got a lot of things to say. And I don't, I don't think

he's really with Capcom anymore. So he probably would be willing to talk. Yeah, he, um, he, he left Capcom a while ago. I think he was like one of the main leads on Samurai Showdown, like the last one. Because I know he went to S&K, but I think he left S&K after that too. But yeah, I think it'd ever be him or, um, It's, you'd probably want to talk to about that. Because I think Goodsuna directed CVS too as well. Any other roster commentary, or should we move on to the home boards? I'll just add that there's three things that are very strange to me. One, they had Ewan and Chunley, and they redrew Chunley to look like her third strike version

and changed up her move list, and I feel like her voice, they redid all of her lines. The other one that really strikes me as bizarre is they redid Cammy's voice lines from CVS1 with an actress who absolutely cannot speak English. Terb. Crap. That's the nicest way I can put it. She sounds like a five-year-old trying to babble through all of her lines. And I'm like, this is uncomfortable.

I guess my only other roster comment is I love that Kiyosuke is in. It's terrible that he kind of sucks. But I do like that he's the only character in the game with like a proper launcher and air combo system. he can do rival schools air combos which is nice they suck but it's it's nice oh you know what that reminds me that like for the s and k grooves they have running instead of like the little dashing like capcom oh yeah and that affects how morgan plays too because it lets her do uh dark stalker's style like uh aerial uh aerial drops from her dash or from her brother rather so she can cross up and she she she hits her dark stalker's chain combos and i think macky gets her

final fight chains as well. So, like, they did some really cute things in there to make characters play, like, their source material. And I think that's probably the biggest part of this game that we're maybe not talking about. Like, competitively, some of these characters are sort of made for specific grooves. So when it comes to, like, team composition, a lot like, again, what we talked about in the Marvel versus Capcom 2 episode is that, like, you know, you have to start thinking in terms of team composition, not necessarily, like, if you want to play a competitive.

I just like these characters and I'll just pick this groove because it makes sense. Like, no, you're thinking of like these characters work best in this kind of groove and this is the way I'm going to play the game, which is sort of a deeper layer for like, you know, people that really want to learn this stuff. But there's just so much in this game to, you know, the toolbox is so big that like, when I first play this, I was just like, like, just blown away like, hey, how many characters were in it and be what you could do with all these grooves. that, like, it's just fun to sort of mash buttons in this game and screw around. There's a lot to do in it. It's a ton of fun. It's a fighting game sandbox, pretty much. Yeah. There's just so much to experiment with.

It doesn't even matter if, like, the groove, you know, your chosen character, you know, the groove you choose for them isn't great. It's still kind of fun to just look at what their options are and just seeing what you can do with it. It's just the, like I said, it's a really fun game the press buttons in. You know, if you're going to talk about competitive play for this, I do have to bring up the role canceling. Yeah. I feel like this has been like a very big, I think it's something that scares away people who are interested in CVS2

because they realize like, oh, here's a glitch where you can cancel the startup of a role into a special move, but for, you know, whatever reason, that special move will retain the invincibility, but also throw vulnerability, of that role. So you have these situations where a character can blow through a level three super with, you know, a fireball or whatever. And some characters can take much better advantage of this than others. But it's a part of the game.

It's been a part of the game since it was discovered in like December 2001. I like that you know the month. I was there. I was there, Gandalf, when the will of men fell. But, you know, when they did these later ports of the game to the GameCube and Xbox, which I assume we'll get to momentarily, they took that out entirely, and that sort of, like, created this schism where people who had been playing the heck out of the arcade version and, like, the PS2 and Dreamcast, they didn't really want to get in too deep to this revised version. And I think that's still true even today. Like, people will just write off these later ports as not a serious version of CVS, too, because there's no role cancels. Yeah, that's kind of a funny thing with Capcom finding games in particular.

