Poor SNK. They’ve finally done it - finally shut up shop, sunk the Black Noah and dropped the ceiling on Krizalid. It’s been a long time coming - signs of the company’s forthcoming demise have been everywhere for some time now, but to actually read the news from whichever site we stole it from, to actually see their sweet little ‘farewell’ message to the fans, badly translated as ever — well shit, I get a little lump in my throat.

And I hope you do too, regardless of your feelings for the company. Human nature, and the type of people the fighting game genre tends to attract, means a lot of fans feel they have to ‘take sides’, to choose SNK or Capcom, then insult the other side - for what purpose I have no idea. We throw joke names like “Crapcom” and “SN-Gay” around all the time at this site, but there’s no malice in it, no attempts to prove what a ‘hardcore’ supporter of one company or the other we are. No, that sort of thing is for faggots, and in the haven for sanity and endlessly crashing web servers that is Higher Voltage - we recognise and acknowledge the wonder of both companies equally. And even if you never really got into the games, or got into them only to be put off by the direction the series was taking; it can’t be denied that they just brought so much to the genre in terms of innovations, in terms of characters, in terms of honest-to-goodness GAMEPLAY; that the alternate universe where SNK never existed is a poor, cold, empty one.

However although the grave is still fresh - it’s not too early to perhaps try and point the finger, to find out who exactly is responsible for SNK’s death.

Was it Capcom? Their arch rivals, secretly plotting to destroy them? Nah, I don’t think so - I never really saw them as being in competition, co-existing yes, and copying ideas and characters back and forth throughout the last decade - but in direct competition with each other? Can’t see it. The CvS games also give this impression - after all it’s hardly like Burger King and McDonalds are going to team up to create a burger any time soon, are they? No, both Capcom and SNK did what they set out to do exceedingly well, and over time they built up their own separate audiences - KOF fans were KOF fans, and it’s not like they’re going to suddenly switch to SF, or vicé versa. Then there are the super-geniuses like me, who loved the works of both companies, and found the time (and money) to buy whatever each ’side’ put out. They both filled a different need and went out to a different audience, so I don’t think it was Capcom.

Was it the slow death of the fighting game genre? Well personally, this whole ‘death of a genre’ concept leaves me cold, but even the blindest of optimists would be unable to deny the scene today is a far cry from the early 1990’s, and “popular opinion” these days (read: IGN, or any Playstation magazine) decrees that Streetfighter games were all the same anyway, and “look like they’re running on a SNES”. So yes, the genre is a lot less popular than it once was. However unlike Capcom, SNK never really had a separate “mainstream” cash cow to keep them afloat. Cappy had the Resident Evil series, as well as a few RPGs (always a good thing), some platformers and other assorted junk. SNK had what? Metal Slug? Those photo-sticker booths? To be an almost solely fighter-producing company in a climate that, frankly, just doesn’t want fighting games is nothing but bad news. Oh sure, the hardcore fans still played the arcade machines, still bought the console ports, and maybe one or two of you bought the Neo*Geo carts - but it wasn’t enough.

What could they have done? Should they have branched out or dumbed down? Well they certainly tried the latter - blatantly stealing from Capcom’s VS. games with the implementation of the Striker system in KOF’99 onwards, which lead to higher combos and flashier, more intense gameplay. It can’t have been enough, and such developments have even lost them fans.

Could it have been the advent and subsequent embracement by the gaming world of polygons? Within a year (thank you Sony) - 3D gaming had become the coolest thing in the world, and 2D was suddenly primitive, boring and unsophisticated. If you follow this mindset, then SNK were just the worst company in the universe. They drew sprites! And ran in low resolution! Burn them.

Again, the question to ask is could they have kept up? Should they have? The company’s two forays into the world of polygon fighters proved to be pretty much disastrous. Remember Samurai Shodown 64? Did anyone ever SEE Samurai Shodown 64? And Fatal Fury Wild Ambition did little better, despite making it across to the Playstation.

Could they have instead embraced better technology, to make a higher calibre of 2D game then? Their use of the MVS board for as long as they did divides people’s opinions like few other topics. Were they complete idiots, blind to the whims of the consumer, and to the market in general, or were they just supremely loyal to their customers? I can’t think of any other console that still had games developed for it something like ten years after it was launched. (If I could interject with my own opinion at this point, I’d say that I’ve been perfectly happy with the look of the KOF games, the Fatal Fury games, the SamSho’s and so on. For me they didn’t need high res, million-frame animations to be fabulous games.) However (thankfully) I am not everyone, and the fabled “general populous”, including the legendary CASUAL GAMERS may well have needed such things. Either way, I don’t think fighters would have done much better if they had been a better class of 2D sprites. Guilty Gear X hardly changed the world, though that could just be a case of (far too) little, too late, so it’s doubtful it would have helped SNK.

Or was it SNK themselves who were ultimately responsible for the company’s demise? The problems I’ve listed above are obviously due to the change in the videogame market over the years, and the change in the tastes of videogame players - but a company of this nature can change it’s products, audience and focus to match these changing times — surely this is what good companies are all about. Did they want to keep up with current trends? Did they even *know* about said trends? Where do you draw the line between loyalty to your fans, and plain bad policy? For what feels like the thousandth time, I have to ponder, could they have kept up if they wanted to? Or were they too poor, too lazy or too technologically inept to do so?

I feel that (cop-out sum-up = dead ahead) it’s a combination of all these things. SNK were a company that grew up in a simple, straightforward and happy era of gaming - however that soon changed - technological achievement began to overtake game design, and with new breeds of game players - people who cared more about how ‘cool’ their games were than how they played, people who prefer frames per second and millions of polygons to gameplay, plus the overall change of videogaming from a small hobby to a huge (soul-less) global industry - and while the market, games and the people who play them changed as time progressed, SNK … didn’t. Only the smart and those who “get it” stayed by their side, and that’s just not enough to run a company on.

As nice as the idea of a company so loyal to it’s “hardcore fans” (ugh ugh ugh) that it was willing to run itself into the ground and go bankrupt rather than betray them is, it seems more than a little unlikely - the notion that they were slow, naive and dumb is a less pleasant, but ultimately much more likely scenario. Perhaps in a less hostile time, there would have been room for such a company, but not in the gaming market of the 21st century. So really everyone gets the blame - the gamers for being so sheep-like, gaming companies for exploiting such herd behaviour, the BIGGER BETTER BANGS mentality and finally SNK themselves for being to blind, stubborn, stupid or even proud to change.

For us miserable peasants, the whys and wherewithal’s of a videogame company are usually shrouded in mystery, and SNK are no exception - we may never know the real truth behind the decisions they made, decisions that brought seven or so years of fabulous fighters, then this ignominious death. Whatever those reasons, SNK’s years as a videogame producer have been nothing if not interesting, and it is a terrible shame to see it end this way.

King of Fighters lives on though, through Korean developers EOLITH, who have yet to prove themselves worthy of the name. KOF2002 is currently scheduled as well, and “Mega Enterprises” have just announced Metal Slug 4, but other than that, who can say? At this point, there’s little more that anyone can do, except go back and revel in the joy of the games that SNK made in the past. So yeah, when you’ve finished reading this, zip your pants back up, wipe your hands and go play an SNK fighter. Go stick a sword in Haohmaru’s eye, punch Goenitz in the balls, make Duck King eat a Power Geyser and put Amano’s stick where the sun doesn’t shine. Do it for the company that made some of the most fabulous fighting games of all times, gawd bless yer SNK, may you rest in peace.