SF2 Clones: SNK

I had earlier said that I was going to give SNK a pass on being SF2 clones, for a variety of reasons. I've changed my mind on that... sorta. Let me begin by listing the reasons that I was initially going to give them a pass, then I'll give a list of reasons why I think that they could be counted after all. Then, I'm going to discuss them in more general terms rather than specifically calling out their series. There are three series that apply here: Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting and King of Fighters. I do like my lists.

• First of all, the first Fatal Fury was already under development before Street Fighter 2 was released. Sadly (for SNK) it wasn't released until some months after SF2 was already sweeping arcade owners by storm, so it appears to be a SF2 clone attempt. However, a careful examination of many of the properties of the first Fatal Fury show it to be an improvement (although very similar, still) on the first Street Fighter title, and one that went a different direction than SF2 in many ways. Fatal Fury concentrated instead on some presentation issues, including adding a bit more of an integrated story to the game.
• SNK was not a flash in the pan SF2 imitator. Although some of their titles certainly pass muster as SF2 clones, they managed to stick with it, develop some real leverage with their titles, and frankly, some of them continued long after the Street Fighter series had faded away (discounting the rebirth of that series with Street Fighter IV.) These weren't quickie copies that faded away into obscurity shortly afterwards, which was really kind of the point of the series. Fatal Fury had no less than eight mainline titles and two spinoffs. King of Fighters has twelve mainline titles (with a thirteenth under development) and several spinoff titles. Art of Fighting only had three titles, but even that's quite a bit for a "copy."
• SNK was never content to simply copy anyway; even some of the very earlier "SF2 imitators" had innovative content, much of which later became standard for the genre, including the first true "super combos" (called Desperation moves in Art of Fighting, and later also in Fatal Fury and some King of Fighters titles), spirit meters (useful for using super combos), hidden characters that you needed to unlock, and more.
• Of all the developers who made these ripoff titles (Atlus, Visco, Data East, Noise Factory, etc.) SNK is the only one who's still in the game. Heck, a couple of years ago, SNK was still in the game while Capcom itself wasn't.
• The developers for many of these titles were the original developers of the original Street Fighter title: "Piston" Takashi and "Finish" Hiroshi. Well, that doesn't exactly make them not ripoffs, but it still means something.
• SNK used to also make a bunch of other fighters that were much less similar to Street Fighter in many ways, including the Samurai Shodown series, the Savage Reign/Kizuna Encounter series, and the Last Blade series.

Of course, on the other hand...

• SNK very obviously did ripoff SF2 once they saw that SF2 was more popular than its own offerings. Fatal Fury 2 and Fatal Fury Special are exactly to Fatal Fury as Street Fighter 2 and Super Street Fighter 2 is to Street Fighter. Mai was an obvious Chun-Li clone, and the boss progression (both the idea of fighting four bosses, and the specifics of the bosses themselves) strongly resemble the SF2 bosses, including having a boxer, a Spanish fighter, the boss from the first game (Geese vs. Sagat) and a big boss who wears big shoulder pads. The resemblance between Fatal Fury Special and one of the later iterations of Street Fighter 2 are almost uncanny at times (although the same will be true for some of the other titles we'll review in this series.) While it's fair to say that SF as it developed took some ideas from SNK, I think it's also very fair to say that much moreso, it went the other way around. This actually became more pronounced over time, particularly if you compare the Fatal Fury series with the Street Fighter series. The later Real Bout Fatal Fury games have a strong resemblance in many ways to the Street Fighter Alpha subseries, and Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves has a strong resemblance to Street Fighter III. Then again, as King of Fighters turned into the flagship title for SNK, it underwent its own evolution independently more often than not (although the change from EX to Advanced super meter scheme was very reminiscent of how Street Fighter Alpha handled the issue,) and of course, Art of Fighting didn't really last very long anyway.
• Art of Fighting in particular looks to be a series that was developed to cash in on the SF2 craze, and since it wasn't in development at the same time as SF2 (at least as far as I know) that's probably exactly what did happen.

All in all, SNK gets a lot of credit for being, of all the producers of Street Fighter wannabes, the most consistent, the most innovative, the longest lasting, probably the highest quality (this is certainly true for the later titles, where the competition is long gone), the most serious, and the most successful. Over time, I've come to appreciate SNK as much as Capcom, and some of their titles are certainly more than a match for the best Capcom titles. Some of their characters are just as intriguing as the best Capcom characters. While I won't go as far as to say that they've ever bested the best Capcom titles, they were certainly toe-to-toe peers, a claim that no other karate supers producer can match.