When there's, like, home revisions or even, like, arcade board revisions of games where they're rebalanced things, almost nobody ever wants to, like, mess with them competitively because they just change something that they find fundamental to the meta. A good example I can think of with the Marvel versus Capcom collection is X-Men version. Street Fighter because there were three revisions of that game and the third one really took out not all of it like it's still a pretty silly game overall but um a lot of the stuff things a lot of things people can do in that game with certain characters were taken out and um people were not really happy about that because the i think it's the second version that's generally seen as the competitive standard but you only get that third version in the marvel collection alpha three upper is another one um which i'm kind of surprised it's in the collection but um that one took out

like alpha three has like crouch cancel combos where you can cancel like your you can if you crouch after juggling somebody for whatever reason it keeps the opponent in hit stun so you can just do the absolute silliest stuff in vism with that and alpha three upper took it out and that that game is not really like loved competitively at all like anywhere not even in japan so yeah cvs2 is just another one of those cases where people just didn't really like the changes and it it has it's fans, you know, and there's other merits to EO, specifically, that I think P. Groove got buffed, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, they added in a super cancels.

Yes, yes. It helps it significantly be competitive. But, yeah, that's just how it tends to go for a lot of fighting game revisions. Well, let's talk about that for a brief moment here, because, yeah, this game came home to basically all the consoles that were available at the time, and the Dreamcast port and PS2 port came first. little bit later were the GameCube and Xbox ports, and those were rebranded as Capcom versus S&K2, EO. Now, it's not a Michael Jackson thing. EO stands for easy operation. And the idea was that these home versions, and I think this is part of also because of the spirit of the time, again, fighting games were not as popular as they used to be. The arcade scene was dying

out. So I think this was some kind of like, we need to find a way to get new fans on these games. so here is an optional control scheme that makes these games a little less harder to like parse and also to make it easier to control on a you know a controller which is not an arcade stick and the big thing for this sort of eo stuff is that all the punches and kicks were now moved to like the shoulder buttons and you're holding much like much like the pocket game you hold the button down to make stronger attacks and you can map or it is mapped all like the super and special moves are mapped to like the right stick, like the C stick in GameCube and the right stick in Xbox. And like, if you imagine a pie chart, if you push the right

stick in a certain direction and a certain, with certain force, you can do different levels and different strengths of super moves. I'm pretty sure they like actually show you a pie chart in the, and like the config menu for it. Yeah. And it's pretty wild as a concept. And I don't know, I don't know if there's one of them any more fans, but like, again, it is optional. You don't have to do that. You can play it with a regular controller and just map all your buttons out. But it is kind of, it's pretty radical at the time to say, okay, here's our recent arcade game and here's a completely new way to play it if you want to try it. And I kind of get it because this was an era where, you know, arcade sticks for home consoles were not easy to come by

and they usually kind of sucked. So having something that's more controller friendly made sense. and, you know, Capcom's been experimenting with that for years and years, so I get it. I didn't like it, but I get it. I feel as that this is made specifically for the GameCube controller, because, like, that just looking at it that is clearly not made for a 2D fighting game. Yeah. But it's like they over-engineered it to the point where it seems more complex to me to play the EO version than it would be to just, with a six-button layout. Yeah, it's, I don't know, like, I can't imagine this sold particularly.

well for either like for really any of the consoles. I kind of wonder, but I don't really know for sure. Well, I know for me personally, I actually had the Xbox version but I had it for a really silly reason and kind of relevant

to why it might not have so well. So there, you know, Xbox used to do like the demo this that they would bundle with like magazines and whatnot. CVS2 was one of the demos they put out. The thing is, and it's the Japanese version of the game, but I guess somebody had Capcom screwed up. It's the full game minus online.

