from the instruction book...In AD 2000, a special martial arts event is planned through a collaboration of the two most powerful world organizations: Robert Financial Clique and Masters Foundation. It is hoped that the gala event will ease the political conflicts between the two powers.
Many renowned martial artists have registered for the tournament. Around the world, people are intensely focused on the upcoming exhibitions.
The long-awaited opening ceremony is a huge success.
No one notices the signs of imminent collapse.
Well, I don't know about the story... It's pretty shaky. Actually, there is no story and the endings (all three of 'em) are downright horrible. Badly translated, censored, and ruinously sad, with Dan Hibiki and Joe Higashi winning the tournament no matter what you do (even if you stick it out and beat Akuma!? Yargh!).
Capcom vs. SNK sports a ratio system for character selections. The characters they chose for the 1st and 2nd point values seem completely except for main protagonists, Ryu, Ken, Kyo, Terry, who always seem to be level 2, and the third level, which consists mainly of bosses (and Vega and Yamazaki, not sure if ol' Yam is a boss) allows you one little back up character, as you are allowed 4 points worth of people in total. Point value doesn't determine how 'good' any character is, but how much damage they do. So your combination is up to you. "Bigman," one of the resident shit-talkers at the local Penny-Arcade swears by a combination of M. Bison and Blanka (3,1). I like Ryu and Ken (2,2). Leon (another PA resident) uses Blanka, King, and Ken (1,1,2). Whatever the case, you can choose between one four point character- Oh yeah! I didn't mention, but special unlockable characters exist, like Evil Ryu and Akuma and Orochi Iori. On the DC version, you can even get Morrigan from Darkstalkers, and Nakoruru, an SNK character whose origin is unknown to me, perhaps Samurai Showdown?- and four one point characters.
Combos in this game work kind of like the Alpha series, or Super Street Fighter II Turbo, and I'll leave it like that. I'm not going to talk about juggling especially, because it's rough in this game, and there are websites with eleven page lessons on the combo system. I say gimme my 5-hit-fierce-jump-in-dragon-punch and I'm good to go. Basically, it plays like Capcom, SNK characters have lost moves to become more 'Street Fighteresque,' otherwise the Capcom characters may have been at a severe disadvantage, although if they'd just pitted the exact games against each other, the Capcom characters would be better animated and have better control.
The arcade version of this is pure, crisp goodness, but the features in it are unlockable only by the guy who starts up the machine in the morning. I'm beginning to love the Dreamcast port.
Okay, so they moved this game to the Dreamcast, and it's an awesome arcade translation. It looks good, it plays well (save for the problem I have with playing fighting games while holding a DC controller at the same time; I'm not getting used to it), and it runs a little faster than it did at the arcade. This is good for me, and I think all the kids from the 'cade would agree (seeing as I've heard all of them complain about it). The main problem with it is the unlockables. They've got 77 unlockables, which range in price from 200 pts (buying new pallete swaps for characters), to 9500 pts (playing Akuma). By the time I'd beaten the game with every character, and bought the right to challenge Morrigan, Nakoruru, and Akuma, I'd played all day and accumulated some 4000 points. One needs over 120,000 to get everything. It's depressing. I figured that if you used the training mode, which gives you 10 points a minute, you'd spend about 8 days getting all the points needed for the hidden things in the game. That's unreasonable, and doesn't even include the fact that it will only accumulate 999 pts at a time and then you have to exit to the title screen and go back...
Well, that is, if all you own is a Dreamcast and a copy of this game.
The home version of Capcom vs. SNK tries desperately to convince you to buy a NeoGeo Pocket Color and a copy of SNK vs Capcom : Match of the Millenium for that thing, so as to unlock things faster. I've heard the time can easily be reduced to a mere 12 hours. If you don't use training, and continuously beat the game, you can get it all in 120. I mean, an economist would tell you that these products are more complimentary than $40 bread and $100 peanut butter to make it taste better. I, however, refuse to buy portable video game systems (well, maybe when I see that port of Final Fantasy with new and improved graphics, I'll change my tune), and I've, at this point in the writeup, owned the game two weeks and unlocked half of it, through training, repetitive winning, and the goading on of my roommate to continue playing against me in versus mode (okay, so you get crap points for versus mode, I just like playing against real people more than machines, even difficulty level 8 is a joke to me).
Anyway, as for the reasons this game is the right one for most people who enjoy a good 2D romp, fanatics will tell you that they dreamed of M. Bison locking horns with Geese Howard and Kyo and Iori fighting Ryu and Ken far longer than anyone ever was looking for Cable, Jill Valentine, and Megaman in a fighting game together, although that comment makes no remark against the quality of the unnamed Capcom 'versus' game itself, as it was a good piece of work. It just departed from the strategy and talent that the Street Fighter series had evolved and revolved around, where this game is a return to that style, for the versus series anyway.
And hey, it couldn't hurt to try the thing. Eh?
Eh?