King of Fighters ’95 and Tekken

 32 Bits is a series where I revisit the most popular games of the recent past; from the launch of the original Playstation to the last days of the Xbox 360. Why?

• To chart the evolution of games.

• To destroy people’s nostalgic feelings by playing the “classics” they all know…alongside the detritus everyone played at the time, but no one remembers.

• To rediscover games unjustly forgotten by history.

The time is August 1996: eight months into the Playstation’s first full year. The Nintendo 64 is a month away; while Sega’s Saturn system is fading fast.

A full list of 32 Bits articles from the current season (1996) can be found here; further explanations of the “greatest hits” series and what games I’ll include can be found here.

Playstation Review #38:

KING OF FIGHTERS ’95

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Best-Seller in	Also On
SNK	SCEA	8/31/96 (North America) 6/28/96 (Japan) 7/1997 (Europe)	Japan (the Best)	Arcades Sega Saturn Neo Geo

SNK occupies a niche in gaming that was honestly unknown to me. A Japanese arcade game developer, they also created the Neo Geo console. Launching in 1990, the Neo Geo promised arcade perfect ports thanks to its basis in the Neo Geo arcade hardware. Of course, this accuracy came at a cost: the Neo Geo retailed at over $600 – but the niche audience it was pitched at were willing to pay.

My past experience with SNK is limited to scattered memories of playing their 2D weapon fighter, Samurai Shodown. I had vaguely heard of King of Fighters, a 2D fighter bringing together characters from different games of theirs – a fact completely lost on me when I started playing. New King of Fighters games were released yearly until 2003, and the latest is 2010’s King of Fighters XIII for PS3 and Xbox 360.

A 2D fighter, the key gimmick to King of Fighters are the team battles. The player assembles a team of three (while King of Fighters ‘94 made you choose from several pre-made teams, ‘95 allows the player to develop their own team from the whole slate of characters). Before each fight they decide which character goes first and second. Defeating one fighter sends out the next. Winning a round restores a small amount of health, but damage carries over from round to round. To win the player must defeat all three fighters on the other team.

Characters hail from SNK fighting games Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury and the developer’s non-fighting arcade games Psycho Soldier and Ikari Warriors. Others are original. The 2D sprites are entirely competent, though hampered by their traditional sprite style and the poor 2D animation of the Playstation. The characters are fairly generic, however, with the requisite martial artist types, national stereotypes and pop-culture knock-offs. The backgrounds are among the better 2D fighting game arenas I’ve seen and the game makes good use of the foreground.

Ironically, American gamers could not find this game on SNK’s own console. The American release was Sony-exclusive, confining the Saturn and Neo Geo versions to Japan. Unfortunately, the Playstation often had trouble with 2D games: I saw claims that animation frames are missing, but more glaring are the constant load times. Sony didn’t bring over anymore games in the series, and the only other King of Fighters game to make it to the Playstation in the US was King of Fighters ’99 – published by Agetec in 2001, in the wave of belated releases and shovelware after the debut of the Playstation 2. The same game’s Dreamcast version was released at the start of that system’s life in 1999 – and the international Playstation release lagged so far behind that the Dreamcast was nearly dead when it arrived.

A unique 2D fighting game and one of the better ones of its year, King of Fighters ‘95 may seem generic at first but is an admirable deviation from the Street Fighter norm at the tail-end of the 90s fighting game craze.

notes

• My research into this game’s cast was halted when I saw that the Wikipedia page for one (grotesque, overt fanservice) character contained no less than twenty-eight citations discussing her breasts. Not only are there people compiling lists of “the best side-boobs in gaming”, these articles’s readers collect their rankings. Ew, just…ew.

Playstation Review #39:

TEKKEN 2

Developer	Publisher	Release Date	Best-Seller in	Also On
Namco	Namco	8/25/96 (North America) 3/29/96 (Japan) 10/1996 (Europe)	North America (Greatest Hits) Japan (the Best) Europe (Platinum)	Arcades

PREVIOUSLY: Last season I played the original Tekken. I praised its character design and fluid fighting, contrasting it with Battle Arena Toshinden, a weak game over-praised in its day.