No way. And once everybody figured that out, it was just a mad dash to get that specific issue. I can't remember if it was an Xbox magazine and just some promotional magazine for something. But it's the entire game. And the funny thing about it is that it's even the build on the disc is actually a little bit better than the final build because the final build has a glitch. it's like a weird audio glitch where if you do like a finest K-O on somebody with like a specific move with I think Evil Rio or Akuma

there's a sound effect that plays and it just keeps persisting for the rest of the match it got so bad that like if you go on like the Instant Archive Japanese website for the game there's like a little thing at the bottom of Capcom like acknowledging that glitch but it's not in the demo version so like in some ways

it's a more polished build but once I learned about that. That's how, like, everybody I knew played the game that didn't already have no, like, PS2. They just got the demo this for Xbox and played it that way. I'll throw that out there that, thanks for mentioning that it was only offline, because the Xbox version was the first fighting game with online play in the U.S. that, you know, you didn't have to go through some awful emulator like Kylera to run. Yeah.

So it wasn't great online play, but it existed. And let me tell you, at the time, that was all we needed. Yeah, this and the Street Fender anniversary collection, right? Like, you could technically play Third Strike Online, but you didn't want to. Yeah. Anyway, as part of the upcoming collection,

you can choose. They have the arcade original for CVS2, but you can also play the EO version if you want to flip. So, again, totally optional, so I guess they're, someone must have asked for this, you know? It's still there. Someone must have asked for this.

I'm wondering how they're doing that. I wonder if they're just taking, like, the arcade version and just kind of, like, backporting the, uh, the balance changes. Because I, as far as I know, EEO didn't get an arcade release. No, no. So, yeah, I think that's, I think that's what they're doing. Uh, they didn't, they already said that it doesn't have the EO, like, control scheme. So it's just like, the balance tweaks. So it's probably just like, you know, the P groove buff, you know, no roll canceling for the people that don't want that.

That, that makes sense. And I mean, like, these collections in particular, I think the lead programmer for them is, It's like somebody that's been at Capcom for a while. And I think they even did like the Street Fighter Alpha collection for PS2, which just has like a ton of like really crazy customizable options. It's kind of weird. So it doesn't shock me that they're doing something like it for this. And you never know because like Capcom got bullied to put stuff back into the Marvel re-releases, right? So like they took out the Juggernaut glitch.

Yeah. I mean, if there's something that's not in. there that enough people are going to get up and arms over, they might just wind up putting in there down the road anyway. Yeah, I think the juggernaut thing in particular might have actually been an accident. Because Marvel 2, like anybody that's dug into the code for the game, Marvel 2 is kind of a mess because it's built more than just surface level because it's built on top of all of the CPS2 Marvel games. And anytime it gets ported to other platforms, there's always just really weird unintended, like

bugs and glitches that differ depending on the platform. And the Juggernaut glitch is like one of the few that's actually remained in each and every port. But some ports just like if you fix one thing, another thing might not work. Something else cracks. Yeah. And somebody had dug into the code

and they had surmised that with Juggernaut because of how the glitch works, I think it has something to do of how the game handles memory addresses. And probably fixing that one gambit glitch, which also works for a similar reason probably like

stopped the juggernaut glitch from working and I do remember the digital eclipse or backbone I can't remember who did the the PS3 port of Marvel 2

I remember them saying that the gambit glitch got fixed there on accident they were just kind of tweaking things and one day the gamut glitch

just stopped working huh so with this they took out the gambit glitch for the collection as well so it was probably just they were fixing

things accidentally took it out. So, again, that same programmer, I think, also worked on Marvel 2 that still worked on the collection. So they probably had to know how to just get it in there without breaking anything else. So it was really nice for them. Actually, it's good that you're bringing this up because I was going to ask you guys, like, why does this game work so well on PS2 versus Marvel versus Capcom 2, which is a hot, stinky mess on PlayStation 2? Like, I mean, you basically answered it, but. Yeah, I think it's got to be it, right?

