It's been almost a year since the previous SNK love thread, and since then SNK Playmore appears to have grown more active:
* created a Twitter account which they use regularly and have grown more active on Facebook too, which is a step forward
* continued releasing cellphone and pachinko/slot games, which are a sore spot for some fans, but some of those actually leave Asia now (you can get
the Garou Premium slot game for iOS outside Asia)
* while controversial, the Garou Premium and Samurai Shodown slot games have allowed them to experiment with 3D a bit more, which brings up the hope that future fighting game efforts will benefit from some of that experience
* while most of their past releases for phone have been ports of older NeoGeo games, more recent releases like Metal Slug Defense and The Rhythm of Fighters are essentially new games actually meant for touch controls from the ground up despite using (mostly) recycled assets, which means they're at least trying new things, and not doing too bad a job of it.
* these cellphone games are getting released worldwide almost simultaneously too, which may be due to the nature of the medium, but shows an awareness of the western fandom that seemed impossible years ago.
Yes, a lot of us want a new KoF, especially as we're reaching the series' 20th anniversary, some of us are still waiting for Garou 2, but SNKP must pick its battles carefully - KoF is their strongest brand, and unlike the company's primary acronym, that abbreviation isn't being taken over by a popular anime, which is probably why they're trademarking it - although if that means the series is rethinking how worthwhile it is to append a large sequel number to it with every new release, I'm not against it, 13 is big enough as it is.
Today I made a discovery that would have been great to add to the thread I mentioned above, but between its age, these recent developments and some mod advice, it seemed best to create a new one.
Right from the start in Garou Densetsu/Fatal Fury 1, SNK bothered to establish a number of story elements about several characters which did not affect gameplay at all, and not just regarding the playable characters - things like Tung Fu Rue (not playable) having been a teacher to Geese Howard (final boss, killed the protagonist's foster father).
Nobody asked for that or was likely to care, yet they bothered - and with every new game they added a few details spread around several characters, many of them sharing a city, South Town, which would serve as a stage for most of the Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting series - separated by a decade, yet closely tied together, mostly through a primary antagonist:
Follow only the games through their chronological order and you'll find a police commissioner turned crime boss who has killed a former rival with his bare hands before assuming practical control of his city. Along the way of managing the criminal underworld of one of the most physically violent cities in fiction he managed to find the time to get married and have a kid and dabble in the acquisition of mystical artifacts and related troubles, survive a near-fatal beating, and ultimately refuse to be saved from another by the same guy - which may not have been the actual end of him thanks to the aforementioned dabbling with mystical artifacts.
Still, he's too popular a character be gone forever, and nowadays it's accepted the KoF games work in an alternate continuity where he's still alive and kicking just so he'll stick around - and give infamously overpowered KoF bosses a run for their money as the ultimate challenge in games like KoF2002UM.
That's just one character, and outside the games there's a fair amount of supplemental material, although a lot of it is in Japanese and much of it never got officially translated - there are a few sources in English like the KoF official website, although that covers only KoF games and hasn't been updated to cover XIII yet.
Anyway, this was what I discovered today: http://meh.brpxqzme.net/timeline.html
A translation based on a couple of Japanese fansites, one of which is now defunct, and it contributes with a lot of interesting little factoids to the wider lore of the Last Blade/South Town continuity - some notable observations:
* The authorship of the Qin/Jin scrolls from FF3 and Real Bout is actually assigned to someone (a Qin Wang-long), and is the very first event in the timeline. His offspring are mentioned later as the ones possessing the Jin twins, something not directly referenced in the games.
* I recall occasional mentions of Lee Gaksuo (Takuma mentions him in his pre-match dialogue with Athena), an ancestor of AoF's Lee Pai Long whom Takuma respects, but had no idea he was born so close to the LB era - it would probably be a stretch to associate him with LB's Lee Rekka, but still interesting he got a mention.
* Related to that, also interesting that AoF's tiger and dragon titles were apparently once held by Gaksuo and Takuma
* 9-year-old Krauser beat up 15-year-old Geese
* Jeef Bogard and Hanzo Shiranui both took on Krauser when he couldn't have been older than 16... someone's got some 'splaining to do...
* Some Don Gonzalez set up a KoF tournament between the AoF2 and FF1 ones - never heard of the character... maybe that's from some light novel tie-in or something? The Geese Howard Story manga?...
