Weekend Arcade: A Closer Look At SNK's Arcade Library

The Future Is Now
With Vol.1 of an arcade collection released earlier this year on PS2 and soon to be released on Wii, SNK have thrown but a tray of appetizers out for ravenous hard core arcade fans to munch on. Before we look towards the obvious Vol.2 lets roll up our sleeves and dig for the treats SNK has buried at the bottom of its freezer.

Images KLOV

The Early Years 1979-1985
Not exactly Pac Man and Galaga
These early games were fun but didn't really stand up to the competition at the time. SNK needed a calling card game, a mascot, anything to stand out and win a few of the quarters destined for the bellies of Defender, Donkey Kong and Tempest. SNK's early years are fairly forgettable. Not much here worth putting on an arcade collection. I, like many gamers, did not own a Neo-Geo as a kid. I played most of these games via PC emulation although my memories of late 80's Saturdays afternoons spent at Electronic Avenue video arcade in the North Sydney mall, loosing many dollars to SNK games are vivid and many. As with all the games I blog about from this moment forward let it be known to all, I use emulation. I payed for a lifetime of free plays as a kid.

Ozma Wars 1979

Satan of Saturn 1981

Main Event 1984

Mad Crasher 1984

Alpha Mission 1985

The late 1970s and early 1980s were pretty much standard fair for SNK. The company pumped out a few dozen games, most of them pretty average and with the exception of Alpha Mission they really didn't produce any exceptional titles in those first few years as a struggling arcade publisher/developer. SNK were creative and resourceful however, and they managed to try and develop for almost every type of genre possible and even helped invent a few along the way.
By 1986 they demonstrated an obvious talent for developing action oriented shooters and were about to tighten the screws on the quality of their games in the face of fierce competition from Capcom, Konami, Data East and Taito. Arcade technology was moving forward in what seemed like huge leaps in the late 80s and SNK's games were about to get a whole lot better.

The Late 1980s
The Calm Before the Storm

The last SNK cabinet style before the Neo Geo hit.

Athena 1986

P.O.W. 1988

Mechanized Attack 1988

Prehistoric Isle 1989

Ikari III- The Rescue 1989

With a strong emphasis now on pushing powerful & expensive technology, SNK really started to pull ahead in the late 1980s. The graphics and art were beginning to hold up against Taito's and Capcom's. Players were treated to high quality sound and state of the art effects on more and more SNK games and most importantly kids were lining up to dump in their money. For the first time the company was turning a solid profit. As good as their games were in the late 1980s SNK was about to get a boost of power incredable enough to make a Libyan terrorist proud. SNK was secretly developing a technology that would forever place them at the pinnacle of hard core arcade and home gaming.