That's pretty much it. I mean, I think, because I know CVS1 is the same engine as Marvel 2 because there's like leftover assets if you go into the code. But I think CVS2 is mostly a refresh. I know there's some data in that game that like, I think some hitbox data and like frame data or like actually like copy pasted from Alpha 3 for some characters. But overall, from when I understand, it's not as much of a mess as Marvel 2, code base wise. So yeah, that makes out of sense.

I think the fact CVS2 was like coming out the same time as the Dreamcast version as opposed to a couple of years after the fact. Like they were kind of working on them simultaneously. They could make sure everything lined up. But basically what you're saying is we can bully Capcom into giving us vanilla CVS-Wod on this collection. That's exactly what we're saying. We probably get your letter writing campaign started. We want busted knock. They're here in Osaka.

I can drive down this. If I have to drive down there, I can drive down there. I'll find it. Don't make promises that you can't keep. I mean. All right, we are approaching the two-hour mark here, but we do have talked about one more game, which we already mentioned a little bit back in episode 610, where we talked about the fighting game doldrums, but it is the end of the series, basically, S&K versus Capcom, SVC Chaos, which probably reflects

this development history. So it landed in 2003 on the Neo-D. Now, the Neo Geo expired in 2004. So this is one of the last Neo Geo games. And at this point, as we mentioned before, S&K has gone bankrupt and come back from bankruptcy, but it's still, you know, it's on life support, basically. So they couldn't do a extravaganza, the scale of, you know, Capcom, S&K, too. And I think that shows in the game, not that the game is, you know, cheap, cheaply made,

but just like obviously things ran out like something ran out somewhere ran out of time ran out of money I don't know but it does feel less I mean my opinion like at the time as a huge Jessica fan like I was super excited for this game and I couldn't have but you know sit down and play it I'm like this doesn't this doesn't wow me like CVS 2 wowed me you know I think that's it's really apparent from the start unfortunately nothing uh nothing quite like uh being so hyped up for this game, because the roster is fantastic, and the way they were, like, dripping out who was in it. I remember hearing that the arcade nearby had gotten it, like, well, a day I was at work, and I spent the whole, like, time waiting until the clock hit 9 o'clock, so I could go to the arcade

and check it out, and this is what I got there to experience as a big CVS2 fan. I'm like, what the heck happened here. And I think... I still want to know what the heck happened here. Yes, I agree. I think part of the problem lies in the fact that just all the stuff that we talked about, how CVS2 gives you so many, you know, six different grooves and you can customize your own groove and all these characters have different methods you can play with. And SFCCast does not do any of that. There are no grooves.

Like here's the one, here's how you play the game. Here's your life meter. Here's your super meter. It's one-on-one. There's no teams whatsoever. There's no ratios whatsoever. The super meter is kind of weird. You know, it's kind of a weird system to come up with.

Every character has something they call an exceed move, where you can do this one super, super move when you're at low life, but only once per match. That's it. You get one chance per match to do this exceed move. And, you know, a lot of these sprites are really, really cool. Certainly, again, much like the CVS games, like S&K had to redraw all the Capcom characters,

and some of these Capcom sprites are awesome. Yeah. You know, we took this the last time, but, you know, Like, the Dimitri Sprite is really goddamn cool. Mm-hmm. I don't know. If anyone's his favorites, just go ahead. I really like the Delson Sprite because I feel like this is the first time that he really had like the rubber limb thing going on that all of the subsequent games with Dalsam have really leaned into.

So he's just a lot of fun to watch. Chudley, they also pulled from like the Third Strike Sprite again. And she is like beautifully animated in this game. She looks great. Yeah. I really like the way The Scott looks in this Big Hugo

Oh, Sagat looks so good Sagat and Hugo look awesome Yeah I think the sprites though also kind of highlight where S&K was at financially

at the time because most of the sprites are pretty much originally drawn but some frames are kind of recycled from other things

like I think it was like only recently discovered that Balrog's idol stance is like traced over from Heavy D in like KOF I think it's KOF 98 stance Um, everything else is like original, but it's just the idol stance. It's just heavy these redrawn.

