#SNK ARCADE CLASSIC PS2#

Even if you don't like playing some of these games (Sengoku), having a hearty chuckle at the poor translation and ancient art design is still amusing. Sports games, fighters, side-scrollers and shooters can all be found here and that's pretty neat. But the greatest strength of Arcade Classics is the diversity of the titles. You'll definitely have a few laughs when facing off with a buddy in Baseball Stars. A lot of these games are also great with a friend because the grand majority of them offer two-player options.

Baseball Stars 2, Top Hunter, Neo Turf Masters and Last Resort were among my favorites and offer a very simple but entertaining gameplay experience (I'm well aware that Last Resort is basically a clone of R-Type, but it's still a smashingly good time). This is of course assuming that you enjoy dabbling in older titles, which I definitely do. Perhaps they're dancing? Those issues aside, Arcade Classics is great when you get right down to the raw gameplay. It's just greatly disappointing to see such classics chugging along when the system can obviously do great things. Only a handful of those titles become unplayable (I'm looking at you, Fatal Fury), but everything else is smooth and certainly fun. Several of the titles on the disc, especially the fighting games included, run quite poorly.

#SNK ARCADE CLASSIC PS2#

The final concern I have, which is only a problem for the PS2 version of the game, is slowdown. Because a lot of these games are inherently arcade-style, quick-play affairs, having to sit around and wait for something to boot up can be discouraging. Neo Geo games aren't exactly massive data files, but the PS2 takes a hefty amount of time trudging between various menus, start-up screens and the games themselves. I understand that this promotes play time across the different games, but locking fundamental information is never a good idea. Odder still is that in order to unlock those details I would need to play a game of Burning Fight, for example - a completely different title. That character's move list might be locked - which is odd considering the nature of that information. For example, say I want to play some Samurai Showdown but I can't figure out the special techniques of a certain character. Having goals is a fantastic option, but the one thing I found very strange is the aforementioned unlocking of character moves. Some will unlock art for other games on the collection while others will open up move lists for fighting game characters. The rewards for accomplishing these Goals vary quite widely. The tasks you must complete to fulfill these Goals are pretty straight-forward, like beating a game on a certain difficulty or going through a stage without using a continue. You'll also notice that every game has a number of 'Goals' to unlock. In case you want the specifics, the exact titles included on the collection are as follows: Art of Fighting, Baseball Stars 2, Burning Fight, Fatal Fury, King of the Monsters, Last Resort, Magician Lord, Metal Slug, Neo Turf Masters, Samurai Showdown, Sengoku, Shock Troopers, Super Sidekicks 3, The King of Fighters '94, Top Hunter and World Heroes. A very basic, retro-inspired menu organizes the games alphabetically and breaks down some basic information on the labels like the year of release, game genre and number of players. There's something very appealing about going back to the old stuff and giving it a spin, and that's exactly what's happening with Arcade Classics. I have a feeling that gamers in the same or a similar situation might feel this way as well. Thus, I get intrinsic satisfaction out of playing older games that I haven't had much experience with before. You should know, first of all, that I missed out on a lot of classic Neo Geo games when they were first released.

Snk arcade classic