Ok, so I heard awhile ago that Playmore was working on a new VS game, SNK vs. Capcom. I thought at the time, "Cool, maybe we'll finally get that MVS game the original SNK was working on a few years back." Since then, Playmore has renamed themselves SNK Neo Geo. That kind of got me excited. SNK is my favorite game company. My favorite type of game is 2D fighters and nobody does them better than SNK. They also released the most bad-ass console of all time, the Neo Geo AES system which used monstrously huge and expensive cartridges.

I love their games so much that I own an AES system with 3 original joysticks and a 4 slot MVS arcade board. I own Samurai Shodown 1 through 4 on at least 2 platforms for each game. The same can be said for King of Fighters 94, 95, and 96. The later King of Fighters I only own on the Sega Saturn or Dreamcast. I also have Last Blade 2 on multiple systems. These games just rock and there's something religious-like in playing them on a real NeoGeo.

That was the greatest failing of Capcom vs. SNK and Capcom vs. SNK 2. They weren't NeoGeo games so you couldn't play them on a NeoGeo arcade or home machine. Don't get me wrong, they are great games. It just isn't the same as buying a massive, over-priced cartridge and firing up the best cartridge-based game system of all time. The sheer ridiculousness of the size and expense makes the experience better. The same failing applies to Capcom vs. SNK: Card Fighters Clash and Capcom vs. SNK: Millenium Fight on the Neo Geo Pocket. They are both excellent games but playing on a handheld just isn't the same.

I honestly didn't expect much out of the new SVC Chaos game because the MVS hardware is well past its prime at around 12 years of age now. However, it appears that SNK has managed to squeeze some more horsepower out of the 6800E chip somehow because the game looks good, really good. In fact it looks better than any previous SNK game, including Last Blade 2. Since it isn't actually out yet I can't judge it totally but so far I'm quite impressed. Hopefully it will display the sort of animation detail seen in games like Street Fighter III, Second Impact or Guilty Gear XX.

The more I've thought about this game and looked into it, the more excited I've gotten. It looks like a real return to the great fighters of the early 90s. Most newer fighters have a different feel to them than the old-school Street Fighter 2 and King of Fighters 94 and 95. Street Fighter 3 kind of recaptured it but the characters just weren't appealing enough as a whole to really manage it. Nowadays I don't normally get that wound up about games but this one really has me excited. The last time I can remember getting this worked up was when I heard that Panzer Dragoon was coming to XBox. Here's to hoping that the game is as good as it looks, and that it comes out quickly on the home systems or is released on the AES hardware.