But, um, otherwise, yeah, DeBitri looks sick in this game. I, I don't even think Capcom's animated, like, made him look as cool as he does in SVC chaos. I think this game, what, we, we were just talking about CBS2 with how, like, it has a distinct look to it. And other than the sprites for SVC chaos, I think that, like, everything looks basically stock to me in this game. Like, you know, the way the UI looks, it's like they were just dinking around with development tools and just had lots of great sprites kind of thing. And, you know, I don't really have a ton of things to say about the game itself other than like kind of agreeing with what Kevin said in that past episode that like if they had another chance at another pass at this, like if there was like a SVC Chaos 2.0 or 1.5 or something like this, it would have felt like a better game. But it just feels, other than the sprite work, it just feels cheap and sort of rushed to me. There's some things I like about it. I like, for single player content, the fact that they have, like, all the characters with these, like, cute little intros that are very much in keeping with their personalities.

That's very cute. The roster, again, fantastic. The bosses are very cool, you know, having these secret final bosses of goddess Athena from, like, the 1986 game, I think, where she's in a red bikini for some reason, and a red aramer, just a random red aromarer from ghosts and goblins. Like, that's really cool.

And they have a lot of really fascinating sprite work. And there's a real, like, implication that all of these characters are in purgatory and you're sort of fighting to escape. It's just, you know, this game, like you said, it's very flat. The, like, input, engine is very fussy

even for a Neo-Gio game. It's really rough to get it to, like, do the moves you want it to do. The mechanics just don't quite work right. It's interesting. Not, not, like, necessarily the fun kind of interesting, but interesting.

I think it's fun to mess with. Yeah, it's fun to tinker with. I think this game, Dalsim calls Ryu a narcissist, and I always thought that was hilarious. Like, this is right on the money. But, yeah. Yeah, I think it's a really weird game mechanically and aesthetically, but there's some, like, glimms of, like, some really neat stuff in there.

Like, um, if you encounter Zero as a boss, it'll actually, like, animate, like, the little warning screen that pops up when you play, like, do boss fights in Mega Man Zero games. Yeah. Um, also started, like, Zero's streak of just being stupidly good in any fighting game he's in, so, you know, there's that. Any and every. Uh-huh. But, yeah, very.

we're like the step mechanic in that game like the forward step mechanic is it's like kind of weird to wrap your head around um still it's it's an interesting game the to just kind of lab out every now and then my feeling is that if you don't care about the capcom characters just play neogeo battle coliseum because they took a lot of the mechanics from this game and made them like work really well together yeah i think part of the problem is that the stages the stages are exceptionally empty. You know, S&K, you know, has gone out of the way to make stages over the years that are just overflowing with life. And Capcom S&K2 carried that ball, you know, even the stage that's in, like, the Arctic Circle, a ship comes in for the background and flags come out

of the ship, and then, like, a TV crew appears, and they're filming you fight, and the whole thing's like, okay, we're in the Arctic Circle, but, like, the Arctic Circle will never look more colorful. And then, see, SVC Chaos is like, okay, now we're in the nude place, which is like an empty church. And now we're like in a deserted train yard. Now we're in a giant like spinning, I don't know, particle collider. I don't know what the hell this thing is. And there's like a tie-in Chinese manga that explains the plot of this game that you know, maybe you read 20 years ago, but I certainly didn't. Oh, those are all absolutely insane. I think for this particular one, they had a plot line where Iori and Morgan, like,

like hook up and have a child who's like a whole thing in that story. It's, it's crazy. I got to find this. I think it also sets up like the, um, the overall plot of the game. Like, it's in purgatory. But if I'm remembering, right, it basically states that bison quote word of like a way to get into purgatory. There was like some kind of tournament there.

