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 When most people think of the video arcade, they think of the early eighties. Those were the days of wine and roses (and Pac-Man). Of course it didn't last very long. The bubble burst and, for the most part, the arcade scene died a quick and painful death. During my formative years however the arcade scene had a brief but successful resurgence. The early nineties saw a number of great titles that brought the popularity of quarter-munching electronic entertainment back to the forefront. Games like Street Fighter II, Lethal Enforcers, and the six-player X-Men Arcade ruled the day. But tucked away in the back of the arcade was one cabinet that few of us knew what to make of. It usually cost a little more than the rest, but it didn't have just one game. You could choose from two, four, or -- if your local arcade could afford it -- up to six different games. The big red cabinet didn't have much in the way of art to draw you in, just big white letters in a generic font . They read NEO-GEO. From the second I put my first fifty cents into that machine, I was in love.
It's hard for me to review a title like SNK Arcade Classics: Volume 1 without feeling a slight bias towards the product. In many ways, the story of the Neo-Geo is the story of my youth as a gamer. When I was 10 I first plunked a few quarters into a Neo-Geo machine at ET Games, my local arcade in the now-defunct Lincoln Mall. Back then it was all about games like King of Monsters and The Super Spy. A few years later my gaming store picked up a home console version of the Neo-Geo. They would charge us kids five dollars to sit in the back room of Gametronics to play games like Samurai Showdown on a big screen TV for 30 minutes, and it was downright magical. In my late teens I would hang out at our local internet cafe, Hava Java, and sneak into their two-cabinet games room in the back for hours on hours of Bust-A-Move and Metal Slug. The Neo-Geo has been a theme running through my life as a gamer, and so it's hard to not have fond feelings for the games on this disc.
SNK Arcade Classics: Volume 1 includes 16 games from the glory days of the Neo-Geo. The compilation offers a good deal of variety featuring fighting games, side-scrolling action, sports titles, space shooters, and more. Some big titles like Metal Slug and King of Fighters make an appearance, but for the most part the compilation is rounded out by a number of games that probably won't ring any bells. A few of these titles deserve their place in obscurity -- not a lot of people are clamoring for a twelve year-old golf game like Neo-Turf Masters or a fairly generic (albeit bizarre) beat-em-up like Sengoku. Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad. Old school gaming compilations often try to beef up the number of titles offered by including some filler that nobody is looking for, and SNK Arcade Classics: Volume 1 is no exception. Equally disappointing are some of the old titles that just don't hold up to your memories of them. King of Monsters may have filled that Godzilla craving long before Atari stepped in, but it plays like a slightly duller version of electronic thumb-wrestling. Baseball Stars 2, much to my surprise, has suffered a similar fate. At the time it was the king of simulated baseball, but after nearly two decades of progress in the sports genre it's hard to appreciate this on even a kitsch level.
Luckily the good really outweighs the bad in this title. Over the years SNK has become known for it's fighting games, and they've attempted to showcase this by including five of their all time greatest. King of Fighters '94, World Heroes, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury -- and yes, even my Samurai Showdown have all made the list. Outside of the fighting realm, a few of the obscure titles turned out to be quite good. Shock Troopers is a top-down shooter in the vein of Total Carnage, and plays a hell of a lot like a top-down Metal Slug. Top Hunter is a side-scroller that feels like Metal Slug Jr, but with a twist -- your character has to jump from the foreground to the background to battle enemies and navigate the environment. Last Resort is a space shooter not unlike R-Type, and despite it's blistering difficulty it's proved to be a good deal of fun.
Despite all of the quality content on this disc, the real highlight isn't in the games themselves. SNK has incorporated it's own version of the achievements system that has been popularized by the Xbox 360 in each of the games listed. Not only do you earn these "medals" for completing individual tasks in the games, but these medals in turn unlock a great wealth of bonus content. Some of it is what you've come to expect from bonus content like game art and music. They've included some helpful tidbits as bonus content as well, such as move lists for characters in fighting games. All in all a pretty well-crafted carrot on a stick to keep you coming back to this title long after you might have shelved it.
There's a lot to love here in SNK Arcade Classics: Volume 1. Sure there may be a few poor choices in game selection and a few titles that are going to shatter some childhood memories, but for the most part SNK has put out a pretty solid package. Hitting shelves at the bargain price of $19.99, it'd be pretty hard to say no to a compilation this good. Now if only they'd announce The Super Spy on Volume 2.
SNK Arcade Classics: Volume 1 is available now for the PS2 and PSP, and is slated for a Wii release later this year.
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