SNK 40th Anniversary Collection – Review

SNK has been around for 40 years now and their names has been synonymous with titles like King of Fighters, Metal Slug, Ikari Warriors, Samurai Showdown, Shock Troopers and more.

The SNK 40th Anniversary Collection however features games that are older than the Neo Geo System that made the company famous. With 13 games offered on the Switch Card and 11 games coming as DLC later, the bundle is a decent package of classic games offering a lot of different games for everyone who were curious about the other games that company had.

The collection itself does feature some solid hits, including Athena – a sidescrolling action adventure where you play the title character (and later KOF/SNK Heroine fighter) through a mystical land, Ikari Warriors 1, 2, and 3 – which can be considered one of the best retro-top-down shooters, and Prehistoric Isle – a strange 2D Shoot’em up that includes Dinosaurs.

Each games plays smoothly thanks to improved graphic resolution, and redesigned control schemes which give players a bit of ease when it comes to twin-stick shooters – which I feel the collection has a lot of. But what really caught my eye when going through the titles is the ability to choose from the Arcade or Console Port of specific games.

It’s important to note the difference between these, as the arcade generally had better graphics – they were also made to take as much money from you as possible, so the arcade versions are noticeably harder from the console port (which most are from the NES era.)

The Collection also features a rewind option that allows players to, well, rewind the last few seconds of the game, and an interesting ‘Watch’ feature which gives players the ability to watch a too-assisted perfect run of each game. The Watch feature also gives players the ability to jump right in seamlessly at any point and time in the game.

There were some issues that I’ve run into when it came to enjoying these classics was the lack of single Joy-con Support on most titles. These games did make some sense as of why it was not available, as most were Twin-Stick Shooters, which consists of a large chunk of the games in the collection. That being said, NIS America has stated that there is a planned Day 1 update for when the game launches that will correct this, allowing a single-stick mode for twin-stick games.

It also helps to know that there is 11 more games to come as a free update on December 11th, with two of them being part of a free download on the Nintendo eShop. Giving plenty of options and different games to play. Still it feels weird knowing that the heavy hitters like King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, and Metal Slug, despite already having their time in the light with various re-releases on other consoles, are missing from this collection.

To put it bluntly, The SNK 40th Anniversary Collection isn’t for everyone. While for a collection based game, the technical features are fun to play with, and I love the option to play the original Arcade or Console release of the game, but the selection of games are questionable due to a lack in variety and heavy hitting titles that makes us think “SNK.”