And if you want, like you got a wish or something. So bison goes and makes a device that nukes the entire planet. So now everybody's in purgatory, you know, just not by their own free will because of bison. And now everybody's fighting to get out, which I guess that kind of contextualizes the stages, but I mean, yeah, those man was a while, yeah. So it's a little bit of plot spackle, I feel like. Yeah. But again, even saying this, like, there's still lots of, there's still lots of love here in the details. I do love the fact that, you know, because the beatries in the game and he has been night bliss, that means every.

Every character has an alternate sexy version, because that's his whole thing. When he grabs you and drinks your blood, but first he turns you into a sexy lady. So every character is their own sexy sprite. And then Athena and Red Armour, if you fight them and you lose, you get transformed into something else. And again, it's a unique sprite for every character. Athena, it turns you into some sort of animal, and Red Aramor turns you into some sort of monster or Yokai, whatever. And some of these sprites are like adorable and hilarious. I know, like, Gile turns into a chicken, but he retains, like, the flat top.

Dan, if Red Armour defeats Dan, Dan, just still Dan, and he makes a face, like, what the hell is this? Like, what am I, I, I'm one worst nightmare? What are you saying? It's like, there's a lot of goofy stuff here that I, they didn't have to do that, but they did it. It's just a shame. It's a shame that not everything else works together. It just doesn't. And, like, the deep cuts, like, they put in Tessa from Red Earth, the game.

that nobody played on the CPS3 and like she has all sorts of personality and like all of her moves and their animations like throwing out birds and cats and all sorts of bizarre like magic tech oh my god yeah it's just like all this effort put forth to what end I guess it's the best way to put it I had a friend that was he hates this game to this day because the one time he got got earthquake in a crossover game. It was this one. Because he's a big show guy. Quake is great. He just did not like the game. So he was at Evo when the re-release got announced. And like he was recording, he was recording it, you know, the announcement.

And as soon as it came on screen, he just turned off the camera. Oh. He just, he wanted to happen to do with it. Oh, man. But really, really nice deep cuts overall, yeah. I'm glad it got a reissue. I kind of wish they'd retained the improvements to the PS2 and Xbox port to the input reader. Yes.

I mean, at least the net code itself is decent. Yeah, the net code's good. Like, it's the best way to play this game online. It's just, you know, you're still playing SVC chaos. And hey, if you really like janky, like bad but still fun games, like this is, like, this is very solid. But I can't say that it's like an unfun game. It's just a very silly game. You can't call this Kusoge, right?

Like, it's not quite like that. But it's, there is some busted weirdness going on, just top to bottom here. Yeah. I know some tournaments got ran recently in the wake of that re-release. And Mars people in particular have kind of found like a newfound, they've gotten like a newfound appreciation for just how, just how silly that character is, both competitively and just aesthetically. Because, like, when you win with them, It's just like, it's like, literally saying, like, pee-pee, pooh, like, something like that. No, obviously they can't speak, you know.

Can't speak in guy language, but. I like when he pulls up the flip phone with, like, another Mars people on it. What the hell's going on here? Incredibly goofy character. But yes, as an SK game, this is not part of the upcoming collection, but it did make a surprise return to really all platforms. It's on PlayStation 4. It's on Steam. It's on Switch.

G-O-G. So if you want this game, you can just play it right now. You don't have to spend $200 like I did, you know? Because that's what Neo Geo games cost back of the day. Actually, this might have been $300. This might have been $300. I was going to say 200 sounds low for that particular game. For that game? Might have a 300 at this point. Do not look up how much it costs now for the original Neo Geo cards. Oh, I can imagine. It will give you a heart attack. But, yeah, that's kind of the end of the story. I mean, that's certainly the end of the series. You know, we never got a Capcom S&SK3, which might have been in the works.