Not a radical reinvention of Tekken so much as a gradual improvement, Tekken 2’s not as groundbreaking as the original. Neither is it on the level of Tekken 3, the series’ finest hour. But a retool of a great game…is still a great game.

All characters from Tekken return in its sequel, though the towering Jack has been replaced by the more mechanical Jack-2. Joining them are newcomers Jun and Lei. All sub-bosses are unlockable, from sumo wrestler Ganryu to boxing kangaroo Roger. The new arrivals are capable but not as distinctive as the original cast or the newcomers in its successor.

Tekken 2 retains the fluid fighting of the original. Oddly the character models in Tekken 2 are more rough and polygonal than the originals, a point of some scorn at the time. The arenas, which mix an endless 3D plane with still 2D backgrounds, are generic.

One of the best fighting games of its year, Tekken 2 doesn’t change much. Neither did Battle Arena Toshinden 2, then Tekken’s fierce rival. The difference is Toshinden needed fixing and Tekken didn’t. Toshinden 3 was a marked improvement over its predecessor, but no one cared. The boilerplate sequel destroyed their faith in the series. But Tekken was strong enough that even a minute improvement could hold people’s attention – and they would be rewarded in 1998 with one of the best fighting games of all time.

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Next Sunday: Nights Into Dreams for the Saturn.

Namco Museum repackages retro hits for a retro era

Playstation Review #36 & 37:

Namco Museum Volume 1 & 2

Developed by Now Productions (Vol 1) & Tose (Vol 2), published by Namco

Release Date:

Volume 1: November 22nd 1995 & February 9th 1996 (Japan)

Volume 2: July 31st 1996 & September 30th 1996 (North America)

Best-Seller in:

Volume 1: North America (Greatest Hits), Japan (Playstation the Best)

Volume 2: Japan (Playstation the Best)

Films hail from the 1890s. The novel dates back to the 11th century. Music, ancient times.

Video games as a popular medium began in 1972. Modern console gaming arguably didn’t begin until the mid-80s.

Classic film channels rarely pass the late 1960s, but games are so recent, and evolve so quickly, that 2001 is a far-off vintage era. Hell, 2007 is now firmly in the distant past. No one would call Gladiator a retro film, but games from the same year? The Departed would never be called “old”, but a game released the same day, for a now-obsolete console like the Playstation 2?

So it’s a bit odd to see retro games in a retro era, throwbacks in an era that’s a throwback itself.

Namco Museum is a series collecting 80s arcade games by Namco; recent incarnations have been as downloadable games, but its debut was as six games on the original Playstation. Five were released internationally. The first and third Namco Museums feature games popular everywhere, while the rest are largely made up of Japanese titles obscure abroad.

The game’s virtual museum situates each game in its own unique chamber, at the end of hallways lined with bonus material related to the game. Alas, this material is sparse. Pamphlets, how to play guides, branded sweatshirts: the same kind of objects accompany each game. There’s nothing telling you about the game’s development and little historical context. All this bonus material shows you is that these games were advertised in Japan once. It’s the equivalent of DVDs whose only special features are a trailer.

Each collection features six games.

VOLUME ONE

BOSCONIAN: Free-roaming space action game where you destroy fortresses. The ability to fire behind and in front of you enlivens up this occasionally intense experience.

GALAGA: The sequel to Galaxian, which naturally is on Namco Museum Volume 3. Better than the more famous Space invaders.

PAC-MAN: A simple game, Pac-Man’s enduring fame comes from its primal drives – the nerves of fleeing ghosts in the maze, or the thrill of going from prey to predator.

POLE POSITION: Its pseudo-3D was once impressive – alas, Pole Position has dated in a way these other games haven’t.

RALLY-X/NEW RALLY-X: Another maze game, distinguished by the scrolling screen and smoke screen mechanic.