* There's a mention that according to the Wild Ambition version of FF1 events (the former overrides the latter), Ripper spread the rumor that Geese died - and that in the original version of the story it took Geese 3 hours to die after hitting the pavement
* Billy's one act of disobedience to Geese, not destroying a Jin scroll, may actually be proof of his loyalty, if we go by Geese's RB2 ending
Well, this is all very interesting for some, but a lot of it is based on a time when SNK was doing very well, had their own hardware, and it was a greater concern for them to ensure that arcade content could work as console content and vice-versa.
Times have changed, however. The thing is, SNK's games have also changed a lot, and they made a whole lot of them. For the Fatal Fury series alone, every 2 or 3 games they'd completely revise the control scheme.
What remained throughout all of those changes?
The characters, the setting, and the lore.
That, in my opinion, is SNKP's greatest asset nowadays, and someone at the company clearly realized it while they were working on KoF XIII.
That game could have been their final effort as a gaming company, but fortunately, despite some missteps along the way, it ultimately did very well at all it set out to do, and helped keep the company afloat - I think it's safe to say we can eventually expect more from them in the future.
The interesting thing is how their smaller recent efforts are also showing some care and concern for their characters and lore:
* Metal Slug Defense lets you see the full names of every character and vehicle in the game that actually has one - that sort of thing wasn't visible in the actual games, but now fans can access it there
* Well, but Metal Slug is one of their famous titles, that makes sense, right - sure, but now with The Rhythm of Fighters they're clearly paying attention to much less famous material from their history through its assists - you get to see names of previously nameless characters from the likes of NAM-1975, even an enemy minion from the really old and blocky Sasuke VS Commander is available. Characters loosely tied to more established settings, like Red Dragon from 3-Count Bout (who after his game hasn't been mentioned since a Kensou/Raiden intro in KoF XIII) are in. There's a DLC pack featuring G-Mantle (who represents the NeoGeo), Neo Poke-kun (who represents the NGPC) and Kuroko (who represents just about every SNK character, since he can use practically all their moves in the games he's in).
* It may be sad for a lot of fans that Fatal Fury's latest iteration is a 3D slot game, but think about it like this - they took the opportunity to model as much as needed of South Town in 3D and gave a lot of characters new, mostly-plausible outfits. It would have been easier to use the same old outfits and use empty stylized backgrounds for everything.
There's still care for the finer work of the company at SNKP's offices - and I'm looking forward to what the future will bring.
What about you?
* created a Twitter account which they use regularly and have grown more active on Facebook too, which is a step forward
* continued releasing cellphone and pachinko/slot games, which are a sore spot for some fans, but some of those actually leave Asia now (you can get
the Garou Premium slot game for iOS outside Asia)
* while controversial, the Garou Premium and Samurai Shodown slot games have allowed them to experiment with 3D a bit more, which brings up the hope that future fighting game efforts will benefit from some of that experience
* while most of their past releases for phone have been ports of older NeoGeo games, more recent releases like Metal Slug Defense and The Rhythm of Fighters are essentially new games actually meant for touch controls from the ground up despite using (mostly) recycled assets, which means they're at least trying new things, and not doing too bad a job of it.
* these cellphone games are getting released worldwide almost simultaneously too, which may be due to the nature of the medium, but shows an awareness of the western fandom that seemed impossible years ago.
Yes, a lot of us want a new KoF, especially as we're reaching the series' 20th anniversary, some of us are still waiting for Garou 2, but SNKP must pick its battles carefully - KoF is their strongest brand, and unlike the company's primary acronym, that abbreviation isn't being taken over by a popular anime, which is probably why they're trademarking it - although if that means the series is rethinking how worthwhile it is to append a large sequel number to it with every new release, I'm not against it, 13 is big enough as it is.
Today I made a discovery that would have been great to add to the thread I mentioned above, but between its age, these recent developments and some mod advice, it seemed best to create a new one.
Right from the start in Garou Densetsu/Fatal Fury 1, SNK bothered to establish a number of story elements about several characters which did not affect gameplay at all, and not just regarding the playable characters - things like Tung Fu Rue (not playable) having been a teacher to Geese Howard (final boss, killed the protagonist's foster father).
Nobody asked for that or was likely to care, yet they bothered - and with every new game they added a few details spread around several characters, many of them sharing a city, South Town, which would serve as a stage for most of the Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting series - separated by a decade, yet closely tied together, mostly through a primary antagonist:
Follow only the games through their chronological order and you'll find a police commissioner turned crime boss who has killed a former rival with his bare hands before assuming practical control of his city. Along the way of managing the criminal underworld of one of the most physically violent cities in fiction he managed to find the time to get married and have a kid and dabble in the acquisition of mystical artifacts and related troubles, survive a near-fatal beating, and ultimately refuse to be saved from another by the same guy - which may not have been the actual end of him thanks to the aforementioned dabbling with mystical artifacts.
