Jonnas

It bypassed my inner proofreader/grammar nazi. That's how much I agree

I hate that I read this and immediately agreed

I would wager, two reasons: Wrestling popularity was at an all-time high during the late 90s, and the market was fiercely competitive. WWF was entering its now-famous "Attitude Era", WCW was still reaping the success from the NWO storyline, and ECW was THE indie to follow, with its grungey environment and rabid fanbase (they even pioneered the tone that would define the Attitude era). It's sensible to take advantage of a red-hot market, especially if its competition also spilled into videogames (as we see with Aki and Acclaim in this post); While the PS1 allowed for FMVs (and thus, entrance videos and live-action footage), the N64 allowed for 4-player local gaming. Wrestling goes hand in hand with multi-man matches (battle royals, triple threats, tag-team matches, etc.), and the N64 was well-equipped to translate that chaos into a videogame better than its competition.

I'm actually really fond of this one. Played it a handful of times on the PS1, then received the PC version as a gift. Those versions had relevant clips from the film play before each level, which gave a lot of context for each. No wonder the N64 version feels so bland, as it doesn't have them! I swear, this level's track hits hard when you have the music video before it. That said, yeah, the game has a lot of rough edges still. You sparked a memory when you said it's easy to fall off ledges, as I definitely had to jump prematurely a lot in this game! Combat also sucked (especially with the later human enemies), and so did the bosses. But it's got some cool stuff, too. Jumping off Tantor (the elephant), the tree-surfing sections, the Crash-like chases were nice, the boat level was pretty cool (outside of combat) as well... I'm also always down for collectibles, and the game made good use of the novel 2.5D visuals to hide/display them. My most vivid memory of this game will always be the "PLOISH" sound that the fruits make when you throw them at enemies. So fun. (EDIT: Just watched a gameplay clip. The sound is actually produced when you throw fruits at a specific plant. Mandela effect strikes again)

Regardless of what Switch 2 turns out to be, I'm already happy. I've been using the Switch to build up a fair collection (to the point that I refused to buy cheaper alternatives on GOG or Steam), so it's nice that I'll be able to bring it forward. Really happy that this includes NSO as well.

Worms Armageddon is one of the greatest games of all time. One of the few PC games you can easily play in local multiplayer, too. It's hard to imagine playing it with a console controller, but I guess it's a matter of whatever we're used to.

I am legitimately surprised to see Metroid Prime and Fire Emblem Blazing Blade in the launch catalogue. I listened to the "To Sleep" playlist on shuffle, and was shocked when Lyn's emotional theme came up (with an accurate screenshot as the thumbnail, too). After adjusting the spoiler settings, I saw the current game list as well. They went for some surprising variety, including Lylat Wars or Kirby's Dream Land just to include those eras/consoles. Even the NES only gets SMB and Metroid for now (not the most obvious choice), because they're likely to fill it over time. This is nice.

Seeing as I own Shadow Man on GOG (the now-delisted original, not the remastered version), and seeing as this is the N64 version... which version should I play, I wonder?

Never played any of the 3D Castlevanias, but this one in particular intrigues me. Having a werewolf for a protagonist is attractive in itself, and atypical, even for this series. Plus, Cornell was playable in Judgement (the most fun character to use in that game, imo), and he had a really cool theme song inspired by Legacy of Darkness:

I remember being fascinated by the Custom Robo trophy in Melee, and being very curious about the upcoming Gamecube game. I'm not sure if this kind of game would've been for me... but then again, it was the age of Pokémon and Medabots, I'm sure I'd have a blast. This franchise would've been fire if it released in the west with better timing.

Told'ja! This character never clicked with me, but I'm very glad to see him back. Hasn't been playable in 25 years. Not a huge fan of his new design, but let's see if it grows on me.

Wow, hadn't heard of this one before. Looks stunning. Not on Switch yet, but Steam and GOG both have it. I'll wishlist this for sure.