But I feel like part of this, you know, part of the reason I wanted to have this conversation, you know, with everyone who was there at the time, it's like, this was an incredibly exciting moment, you know? Like, this, to me, this hit right before, like, WWF versus WCW, which is kind of like, oh, my God, you know, all my favorites colliding. And frankly, this worked out a lot better than the invasion angle. So I have much funer memories of this experience and how crazy it was to see all these happening. And, oh, my God. You know, it's also, it's funny because this also lands around the same time as Mugan, which Mugan also let us, you know, indulge in our wildest fantasies. But it still wasn't quite the same because it's all, like, fan made. a lot of it was, you know, janky as hell because we didn't know what we're doing, but it still

was fun. So it was really nice to see this, like, oh, no, this is, you know, lots of original sprite work here, lots of crazy backgrounds, lots of great goddamn music. And it was, it was exceptionally, you know, it's too bad that it kind of led to a long, quiet period of no exciting news. But, you know, eventually things got better, eventually. I'm just glad Capcom and S&K seem to have like a really healthy. relationship now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we got we got crossovers with Terry and Mai and Street Fighter. We've

got Ken and Chunley go into Fatal Fury where all of the old games have been reissued at this point except for I think the DS Cardfighters game and I'm not sure who's really. I don't think anybody wants that. But yeah, I think if there were a better time for them to make a third game in either CVS or SVC, now is it. So hopefully. we get something in the next few years. I'd love to see it. Fingers Christ, yeah. It would be awesome, but it is unfortunate because what's happened today,

as part of this reality of just, I think, game development in general, is that everyone's kind of doing a crossover at some level, you know? So the magic that happened, you know, at this point, 25 years ago, it's not going to feel the same because, yeah, like, Tekken 8 had Akumu and Geese Howard in it, you know? Like you've already mentioned, Street Fighter 6 has, get characters in it. Fatal Fury has Capcom characters in it. So it's like, when everything's a crossover, there's no incentive to make an a crossover exclusive kind of thing anymore. So I don't,

I mean, I would love to see it. I'm not saying no, you know, much like the Marvel Capcom game, like I would love to see more Marvel Capcom games. I'd love to see more Capcom as and K games. Absolutely, yes, please. But at this point, since people are just willing to put people in any game they can get their license to, you know. It wouldn't feel like in the event the same way CVS 1 and 2 did, yeah. I get it. Especially if you go back, if you go back and just, you know, or just on YouTube, go to YouTube, watch

the attract mode for Capcom S&K1 on, you know, the Naomi. And it's like, it's tons of arcade screens from different S&K of Capcom games and like you're spinning from space and you're zooming in on the planet Earth and it's like, you thought this would never

happen and now it's happening. And like, you feel like that things like the ground is going to shake apart. Like this is how this is an epic confrontation. Yeah. And now it's like, you know, My Street Fighter 6, and she's here, and she's hot, and that's just the way things are.

Okay. All right. So he's saying Fortnite has ruined everything for these crossover games. I mean... So we need to end Fortnite, and then we can get CVS3. I'm not going to point fingers, but yeah, you know, it's the fact that I can play, you know, I can play Fortnite as Sakara, you know,

So it's a little weird. You know, with who, without getting too deep into this, with who basically owns SNK now, who also has a big stake in Capcom, I think the odds are better that we would get a CVS3 than even maybe a Marvel 3 or a Marvel 4, right? That's true. So I think that this, I don't want to say it's going to be a slam dunk, but like, you know, A lot of people have asked the developers on both sides over the last year or so, like, is this a thing? Are you planning on doing this? And everyone seems into the idea, even though there hasn't really been any confirmation one way or the other.

I think it's really probably an inevitability that we're going to see something. But I've been wrong about this stuff before. So who knows? I feel like it's likely to come from S&K developers than Capcom, just because Capcom seems to like, we do Street Fighter. and that's all. That's kind of where I'm at. I feel like if it does happen, it might be like S&K developed. I mean, it'd be really great to see them kind of, you know, redeem themselves from SVC chaos.

