Constantly offloading their back catalogue of fan favourite hits to nostalgic gamers, SNK’s latest collection bundles together a pick and mix selection of their most famous franchises. With no duplicates from a single series, Volume 1 has one Metal Slug game, one King of Fighters, one Baseball Stars and thirteen more Neo Geo classics.
The collection is presented as a glorified emulator, allowing graphics, controls and audio to be switched and tweaked to the player’s preference, and setting a budget of credits before booting up a game; you can Free Play through an entire game, or limit yourself to a few continues.
Each title also has a number of 360-esque achievements, from completing the game to doing knife-only runs in Metal Slug. While only one game is locked behind the goal system (collecting 10 medals unlocks World Heroes), the moves lists for fighting game characters are not only hidden, but are unlocked in completely irrelevant titles; beat Super Sidekicks 3 on Easy to unlock Terry Bogard’s move list; of course!
Still, the choice of games is mostly excellent; Metal Slug 1 isn’t as outlandish as its sequels, but its reserved nature has a distinct charm and contextual importance. In fact, each game marks a milestone in SNK’s career, and the compilation picks massively important titles from their illustrious history; Magician Lord, Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting and Samurai Shodown to name a few, ensuring no franchise is left untouched. The companies most landmark franchises, King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown and Metal Slug, have individual PSP collections and anthologies, for the missing games.
The PSP conversion is mostly solid, but some games have far more polish and stability than others; the ultra famous Metal Slug runs without a hitch, while barely remembered top-down shooter Shock Troopers is plagued with nuisance load-screens and annoying hiccups and delays. Load times are, as usual, frustrating, and the local multiplayer suffers lag. Technical nitpicks sully an otherwise immaculate collection.
Playing the games in full screen look fantastic, especially with SNK’s notoriety for its colourful visuals and amazing sprite work; the game also bares little evidence to show the sprites’ distortion in upscaling when stretching to the PSP’s widescreen. They also control well with a choice between d-pad and analogue-nub, and sound great, complete with heavily distorted voice samples.
The collection is no-doubt bursting with your favourite games, and reeks of arcade nostalgia; the oversized artwork, bellowed titles and flashing backgrounds of the attract screens, simplistic controls and even the ticking timer during character selection. SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 successfully emulates a vibrant and lively 90s arcade in your pocket, hand picking sixteen of SNK’s most important titles and bringing them to PSP with care and attention, only spoilt by technical blunders.
As the Tokyo Game Show continues relentlessly over in the Land of the Rising Fun, we’re sat here being overencumbered with news(and playing Halo 3, but what are you gonna do)?