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Backlog: Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 Pro

Speaking of Cross-overs, Capcom has never been afraid of trying to earn as much money as possible by having their popular characters fall in with the wrong crowds.
They started with X-men vs. Street Fighter, then came Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, and then Marvel vs. Capcom, which got a similarly named sequel.

Amazingly these games worked really really well, because they introduced a whole new fighting system, with extremely over the top moves and a very easy comboing mechanism, and Capcom were just very clever to rake in a bunch of internationally popular characters from the Marvel Universe. And it's just cool to be able to pitch Ryu and his buddies against Wolverine and those other freaks.

Soon though, Capcom seemed to have worn the Marvel Galaxy to its extent, possibly because, due to the popularity of the movies, the characters were being increasingly abused for atrocious video games, so Capcom decided to move away from Marvel, and into the hands of an even less likely entity, their rival company SNK.

For years SNK and Capcom have been brawling it out in the Arcades to get dominion over the Japanese Populace and rule the 2D Fighting Game World, but now Capcom decided they were going to have to join forces. SNK obviously could not refuse because they've never been able to get a decent foot on the ground overseas, and their Neo Geo sold like the crap that it is, despite the fact that new games are STILL being released for it today, as I speak.

Thus, Capcom vs. SNK was born, although Street Fighter vs. SNK would be more accurate, since there's only one character from another Capcom series in there, but now we can finally decide who can kick whose ass, or more accurately, you can now finally shut up your SNK loving friends (why do you even like them in the first place?) by kicking Terry's butt with, geez, even Blanka would do.

To reinforce how Gay SNK characters are, the artwork for both series has been interchanged, and Street Fighter characters have never looked crappier. I used to think people with eye-patches were cool (pirates!) but Sagat looks like he's about to Uppercut his fist into your rectum. TIGER!

The game works using the Ratio system, where every character has a certain amount of Ratio points, which determine how strong he is. When you choose your character you get to use 4 Ratio points, meaning you can choose 4 characters with one point, 2 with 2, 1 with 4 etc. The amount of Ratio is predetermined per character, so Evil Ryu has 4 points, meaning you can only choose him and noone else, whereas Dhalsim, Cammy, Blanka and others have only 1 point, meaning you can put 4 of them in your party.

By contrast, 4 point characters are very strong and have high defense, whilst 1 point characters are weak pussies (Cammy! MUHAHAHAHAHA!), but at least you can choose 4. This system work really well and allows for some variety and strategy in chosing your characters.

However, the game sucks. The controls are horrid. There's only 4 action buttons, despite the fact that there ARE 3 punches and 3 kicks. But get this, you can only choose of 4 different punches and kicks too! There's only LP, HP, LK and HK. The Light Kick gets its own button, but whether you actually do a Medium Kick or a Hard Kick depends on HOW YOU HOLD YOUR JOYSTICK (hohoho) or how you keep the directional pad pressed. Forward is Hard, backward is Medium. This SUCKS, especially if you like to keep the D-pad pressed backwards for emergency blocks.
Also, the fact that this game was only released on Dreamcast, which has THE worst controller EVER, at least for 2D fighting games, and this is in a long line of beautiful ancestry like the Master System (Square D-pads anyone?) and Megadrive Joypad (It comes back when you throw it away!) and you realise why exactly Sega has gone bankrupt. The day they announced they weren't going to make Hardware anymore was the day my hands actually cried with joy.

So what you have here is a game that is decent enough of its own accord, but is totally ruined by lousy controls. I give it a 7.2.

After this there were rumors that Capcom was going to team up with Sammy to make a Capcom vs. Guilty Gear cross-over, but I think that was canned, which is a real shame. So I've thought of some other cool cross-over ideas for Capcom:

- Resident Evil vs. Silent Hill: Shoot a Zombie's head off, only to see him laugh at you and shout "Hah! I'm not real anyway!". Or just throw your flashlight at him.

- Mega Man vs. Metroid: Find out who has the girliest voice!

- Breath of Fire vs. Final Fantasy: Sephiroth has Blue hair now! Customize your own hair color for added replay value. And I mean your OWN hair color!

- Coffee vs. Beer: Get drunk AND Hyperactive at the same time!

Actually, the first two don't even sound that bad.....

posted by Ingen! @ 8:38 PM