SvC Chaos: SNK Vs. Capcom playthrough (Neo Geo, 1CC)
21Playthrough with Ken. SvC Chaos was released in 2003. It features characters from a variety of SNK and Capcom games, including Fatal Fury, Metal Slug, Darkstalkers and Red Earth. It's notable for being the only game released on the Neo Geo to feature Capcom characters.
A lot of the SNK characters are using their KoF sprites, but some of them are completely new (like Mars People and Athena) whilst the Capcom side feature all-new sprites. I do like what SNK did with some of them, like Demitri, although I can't help but feel that the heads of Ryu and Ken look a bit too small. However the graphics were one of the main complaints about this game, which got bad to average reviews everywhere. I've read on a few sites that the only reason this game was made was due to contractual obligations between SNK and Capcom, although I can't verify if this is correct.
Other issues I have with this game are the boring backgrounds, which are mostly devoid of anything interesting. I mean Jesus makes a cameo at 3:29 looking at Ramiel’s slimmer brother and that’s it. The music is equally forgettable, and the cast of characters is a mixed bag. I do appreciate some of the picks, in particular Shiki, Mars People and Violent Ken, but I could have done without Goenitz and Choi. One thing I do like about the game is the unique pre-fight dialogue, which happens between every character in the game.
The gameplay is similar to King of Fighters, but your now have to press A&B or C&D to throw. And if you miss your throw, it depletes some of your super gauge. Yes, you read that correctly, you lose super gauge for missed throws in this game. You can also do a dash cancel whilst blocking, which costs a little super gauge to do. The main new feature is the exceed move. Every character has a single-use super move which does huge amounts of damage if it connects with the opponent. You can only use exceed moves once per fight.
This game seems to be hated by both types of gamers: people who play competitively think it’s an unbalanced mess, people who play single player hate it because it’s too hard. The AI for the standard CPU opponents gets a bit obnoxious at times, but it’s the bosses that are the real problem. Violent Ken does have an exploit, at least: if you do a neutral jump, it’ll usually bait him into doing his dragon punch, so you can punish it and keep doing this.
The final boss is either Shin Akuma or Mr. Karate. Both are way too hard, not helped by the fact that they have infinite supers. Why would SNK Playmore do that? You’d think they’d want to try and get more casual players playing this, so SNK boss syndrome really shouldn’t have been present for this game. I haven’t got many tips on how to beat Shin Akuma, it took me several tries to beat him. For some reason he seems to show up far more than Mr. Karate does.
Another stupid thing about this game is that to fight the secret bosses, you need to beat the game without losing any rounds. And you’ve got to fight them if you want to see your character’s true ending. That’s so 1993. I think it’s ok to lose a round to Shin Akuma or Mr. Karate, but nobody before that. If you do this you’ll get to fight Athena or Red Arremer. Again, these bosses have infinite supers. Athena is boring to fight because she just spams supers all the time and is completely invincible during them.