This past week, the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection was announced to be coming to Nintendo Switch and many are excited, I include myself in this list due to being a fan of retro gaming in general, but I do have another reason this collection is such good news to me and it is the fact that many of these will not be exact ports but refined ports as well as what games are added.
Many no doubt remember how games like Athena and Ikari Warriors played on the NES and these failures were due to the control scheme available at the time. There was only so much that SNK had to work with and they did their best, but the frustration was unavoidable due to the different control set up. The good news here however, is that many of these games will have updated control schemes which will finally let people not playing the original arcade versions see what made these games excellent. There is also the fact that some of the games have not aged well in certain areas, which is seemingly also being addressed. Thus the games will be closer to what people remembered playing, rather than what they actually played.
I also like the choices of games in this collection so far, and look forward to seeing what else is added. SNK had a history of great games before the Neo Geo and this should be acknowledged more,such as with Crystalis. That game has aged beautifully for an 8 bit rpg on the NES, probably due to the fact that it is the style of gameplay that fans like today more than back then and may even be better received now ( and remember that the game is considered a true classic). With all the additional features and tweaks being brought in, this just feels like it will be the perfect way to show off SNK’s early period and that has me very happy.
But I want to know how you all feel about this collection. Are you excited? Will you be getting it? Let me know!
Disclaimer: The above was the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of ROG or its staff.