TOY POP: The only obscurity in volume 1, this co-op action game is a bit too busy.

VOLUME TWO

DRAGON BUSTER: A side-scrolling action game with branching paths, Dragon Buster is ambitious for an arcade game – pity that the combat is so flighty.

GAPLUS: A minute improvement on Galaga!

MAPPY: The centerpiece of volume two, Mappy stars a mouse cop who jumps around a multi-level area recovering stolen goods and evading cats. Doors are used to stun foes, and enemies can’t hurt you while jumping. But creativity alone can’t make a game as universally fun as Pac-Man.

SUPER PAC-MAN: The forgotten sequel to Pac-Man removes pellets in favor of fruit and gate-opening keys. Unnecessarily complicated compared to the original, but not the worst attempt at reinventing Pac-Man.

XEVIOUS: The original vertical shooter feels placid today, though the air-gun and land-bomb dichotomy is interesting.

GROBDA: A spin-off of Xevious, this tank game features colorful explosions and simple, if dull, “raise shields, fire back” gameplay.

The lightweight volume two featured a different line-up originally: Japan featured a game called Cutie Q instead of Super Pac-Man, and a hidden game, Bomb Bee, was removed in North America.

Presumably Super Pac-Man was added to volume two a title recognizable in the west. Otherwise it would be a unsellable collection of games popular only in Japan, though ironically the game added to give the disk broader appeal abroad is also the worst game on either disc.

What’s interesting about Namco Museum isn’t the games on either disk but the fact that this tribute to the relics of an earlier era is now a relic itself. In 1996 Namco wanted us to be dazzled by the 3D graphics of the museum, gaze at how far they had come since the rough days of minimalist 2D graphics. Yet Pac-Man’s look is timeless.

The 3D environments? Not so timeless. What was once a proud display of technology’s progress now looks primitive. The fog, the square patches of flowers, space represented as textures placed on flat walls, the faceless toy-block receptionist: this game looking back at an earlier era now serves itself as a look into an earlier era, a game showing us what the gamers of the past valued and enjoyed now shows us the values of another historical era of gamers.

Namco Museum is a time machine, but its destination isn’t 1980. It’s long ago 1996.

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Next Sunday: Tekken 2 and King of Fighters ’95.

Playstation #9 and 10: Warhawk and Tekken

The time is November 1995. Gamers are wondering: what’s the future? The Playstation is a runaway success, besting Sega’s Saturn – yet there was still the pending release of Nintendo’s new system the following year. Of course, the year’s best games – Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, Yoshi’s Island – are found on the distinctly last-gen Super Nintendo. Over on the PC, companies are trying to copy Doom, and it’s the last gasp of the LucasArts adventure game. Everything is still very much up in the air.

32 Bits is a series about the most popular console games of their day; not the classics we look back on today, but what people were playing then. How did these games, even the now-forgotten ones, influence the course of gaming? What do they say about where gaming had already been? Let’s find out.

32 Bits #6 and 7: WWF Wrestlemania and Air Combat

32 Bits is a series about how the popular games of the past influenced gaming today. We’re currently in September 1995, and the Playstation has just launched in North America.

Today we finish up the Playstation’s launch titles with Air Combat and move into October. On October 31st, 1995, Brad threw a Halloween party while Mark was sick on a brand-new Home Improvement, so I’d say it was a good month overall.

Playstation #6: WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game

Developed and published by Acclaim

Released: October 18, 1995

Best-Seller In: United States (Greatest Hits)

32 Bits #1 and 2: Ridge Racer and The Raiden Project

32 Bits is a series about how the popular games of the past influenced gaming today. We’re currently in September 1995, and the Playstation has just launched in North America…

Playstation #1: Ridge Racer

Developed and published by Namco

Originally released for arcades (1993); US Playstation launch (September 9, 1995)

Best-seller in: America (Greatest Hits), Europe (Platinum), Japan (Playstation the Best)

I know what you’re thinking, so let’s get it out of the way.