But, I mean, I'll take whichever way it comes. I'll be honest. I know that this isn't a popular opinion, but I would just like to see S&K go back and tinker with SVC chaos. Just like make a new version of it. I'm not kidding. I would take SVC Chaos on limited match. That would be great. Right.

put a couple extra characters in it, fix the game. Like, if that were to come from the Capcom side, like if there would be like an official Ford strike of Street Fighter 3, like people would flip and they would, and like not in a good way. Like we've seen this time and again where like Capcoms put out new versions of games and like the hardcore, like I'm never fucking playing that. Never, ever, ever. Don't even put it in front of me.

But like I think S&K probably has a pass there. They could probably pull it off. Yeah. I can say people like the K-O-F-U-M game. Right, right. And on that note, I think we're done here. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for listening to Retronauts.

We really appreciate your ears. And if you have it, your money. But, you know, this will be released to a free podcast. So if you're listening to for free, by all means, thank you very much. But we do want you to know that there is a Patreon. Patreon.com slash Retronauts. What really keeps the show going? So, if you join the Patreon, $3 a month gets you episodes, one week in advance, higher bit rate,

$5 a month, just a pitt and smore, gets the exclusive episodes every month, two, sometimes three, if we have extra Fridays. Weekly columns for myself, I also read you the columns. I've done plenty of columns so far on Capcom and S&K games to wet your appetite, including Capcoms NK1. And, of course, Discord Access, where we all talk about the games all the time, like these sort of games as well. So if you have the means, we really appreciate Patreon.com slash Retronauts to keep us going here. But thank you to my guest. I'd love all of you to tell the audience where they can find you on the internet

if you want the internet to come find you. Kevin, why don't you go first? You can find me on Blue Sky at Atari Archive.org, which is also my website and the name of my book that you can purchase through Limited Run and Amazon and my YouTube series that it's all stemming from. If you will love early video game history, I got you covered. Also, come play CVS2 at, you know, DC locals. All right. John.

Hi, I'm John. You can find me on Blue Sky at John Lernid. There's, they used to, I thought there was a dot in there for the longest time. And no, there's no dot in there. It's just John learned. I have a YouTube channel. I call it annotated games, but you can just do a search on YouTube for, for me, John Lernid. I've been doing a lot of shorts lately. Somebody convinced me to basically play the hits with the annotated symphony of the night, so I've been making shorts out of them. So two a week, give or take. So check those out. And Jereau? So I'm Jero. I can be found on both Blue Sky and YouTube as the Seventh Force. And on YouTube, I do fighting game retrospectives. I primarily focus on the Capcom crossover games,

Marvel versus Capcom, Capcom, Capcom versus S&K, Tatunoga versus Capcom. But I also talk about various little things about fighting games. I recently did a video about fighting game moves appearing in non-fighting games. So things of that nature. So, yeah, I can be found there. It's a great YouTube channel, by the way. Oh, thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. I also appreciate that when you do a, when you do a comic book character, you always mention a comic book recommendation, which is why I picked up this saber-tooth death hunt on your... Oh, nice. I picked this up recently here in Osaka, and had a great time reading this little story by Larry Hama. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I just...

I'm a big comic book fan, so I just kind of wanted to spread that joy. So I'm always glad to hear people actually, like, you know, getting recommendations. As for me, your host, my name is Diamond Fight. You can find me around the internet by looking for Fight Club. That's F-E-I-T, my last name, C-L-U-B, the English word you already know, dot me. FightClub.combe. Is my website or Fight Club on Blue Sky and YouTube and Twitch and most platforms these days. and I guess that's it

So I guess we all Get down down to New York together And we'll sit underneath that giant beer man And just we'll all drink beer together Beer Cowboy Yeah Good night This is a true love we're making

This is true love we're making This is true love we're making Is it the true love we're making baby the true love for you this is the love we're making this is the love we're making this is the love making all the time this is the love making

this is the love we're making this is the love making all the time oh yeah this is true love we're making this is true love we're making all the time Oh, yeah. This is true love for me.

This is true love for making.