#SNK VS CAPCOM PORTABLE#

Capcom: Card Fighters Clash and fighting game SNK vs. SNK kicked things off in 1999 with two titles for its Neo Geo Pocket Color: card game SNK vs. With an initial agreement in place, both companies planned out their crossover games. It was like building up a new business, and we had to figure out precisely who would do what. It proceeded more gradually, step by step. I don't think everything was necessarily decided in that initial agreement. It turned out there were Yu-Gi-Oh! fans at Capcom as well, so we ended up throwing Capcom vs.

They would play during their lunch breaks, for example. Īside from drinking, you know the card game Yu-Gi-Oh!, right? That was actually quite popular back in the day, and there were a lot of people at SNK who loved playing it. Our relationships improved, and we would go out drinking together and stuff. For me personally, it previously felt kind of difficult to approach people at Capcom, but thanks to that collaboration, I got to know the people there. When I heard Capcom and SNK would be collaborating, it felt like, Ah! Spring is here! Like there was a thawing of relations between the two companies. SNK pixel art supervisor, SNK Japan)Īt the time, it's not as if SNK and Capcom never talked to each other or anything, but I had the impression that there was some bad blood between the two.

And in the late ’90s, he hatched an idea to bring his franchises together: What if the two companies put all this history to good use? While he didn’t directly participate much in the back-and-forth, he couldn’t help but notice it. Nishiyama sat in the middle of this, having developed the original Street Fighter at Capcom before joining SNK and overseeing the Fatal Fury and King of Fighters series. “Street Fighter added a parry SNK introduced the Just Defend. “Capcom had Ryu, so SNK made Ryo,” he says. “Capcom and SNK spent the ’90s in a kind of call-and-response dance,” says veteran fighting game developer Seth Killian. Privately, many spoke of a feud between Capcom CEO Kenzo Tsujimoto and SNK founder Eikichi Kawasaki, while publicly, fans saw the companies trying to top one another while constantly referencing each other in their games. Rooted in executive frustration yet resembling a playground flirtation, the rivalry between Capcom and SNK played out in many forms throughout the ’80s and ’90s. Graphic: James Bareham/Polygon | Source images: SNK via MobyGames The Capcom/SNK crossover resulted in eight games between 19, not counting ports or the second of the Pokémon-style twin versions of SNK vs.

But before departing, he left behind a parting gift - one that neatly tied a bow on his past decade. Soon after, SNK got acquired and filed for bankruptcy, and Nishiyama left and started his own independent studio. Nishiyama, who served as the head of SNK’s development group, says this marked a tough time for him personally, in part because he was opposed to the release of the Neo Geo Pocket, which SNK invested in heavily.

#SNK VS CAPCOM PORTABLE#

SNK failed to find the same level of success outside of fighting games, trying its hand at a CD version of its Neo Geo home console, new 3D arcade hardware, and a Neo Geo Pocket series of portable game machines. Console games were exploding, the fighting game boom was over, and Capcom and SNK’s arcade divisions were left trying to scrape the last pieces of candy out of the piñata.įortunately for Capcom, it had managed to grow its console game division in the meantime, finding success with the Resident Evil series, among others. Capcom kept up appearances, the business was changing. By the late ’90s, though, the industry’s momentum caught up to it.

Snk vs capcom