Something curious happened, recently. I started a new job (which made me a lot busier as of late), and an unexpected perk came with it: there's an Arcade machine in the break room! This is one of those quasi-bootleg machines with hundreds of emulated games inside ("Pandora's Box 4" is what says on the title screen), but they're there, and they're free. As such, I took the opportunity to fill some holes on my gaming history: A Jonnas Arcade Update Just, some things to clarify for added context I've only had 30 minutes at most per session with each game. My lunch breaks are all I get to explore these classics; Emulation is inconsistent. Games like SF Alpha seem to run just fine, whereas SFIII: Third Strike chugs a lot (curiously, SFIII: New Generation runs without issues as well); I'm not used to Arcade pads, but even taking that into account, this joy stick is wonky AF. I can't do hadoukens easily (some games are harder than others in this regard, but no game where they're easy to pull off), dragon punches are out of the question, and my characters would occasionally short hop at the slightest of touches upward. 360º motions are a blast to pull off, though. Because of these factors, these "Arcade" updates will be sparse and few. But we'll see. Art of Fighting Credit: Fightersgeneration.com Released in 1992, Art of Fighting was quite the experiment by SNK. It's a fighting game for sure, and one that's fairly derivative of Street Fighter II, but it brought a lot of unique features to the table. Characters have a "ki" bar that gets depleted with each special move, you can charge it in place, you can taunt to deplete your opponent's ki, you can perform certain moves off the wall or in mid-air (IIRC only Vega could pull that off in Street Fighter, and he wasn't playable at first), there are Desperation supermoves, the camera is very dynamic (zooming in and out), characters' faces get bruised as the fights go on, and most memorable of all, this game was actually built with a single-player campaign in mind. The story follows Ryo Sakazaki, a young karateka (his father owns the dojo) whose sister got kidnapped by thugs. His best friend Robert (a student of the dojo, and Yuri's boyfriend) joins him in this quest. It's got a very "Steven Seagal movies from the 80s" vibe. While there are 8 playable characters in multiplayer, the single-player arcade mode only allows you to play as two: Ryo and Robert. Each fight is predetermined, with specific dialogue playing at the start and end of each match, advancing the story. And between each match, there's a ridiculous shot of Ryo riding his motorcycle (or a less ridiculous shot of Robert driving his car) to the next location and monologuing. At some point, there will be minigames. While smashing cars is fun, these AOF minigames are more rewarding. You pick one of 3: the arm-wrestling minigame is about mashing A, and if you win, your character gets stronger for the remainder of the campaign; the bottle-opening minigame is about timing A, and if you win, your character's ki bar gets larger for the remainder of the campaign; the hadouken minigame is about practising a specfiic input to launch a Very Large Hadouken (not the official name), and if you do it 6 times within the time limit, you unlock that move, the VLH, for the remainder of the campaign. It's a fun idea that gives your playthrough a bit more choice and replayability. Since I couldn't input most of my moves properly anyway, I always went for the arm-wrestling. Honestly, despite how janky and dated it feels, there's a... weight to it. Fights feel pondered, simpler moves are more powerful than in modern games, and there's a chunkiness to the sprites and sound effects that feels really good. It's a very unique fighting game, and it's worth trying. Sadly, the fifth fight is as good as I reached in less than 30 minutes, but I watched the rest online. I already knew the plot, but it's actually pretty cool to see the pace at which it unravels. It's a 3 star game, and my heart kinda wanted that score to go even higher. Art of Fighting 2 Credit: Fightersgeneration.com I played this one before. I just wanted to re-check it to get a better idea of the series' evolution. Released in 1994, this one is structured more like a typical fighting game, which makes it less unique. Sure, the ki bars and bruised faces are still there, but it lost the invested single-player experience. Thankfully, the goofy writing still tries to go for memorable interactions, characters, and relationships, so it still has its own identity. In this environment, the jank hurts the experience, more than me finding it quaint. Everything is a pain to control in this game. Worse, the difficulty is unforgiving, easily the hardest in the trilogy. The first fight kicked my ass over and over. Sadly, this game has aged pretty poorly. 