Still, he's too popular a character be gone forever, and nowadays it's accepted the KoF games work in an alternate continuity where he's still alive and kicking just so he'll stick around - and give infamously overpowered KoF bosses a run for their money as the ultimate challenge in games like KoF2002UM.
That's just one character, and outside the games there's a fair amount of supplemental material, although a lot of it is in Japanese and much of it never got officially translated - there are a few sources in English like the KoF official website, although that covers only KoF games and hasn't been updated to cover XIII yet.
Anyway, this was what I discovered today: http://meh.brpxqzme.net/timeline.html
A translation based on a couple of Japanese fansites, one of which is now defunct, and it contributes with a lot of interesting little factoids to the wider lore of the Last Blade/South Town continuity - some notable observations:
* The authorship of the Qin/Jin scrolls from FF3 and Real Bout is actually assigned to someone (a Qin Wang-long), and is the very first event in the timeline. His offspring are mentioned later as the ones possessing the Jin twins, something not directly referenced in the games.
* I recall occasional mentions of Lee Gaksuo (Takuma mentions him in his pre-match dialogue with Athena), an ancestor of AoF's Lee Pai Long whom Takuma respects, but had no idea he was born so close to the LB era - it would probably be a stretch to associate him with LB's Lee Rekka, but still interesting he got a mention.
* Related to that, also interesting that AoF's tiger and dragon titles were apparently once held by Gaksuo and Takuma
* 9-year-old Krauser beat up 15-year-old Geese
* Jeef Bogard and Hanzo Shiranui both took on Krauser when he couldn't have been older than 16... someone's got some 'splaining to do...
* Some Don Gonzalez set up a KoF tournament between the AoF2 and FF1 ones - never heard of the character... maybe that's from some light novel tie-in or something? The Geese Howard Story manga?...
* There's a mention that according to the Wild Ambition version of FF1 events (the former overrides the latter), Ripper spread the rumor that Geese died - and that in the original version of the story it took Geese 3 hours to die after hitting the pavement
* Billy's one act of disobedience to Geese, not destroying a Jin scroll, may actually be proof of his loyalty, if we go by Geese's RB2 ending
Well, this is all very interesting for some, but a lot of it is based on a time when SNK was doing very well, had their own hardware, and it was a greater concern for them to ensure that arcade content could work as console content and vice-versa.
Times have changed, however. The thing is, SNK's games have also changed a lot, and they made a whole lot of them. For the Fatal Fury series alone, every 2 or 3 games they'd completely revise the control scheme.
What remained throughout all of those changes?
The characters, the setting, and the lore.
That, in my opinion, is SNKP's greatest asset nowadays, and someone at the company clearly realized it while they were working on KoF XIII.
That game could have been their final effort as a gaming company, but fortunately, despite some missteps along the way, it ultimately did very well at all it set out to do, and helped keep the company afloat - I think it's safe to say we can eventually expect more from them in the future.
The interesting thing is how their smaller recent efforts are also showing some care and concern for their characters and lore:
* Metal Slug Defense lets you see the full names of every character and vehicle in the game that actually has one - that sort of thing wasn't visible in the actual games, but now fans can access it there
* Well, but Metal Slug is one of their famous titles, that makes sense, right - sure, but now with The Rhythm of Fighters they're clearly paying attention to much less famous material from their history through its assists - you get to see names of previously nameless characters from the likes of NAM-1975, even an enemy minion from the really old and blocky Sasuke VS Commander is available. Characters loosely tied to more established settings, like Red Dragon from 3-Count Bout (who after his game hasn't been mentioned since a Kensou/Raiden intro in KoF XIII) are in. There's a DLC pack featuring G-Mantle (who represents the NeoGeo), Neo Poke-kun (who represents the NGPC) and Kuroko (who represents just about every SNK character, since he can use practically all their moves in the games he's in).
* It may be sad for a lot of fans that Fatal Fury's latest iteration is a 3D slot game, but think about it like this - they took the opportunity to model as much as needed of South Town in 3D and gave a lot of characters new, mostly-plausible outfits. It would have been easier to use the same old outfits and use empty stylized backgrounds for everything.
There's still care for the finer work of the company at SNKP's offices - and I'm looking forward to what the future will bring.
What about you?
