Hello and welcome to another Retro-Spective review! Today we’re reviewing SNK Vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash, a game for the NeoGeo Pocket. This game was originally released in 1999 but was rereleased by SNK for the Nintendo Switch handheld system. SNK Vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash should need no introduction for plenty of die-hard fighter fans. But does it hold up in a modern gaming environment? Without further ado, let’s dig in!
But First, What Is SNK?
So, for a full disclosure, while I’m sure that many readers are familiar with SNK, I for one am not. I was drawn to this review prospect by a fighting game aficionado friend pitching Capcom properties to me. As a fan of IPs like Megaman and Street Fighter to a slightly lesser extent, I strongly considered reviewing this one for Retro-Spective.
However, to understand the game better I had to know about the other side of this game: SNK. The company was created as “Shin Nihon Kikaku” and only rebranded to its current abbreviated name some years later. SNK created many coin-operated arcade systems and eventually got into the handheld game industry with their NeoGeo device. According to a couple of sources, a charity corporation known as MiSK Foundation bought SNK following multiple financial pitfalls by the latter. According to those sources, this move angered a large sect of the gaming community they’d fostered.
Anyway, that research was important to my understanding of this game. Certain franchises created by SNK might feature prominently in SNK Vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash, like King of Fighters or Fatal Fury, but I couldn’t tell you whether I recognize them.
On to the Retro-Spective!
The game immerses you immediately into its world. It has a burgeoning tournament scene where players of Card Fighters Clash vie for supremacy in the fields of TCG battle. The game is, unsurprisingly, not very deep. We’ve seen this line before, with games like the Pokémon TCG for Game Boy Color, a game we covered in our first Retro-Spective article. We will no doubt see it again future reviews as well.
However, there was something rather off about the user interface of SNK Vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash. Despite having very similar UI to the aforementioned Pokémon TCG, it’s quite unintuitive. When I tried to get information in the midst of a match, I couldn’t find a good way to glean a description of the cards. This meant I needed to rely on memory to know what cards did, instead of just being able to read them. This is a big no-no for game design, I believe. It’s also one that we’ll see again soon, when we inevitably review Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories.
The game also has such small font size for its text. Despite this, however, the cards themselves use many different abbreviations to explain aspects of the mechanics. I couldn’t tell you the difference between BP and SP if I tried. In the introductory match, I didn’t see a single ACT (or Action) card, so I was relegated to wailing on the tutorial opponents with CHA (or Character) cards, with no serious definition of how to use their abilities or the aforementioned ACT cards. The game has a series of flaws to even its tutorial mode.
You can watch an in-game tutorial of SNK Vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash below.
But I digress. The game prompted me, right after the demo match, to collect five coins to gain entry to the tournament in Tokyo, Japan. I felt no such obligation with such a rough UI and so little plot driving my gameplay.
Is SNK Vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash Any Good?
In a word, no. I don’t think this game is worth playing in this day and age. Not with so many other more optimal options available anyway. It’s extremely rudimentary for a card game. When the user interface doesn’t lend itself to assisting new, unfamiliar players, it’s not going to be good for the game or the company making it. I almost wonder if this and other games SNK produced contributed to their bankruptcy only one year later. I don’t think Capcom should have sullied their hands by collaborating here. Maybe that’s harsh, but for such an old game, what’s done is done and this opinion is relatively immaterial now.
In the end, it’s clear that this game wasn’t for me. Not all games are, nor do they have to be. However, if you’re really into Capcom and SNK properties – and I mean really into them – perhaps you’d get a (Spinning Bird) kick out of playing SNK Vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash. You just may have to be a bit more patient with it than I was.
Want more Retro fun? Check out our previous articles on Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour for the Nintendo DS and Kingdom Hearts: Re: Chain of Memories for the Sony PlayStation 2 console.
