#Snk 40th anniversary collection review Patch#

However, the work the team has put into documenting SNK’s history here is utterly commendable. At its core, it’s similar to the history sections you’ll find in other such collections: artwork, other images, background details on games, and so on. It’s not just those games, many of which are available in both their arcade and home console forms, but also the included Museum option. SNK fans should give this collection a try no matter what, though, because of the history it contains. These games can be hard to go back to, a fact that I admit even while loving them, and even being an SNK fan doesn’t guarantee you’re going to enjoy what’s on tap here.

Nor is it early Konami, or Sega, or other developers whose games still hold up incredibly well for a wide array of more casual players. From the nostalgia I feel playing the arcade version of Ikari Warriors again, to my continued bafflement over its incredibly weird sequel, to the realization that I knew Vanguard but had totally forgotten than I did, to once again facing off against my life-long nemesis Athena, SNK 40th Anniversary Collection holds a lot of importance to me, and I’m really glad that something other than SNK’s NeoGeo efforts are finally getting proper recognition. So, there’s a lot of value to this collection to me. My introduction to the company then known as Shin Nihon Kikaku came through its earlier arcade and NES releases, and I actually remember when I was mad about it making the NeoGeo platform-because it meant its future games would vanish from every other system. (For information’s sake, the rest of the at-launch games are Guerrilla War, Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road, Ikari III: The Rescue, P.O.W., Prehistoric Isle, and Psycho Soldier.)

Well, both of those are here, but so are Alpha Mission, and Athena, and TNK III, and Street Smart, and Vanguard, and other games I’m betting a lot of players may have never even heard of. When people think SNK, dollars to donuts they think of the NeoGeo era, or maybe even a high-profile release prior to that like Ikari Warriors or Crystalis. Those games, by the way, are going to be a sore spot for some. Still, in the time I spent with this release, I came away impressed not only with what I’d seen, but also with the fact that I’ve been able to concentrate more on the games I’m playing and not how well they’re emulated-and that’s how it should be.

#Snk 40th anniversary collection review Patch#

After installing and trying out the day-one patch, I’ve encountered at least one random glitch, and I can’t promise that there won’t be other issues either now introduced in that patch or which I simply didn’t run into before. Even here, SNK 40th Anniversary Collection isn’t perfect. Recently, however, the team has been putting a concentrated effort into improving its offerings-even if there still have been a few bumps in the road along the way. On a personal level, the name Digital Eclipse (and its sibling brand Backbone Entertainment) was one I hated seeing attached to retro releases for years, as the studio became known for some shamefully shoddy work in its past. That sentiment doesn’t come because of the package’s emulation quality, but I don’t say that in a negative way. With that in mind, I can say-with absolute sincerity-that SNK 40th Anniversary Collection feels to me like one of the best retro compilations in years. It often feels like every single release of this type is a roll of the dice for fans, with no assurance of how things will turn out until a finished copy (or digital download) is in-hand and playable. Across the years, we’ve seen collections come out with everything from only two games to 40-plus, themed bundles of titles to completely random selections, stellar custom emulation engines to garbage stolen code, and everything in between.

There may be no single type of video game release that varies as much in quality as the retro game compilation.