The very finest product that came out of the SNK v Capcom early 2000s partnership was SNK v CAPCOM: Card Fighters Clash! Don’t agree? Fight me.
The pocket monster craze of the late 90s and early 2000s was something that became all the rage with people a bit younger than myself. A craze that I couldn’t quite relate to. I didn’t understand the collector aspect of playing a video game. The idea of finding Pokémon, or Digimon, or Dragon Warrior Monsters and battling opponents in a game, or friends also playing said game seemed like a fad I’d never quite click with.
That was until SNK and CAPCOM decided to do a little team up across the Sega Dreamcast and SNK’s hot new portable: The NEO GEO Pocket Colour (NGPC)! I was intrigued from the get-go, growing up loving both CAPCOM and SNK, I couldn’t wait to see where this would go! Capcom had slated arcade games Capcom vs. SNK and SNK started working on a proper NEO GEO game of the same name (just reversed the SNK and CAPCOM names). Once the series began to get footing SNK decided to make a few portable releases in the CvS/SvC series for the NGPC! And my grubby little fighting game loving ass was in for a treat!
I wasn’t seeking out the best place to find a Charizard or Metal Slimes to do battle with my enemies, instead I was seeking out an Iori Yagami in NEOGEO Land! I was immediately hooked! Over 300 cards to collect and find and 240 of them were character cards. Making your own deck, balancing out actions and special abilities with a smattering of characters (some obscure af!) to put together your ultimate battle deck!? Did I say I was hooked? Did I finally get the whole Gotta Catch ’em ALL™ craze? HELL YES I DID!
SNK did EXACTLY what all the other offenders of this bizarre fandom did and that was released Card Fighters on TWO different carts. One CAPCOM edition and one for SNK. They would each be nearly identical games, but one had a starter deck and access to all of SNK’s offerings, and the other would be CAPCOM’s. So of course, like any sensible dolt would do, I purchased both. But it doesn’t end there! Being able to connect your NGPC to the Sega Dreamcast to swap and unlock cards and characters was also possible. So whether you were playing SNK and CAPCOM games on Dreamcast or on NGPC the possibilities were endless! So why exactly didn’t this catch on like wildfire? Well…..
The late 90s were kind of a weird time for fighting games. Things started to slow down a bit, and gamers were becoming exhausted dishing out $XX.XX every time a newly updated version of Street Fighter or the annual King of Fighters was released. I wonder if this were released just a few years prior if it would’ve caught on a bit more? Who knows.
I had (and still have!) a ton of fun playing it, and many years ago a small group of us NGPC nerds gathered together to connect our handhelds together to battle, swap cards, and stay up all night in the hotel hallways at the Midwest Gaming Classic! Some of my favorite memories of the early years of that event.
In recent years, the Card Fighters gaming community has seen more hacks and physical updates to the lore of the original series. In Japan the NGPC got an extremely rare Card Fighters Clash 2, as luck would have it, it’s been fan-translated in ENGLISH!! So ultra nerdy fans (ME!) can finally play through an updated version of the game complete with all the bells and whistles expected in a fun sequel with new cards, ability types and challenges.
Meanwhile, The SNK vs CAPCOM Card Fighters Project Fan site has released mock ups of physical cards with all sorts of possibilities! Tutorials on how to print out your own cards, rules, play mats and much more! They’ve even started creating legend cards as well as fun expansions of characters not included in the originals or even from SNK OR CAPCOM!! Now, I’m about as big a Card Fighters dork there is, so you know I’m working on finding a way to get these printed out myself! Once I do, we’ll be able to play in person without needing an NGPC! I hope we can play in the hallway of a game convention table for hours on end!
I spent a bunch of Saturday mornings a few summers ago playing through the SNK story of SvC Card Fighters Clash on NGPC and chronicled the entire play here! If you’re bored and want to see what all the fuss was about, here’s a sampling:
Sadly, as of this writing, the last game to see official release in the Card Fighters series was released on the Nintendo DS called SvC Card Fighters DS and it’s pretty hard. They lost a lot of what made the original games special and made the game overly technical and just not fun. If you desperately wanted more SNK v Capcom action, then maybe check it out, but really.. it’s not worth your time.