2 stars is all I'm willing to give it. Art of Fighting 3 We then arrive at AOF3, released in 1996. This one goes in a wild new direction, both in aesthetics and in gameplay. Starting with the obvious, animations in this game are incredibly fluid (for the most part). This was the first time that SNK experimented with rotoscoping, and they had fun with it. You can see some rough edges here and there (characters get up way too quickly, for example, and characters like Jin have very stiff movements), but it was Streets ahead of anything else back then. The soundtrack goes for some very jazzy ambience, which I appreciate. New for the series, as well. Gameplay-wise, some series elements like the ki bar and taunts are retained, but the flow of the fights is now very different. Imagine my surprise when I started attacking, and found out that punches and kicks flow into each other seamlessly, like... a 3D fighter. Indeed, this game feels like they looked at Tekken or Virtua Fighter and thought "Can we do those strings of moves in a 2D game?". Some 2D games attempted that sort of thing before, with really poor results (*cough* Virtua Fighter Mega Drive *cough*), but AOF3 seems to have been able to actually strike something functional. Enemies can be launched and juggled in a way that feels very Virtua Fighter-esque. Once again, still a bit rough in some aspects (striking an opponent while they're down can feel really finicky and unnatural), but for a first try, it's great! SNK wrote this game like a side-story. While the previous games focused on Ryo, this game is about Robert and him going to Mexico to help out a friend, with Ryo being the one who tags along this time. Outside of Ryo and Robert, the roster is entirely new, made up of folk that's involved in this Mexican business. Weirdly enough, Yuri's in the plot, but not playable. The single-player is far more traditional this time around (not even minigames this time), with vague hints about the plot being told between matches. The writing feels weirder than usual, like the plot was written out, but the machine can only display half of the dialogue at any time. It's disjointed too, for example, there's a cutscene dedicated to introducing Karman Cole to the plot, but you only fight him a couple of matches later, and he has zero consequence to anything that happens. Special shout-out to Wyler, the goofiest SNK boss I've ever seen. He doesn't move much, he spams bitch-slaps where he only moves his wrist, and his get-up animation is just embarrassing (seen at 13:09 in the video above). There's something lovable about this, of course, but holy shit. Despite the rough edges, I had an absolute blast with this game. Punishing enemies with simple juggles and combo strings feels rewarding in a casual playthrough. I wish SNK had continued to develop games in this style, "2D fighter that feels a lot like a 3D fighter". The general vibe of the game is very pleasant, as well. I didn't have enough time to defeat Wyler, but he didn't seem too hard. I respect the decision to reboot the roster too, and while these new blokes aren't very popular, I think there's a charm to them. My heart wants to give this 4 stars, but my head knows it should be 3 stars. (My opinion is always subject to change, of course, but 4 stars is where I put games DB Fighterz or Guilty Gear XX. Perspective is important) ------------ This is a fascinating series. It did a lot to push the genre forward (heck, Ryo was even the first-ever guest character in a fighting game, in Fatal Fury 2), despite none of its entries being very popular by themselves. Its characters would live on in King of Fighters, where they made the vast majority of their fans (and even in Street Fighter, where Dan Hibiki is a parody of Ryo, Robert, and Yuri all at once). Each game looks different from the others, but there's a cohesive line in there. I respect that as well. Interestingly, I used to hear that AOF1 was rough and mediocre at best, AOF2 was the only decent entry, and AOF3 was "the weird one" that didn't do much of note. These are wildly different opinions from the ones I got after playing these games myself, and that's fascinating. Is it a sign of the times, maybe? Where janky-but-creative games like AOF1 have far more value in 2024 than a dated traditional fighter like AOF2? Meanwhile, AOF3 was my favourite hidden gem here. The most surprising thing? SNK revealed they're working on a new Art of Fighting game back in July. This is crazy to me, this was a series made to experiment and innovate in fighting games back in the 90s (when the genre practically only existed in Arcades), and I can't imagine it existing outside of that context. What are they even going to do, here? I'm very curious. Heck, I'd even argue that "Schlocky action film starring Steven Seagal" isn't that popular of a film genre anymore. The modern equivalent would be... I don't know, John Wick? Should Robert be played by Keanu Reeves? On an unrelated note, does anybody have SNK's e-mail for fan suggestions?