『 SNK vs Capcom: SVC Chaos 』

What's the thing you love most about Christmas? Is it being with your family? Is it the obscene amounts of delicious food and sweets? Is it the christmas spirit? It's the presents, isn't it. Yea, for me too. No matter whether you get them of buy them yourself, Christmas has to be celebrated with tons of presents and here are some of the gifts I got for myself this season. A bunch of Andreas comics, including first four Capricorne albums and the final Rork album, and NiGHTS: Journey of dreams for the Wii, plus SNK vs Capcom: SVC Chaos for the Xbox.


I'll talk about NiGHTS soon enough, but this time I wanted to focus on SVC Chaos. I absolutely adore SNK, their platforms and I don't think I would be lying if I said I love each and every one of their games. SNK are the true kings of 2D and they have proven it time and time again, even now when Capcom has moved to 3D with their Street Fighter IV, SNK's King of Fighters XII will be all 2D, hand drawn, mindblowing hi resolution monster of a game with some serious attachment to the old school.


Getting back to SVC Chaos though, you might remember the famed Capcom vs SNK series which had some great success, especially with the arrival of second installment. This title gathered fighters from several Capcom and SNK games and put them together in one great game. It was developed by the Capcom and being lazy bums, the developers just took the sprites of all possible characters and put them in one game. The gameplay system was almost flawless, but the character sprites were sometimes mismatched because of different resolutions and art styles.


In 2003 it was time for SNK to try it their way and so, they had developed SVC Chaos, a game build from ground up, again, featuring fighters from both Capcom and SNK titles. What SNK did that Capcom didn't however, was to redraw every single character so that they would match. Every Capcom fighter present in the game got a new sprite drawn by SNK artists and if you ever played this game, you know what a fantastic job SNK did. Even though there are precious few stages in SNK's production, the sprites make up for it.


Since the game was released by SNK Playmore, not only did it use their sprites, it also used the four button system, even for the Capcom characters. This change, however shocking it might be for Capcom fans, did not make too big of an impact on the gameplay complexity. On the contrary, decreased number of buttons and much more faster battle pace than what was seen in Capcom vs SNK 2 made SVC Chaos come on top. If you own an Xbox or a PS2, aswell as an arcade stick, it would be a sin not to own this title.


SVC Chaos was one of the last titles released for the Neo Geo [the absolute last one being サムライスピリッツ零 Special / Samurai Spirits Zero Special, released in 2004]. It's clear that SNK cared for their platform up until the very end and ensured it gets the highest quality games possible. SVC Chaos might not be as colorful and as impressive graphically as some other titles out there, but once you try it, you'll see why it is safe to call it one of the best fighting games out there.


To show you just how fast the game is and how complex it can get, here is a combo video [of a questionable picture quality, unfortunately] for all of you to enjoy. It was snatched off YouTube so if you're not one of the cool people with a Nico Nico account, you can look for SVC Chaos combo videos there. If you do have a Nico Nico account, click on the thumbnail above and enjoy the show.


So that's it for this time. I feel a cold creeping up on me so I've decided to fight off the germs with some gin to disinfect myself from the inside, some lemons to provide the much needed vitamins and some tonic to add flavour. Let's hope this will be enough because I'm not in the mood to get sick right now.