Presentation counts

Presentation counts in these types of video games. I think part of the secret of the original success of the Street Fighter franchise, now over twenty years ago when the first one came out, was the presentation. The fighters were interesting characters, their stages and BGMs were engaging, and the little story endings really gave folks a reason to keep plunking quarters into the machine to keep moving up the brackets.

I think ultimately that was part of the reason SNK's games struggled to find a market in the US a bit too... their presentation was pretty, but otherwise laughable. In fact, SNK's presentation has become a bit of a joke in some respects. They have interesting characters, they have engaging stages and music... but their endings on their earlier games were a major let-down, and the atrocious use of English was laughable. Even the ambitious storylines and endings that they started developing a bit later, say, the Orochi storyline in King of Fighters '95-'97 was hampered by the fact that the presentation didn't make it very clear what in the world was going on. It didn't make much sense. And the dialogue was nearly nonsensical.

Of course, I also have to admit that some of the most successful games in the genre eschewed some aspects of presentation, and that doesn't seem to have brought them down. That's because presentation is only one aspect of a game's success, not the sole one. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 had no endings, and insulting BGMs, yet is hugely successful. The same is true somewhat for King of Fighters '98.

All other things being equal, though, taking a little bit of time on presentation doesn't add much to the development cycle of the game, but it does add quite a bit to the appeal of the game.