I recently watched some Top Hat Gaming Man YouTube documentaries. I've actually seen these before months ago, but I'd kind of forgotten about a handful of specific conclusions he reached. Now, he's got his finger more on the pulse of what fighting game fans think than I do, presumably, although of course there might be selection bias in terms of the data input he receives. He also (as well as some other fighting game YouTubers) make reference, particularly in regards to the Street Fighter fandom, to a distinction between the "FGC" or fighting game community, and casual fans. I'm not 100% sure that I fit very well into either of those buckets; I don't feel like my fandom is necessarily all that casual, and yet I certainly don't compete online or do much with any "community" other than watch YouTube videos and stuff like that. I'd say I'm a casual fan who's casualness is suspect because I'm a bit of an obsessive collector sometimes, and because I do a lot of stuff when not actually playing related to my fandom, but who's behavior is otherwise quite similar to a casual fan in many respects.
Anyway, either way, THGM made a few conclusions; two major and two minor, that I 100% agree with yet I thought that the fandom in general did not agree with. What's more, he implied that these same conclusions were fairly general. Not everyone, of course, agrees with them, but a significant plurality if not majority does. This is both surprising and also somewhat gratifying if true. The "if true" being a big limiting factor, because I don't know that it is. But if it seems to be true to him, I'll trust that he's in a much better position than I am to see that, and trust in turn that it's much more likely to be true than I had previously suspected.
Anyway, what are these shocking conclusions? First the two major conclusions that he discusses.
Street Fighter Alpha 3 is considered the best SF game of the entire greater series by many fans. I don't actually think this anymore, because after I got Ultra Street Fighter IV back in 2014 or 2015 or whenever I got it on Steam, I came to believe that one was the best one. V is still growing on me, and it's TBD what I feel about it long term. But I seriously can't ever imagine that it would pass up IV in my esteem, and after IV, is definitely SFA3. I don't hesitate to recommend it to anyone as a timeless example of the pinnacle of karate supers development, or even fighting games development as a whole.
It's important to remember the context in which this game came out too, though. The revolution caused by SF2 felt like a long time ago to us (although it wasn't really; less then ten years.) SF2 clones that were a dime a dozen were out there. Street Fighter itself had had a lot of development. The Marvel vs. series was in full swing by this time, and in fact, the alleged pinnacle of that series, Marvel vs Capcom 2, was not far away from being released at this point (about 18 months or so.) The 3D fighting game revolution was also in full swing; Virtua Fighter, Tekken and Soul Edge had been in arcades for years already. In another direction entirely, so had Mortal Kombat by this point.
That said, the PS1 release of SFA3 (which is the one that I played the heck out of for years, by the way) was considered a great release by most, and was immensely popular. I guess I didn't realize that the Alpha series was considered so good by fans, though. I hear all kinds of noise about the classicness of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, or the finely honed tactical, technical, competitive gameplay of Street Fighter III: Third Strike. I consider both of them significantly less fun to play than SFA3, however, and that they apply to a niche market within SF fandom. I guess I'm not as alone as I thought in that opinion.
To be fair, plenty of people don't think it's the best of the SF series. Heck, there are people who don't think it's the best of the Alpha subseries, and who prefer SFA2 still. But, although I don't change my mind because of this kind of thing, it is still somewhat gratifying to know that there's a significant plurality that agrees with me on this one.
Capcom vs SNK 2 is considered the best 2-D fighting game of the entire genre by many fans. Although kind of a quiet "sleeper" hit compared to the Marvel vs Capcom 2 game which came out the same year, it's more serious, Street Fighter-like gameplay, great roster of characters, and general vibe appeals to fans of the genre in many ways more than the hyperactive Marvel vs. games do. I think it's worth pointing out that to the majority of Street Fighter's audience, SNK was not really a rival, but rather a distant second who made some games that they were vaguely familiar with. Not saying that this is fair, but I think it's still true. The SNK fandom is concentrated in 1) certain parts of Asia, 2) South America. In Europe and North America, the only ones who knew SNK well were 3) people who are a bit less casual about their 2-D fighting game fandom and went out of their way to become familiar with series like King of Fighters and Fatal Fury, etc. During the 90s, I'd offer up the observation that most arcades had a few Neo Geo cabinets, probably because they were a good deal for arcade owners. I rarely saw large crowds around these cabinets, though, like I did when a new Capcom, Namco or Midway game was out. (Samurai Shodown's release being a notable exception.)
So I suspect that the portion of the fandom who thinks this is a bit less casual than the Joe Blow who buys a Street Fighter title for his Playstation, plays it a bunch, but then kind of puts it aside and forgets about it when new stuff comes out. It's more for the kind of fan who returns to this type of gameplay time and time again over long periods of time, because he really likes this kind of game more than just about any other kind of video game. Guys like me, in other words.
I also suspect that the people who think SFA3 is the pinnacle of Street Fighter development overlap a lot with the people who really esteem this title. In spite of a few characters who don't really fit the vibe of the game because they come from different enough types of games that they don't really fit (this problem was orders of magnitude worse in the Marvel vs games), it's really Street Fighter vs King of Fighters, and both were really very similar types of games with a very similar vibe to them. The gameplay is heavily based on the SFA3 style of gameplay, and while there are other options you can mess with with the groove system, I still think it's fair to say that the default is very much like playing a SFA3 game except with a bunch of SNK characters thrown in too. It's no wonder that I consider both of these games the very best of the pre-hiatus titles by Capcom if not by anyone (which I might think too, but I do have to acknowledge King of Fighters '98 in particular as a contender there) given in many ways how similar they are, and how both seem to be tailored specifically to my own taste. But again, it's nice to think that my taste maybe isn't such an outlier out there after all.
Anyway, let's move on to the two minor conclusions which, again, I didn't think very many people agreed with, but which were certainly true for me.
The 2.5D style of 2D sprites fighting over a 3D background isn't very attractive, and looks very dated. The well-done 2D backgrounds of earlier games actually look quite a bit better and more timeless. This is, in particular, a feature related to Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Capcom vs SNK 2. Most of the titles up to that point had still used 2D backgrounds. It doesn't help, of course, that the actual stages weren't really all that attractive to begin with. They were simply poor designs. Of course, there are plenty of 2D backgrounds that are also poor designs and which I don't much like over the history of the genre. However, none of the stages from Marvel vs Capcom 2 stand out to me as even vaguely interesting, except possibly the boss stage, and none of the stages from Capcom vs SNK 2 stand out to me as attractive at all except, again, the two boss stages (the rainy castle roof and the fiery destruction stage.)
Of course, I don't really think that this is necessarily a problem with 3D stages, just that at the time these 3D stages were made, the technology and context for the artists wasn't there to make 3D stages that actually looked good. They certainly look good in Street Fighter IV and V. In fact, in V they made a deliberate effort to recreate, in 3D, a number of the classic 2D stages from the past. This includes loads of the Street Fighter II stages and a few Street Fighter Alpha 2 stages.
In fact, in general, I think my copy of Capcom vs SNK Pro has much better looking stages than Capcom vs SNK 2, even though those are 2D stages, and they're on the PS1 (the Dreamcast versions look even better.) Granted, I don't love the design of all of these stages either, but the ones that are good are really good. To be honest, I've often kind of liked some of the SNK stages better than Capcom. I think they have a slight edge in making really attractive stages compared to Capcom. Although it's not really super dramatic or anything, I still absolutely love the stage progression of this little neighborhood park from King of Fighters 99. I think stage design doesn't get much better than that, and since you usually play this game in teams of three, the stage will advance through all three "morphs" before you move on. This is the kind of thing 2D stages could be, and it is a kind of timeless look. These animations aren't actually all of the animations that playing the game would show you, but you get the idea:
That said, I think the stages is one of the presentation areas that Capcom vs SNK 2 really botched, and it does tend to depress my enjoyment of playing the game. The other minor conclusion is also a presentation issue, and it does the same thing as the stages; make me wish for a way to fan-sub it out for something else. That is:
The music from the late 90s games, specifically Capcom vs. SNK 2 is really bland, uninteresting and "Dreamcasty" and really dates the game; also not timeless like the earlier Street Fighter II themes. To be fair, this may be mostly THGM's opinion rather than one that's shared overall. Even in the comments to his video that he posted saying this, he got a lot of flack from the "This is true love we're making" fans. Blegh. The worst track from the game. That said, I suspect that the fans who like that like it in a kind of ironic way rather than a legit fashion, just like they like "Gonna take you for a ride" theme of Marvel vs Capcom 2. Nobody actually likes that song, but they do laugh at it and can become fond of it because of association. I don't; I dislike the music from most of this entire era. Marvel vs Capcom 2 has the worst music of any fighting game that I know of. Street Fighter III Third Strike also has pretty terrible music with only a few standout tracks that I don't mind, like the Yun/Yang "Chinese James Bond" music being a good example of one that I do like. Sadly, when ported into SFIV to accompany the characters that came from Third Strike, their music wasn't rearranged enough to dilute the terribleness of it. Dudley, Ibuki, Makoto, Elena, etc. I'm looking at you. Of this era, I'd actually probably suggest that the Capcom vs SNK music was generally the least offensive and dated sounding, but that isn't to imply that it isn't pretty bad.
This is another arena in which I think SNK might have had a leg up on Capcom. Granted, SNK were prone to do a lot of experimentation with lots of different styles, and the smooth jazz soundtrack of Blue Mary, for instance, might have been a poor fit for a fighting game, but I do kind of appreciate the willingness to take risks and really put out there some intriguing types of music. Again, from King of Fighters 99, check out this boss theme. It's about the same vintage as Capcom vs SNK 2, but nothing on Capcom vs, SNK 2 sounds as good as this.
To be fair, maybe my own personal fondness for certain types of EDM make me prefer some games' BGM to others, but I think that really classic tracks from the SFII era done in the SFIV EDM style sounds kind timeless too. The late 90s early 00s style of music is just a very dated sound, with its weird Eurodisco rap and hip-hop influences. But again, dated or not, I hated it when it was new. It's just not my style at all.
And comparing it to King of Fighters 99 might not be entirely fair. While the vintage of the games is about the same, King of Fighters 99 was probably the most atmospheric of all of the KOF games, which makes is more atmospheric than any other fighting game. Nobody else has managed to compete in that particular front. The dark, secret society cyberpunk edge lurking just under the surface of what appears to be the normal world that we were familiar with is just brilliant. I do think that 99 is a criminally under-rated entry in the KOF series, unfortunately. The problem with the KOF titles, if I can be allowed a small digression at the end of my post (and of course I can, because it's my blog; I can write whatever I want) is that they tend to overwrite themselves. There was a clear progression from 94 to 98 where once the newer one came out, there was little reason to look backwards at the earlier entries, and 98 in particular was meant to capture the best of the entire 94-97 run in a single game. This is especially true of the Ultimate Match re-release. The next phase is kinda sorta treated this same way by KoF02, especially the Unlimited Match re-release. But what gets missed if you do it this way is the atmosphere and story of each individual game in the series. Sure, if what you mostly want—and I'd wager most fans, even me, do want this—is all of the characters and gameplay in a single game, then Ultimate Match 98 and Unlimited Match 2002 are all you really need to have for the entire run of King of Fighters between 94 and 2002. But that's a little bit of a shame, because you miss out on some cool little details here and there that way.
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