The Art of SNK WORLD Vol.1 / SNK Illustrations - A Quick Look

A couple of weeks ago i went around to Jericho MPM's house to play some games, so he could show me a few things on older SNK titles, and he also kindly offered to show me some of his SNK artbook collection.

Of the ones i looked through i found The Art of SNK World Vol.1 and SNK Illustrations to be the most interesting, so will be showing a few photos i took of those two books.

Although there is not much to say about each book, as they are pretty much 90% images, i did take quite a few photos. 

First up is The Art of SNK World.

As you can see in the contents listing it covers artwork from SamSho 1/2, Fatal Fury 1/2/SP, Art of Fighting 1/2, and KOF94.

Each section of the book is seperated by a title page with a blurb of Engrish at the bottom, which of course SNK is pretty infamous for.

Secondly is the SNK Illustrations book, of the two books i really liked this one in particular. Not only does it cover a wide range of SNK games, it also covers SNK games from before the MVS/AES era.

Apologies for some of the sideway images, blogspot sometimes uploads them that way even after i turn them the right way around...

As you can see the KOF96 section has profiles for each of the teams of that particular game, as well as below where you can see a character relationship chart. For example Kensou loves Athena but there's no arrow pointing back to say she likes him in the same way...lol.

Some of the 4koma (4 panel comic strips) in this are pretty good, i've always liked the 4koma KOF stuff but never owned very much of it. :(

Found the above image pretty amusing...I believe it was artwork used for the instruction manual for one of the KOF games (most likely 95).

As mentioned there's a section dedicated to the older SNK games. (Ikari Warriors, Athena, etc...)

The Athena designs section i particularly liked, especially since i had never seen any of it before.

Interestingly G-Mantle appears in this book, had not known of this character before the recent Neo Geo Station promotions so was nice to see some more information/pictures of him. The above image some of you should recognise from the backgrounds of the Neo Geo Station releases.

There was also a page showing the illustration process, although not in great detail (this double spread was all that was shown) it was nice to see how they worked on the art at SNK.

So overall alot of images in each of the books, though as i mentioned of the two i really liked the SNK Illustrations book in particular due to the diversity of images. Hopefully will own it myself at some point.

Finally just to end this fairly long entry, there was one last thing that i found kind of interesting in one of the Neo Geo Freaks that Jericho owned.

In this particular issue of NGF it shows what looks like an early version of SNK vs Capcom, although as i understand this would have been the Capcom version which eventually ended up as Capcom vs SNK.

As you can see in these early screenshots the game included stages from existing Capcom fighters as well as one stage which i don't seem to recognise at all.

I'll try to do a write up on Neo Geo Freaks at some point, i don't own many issues (maybe about 6 or 7 of them) but they are pretty interesting and well recommended for SNK fans if you can find them.

SNK Arcade Classics 0 - Coming to PSP this April

SNKPlaymore has just announced the release date for SNK Arcade Classics 0 (zero) as the 21st April in Japan, and will be released for the PSP. I assume as with the previous collections these would make their way also to the West in due time, but as of yet i cannot find a Western release date yet.

As the title of the collection hints at, these will be a collection of their oldest games (before MVS/AES) and will have games such as Athena, Psycho Soldiers, Street Smart, and Ikari Warriors.

One thing i am a bit concerned with though is how well these will be ported to the PSP, i have read alot of negative reviews about SNKP's other collection releases and personally though SNK Arcade Classics Vol.1 on the PS2 wasn't ported very well.



Hopefully if the port is decent it should be good to play some of these old titles.

Check out the official website here for more details and a list of games which will be on this collection.

King of Fighters '98 Arrange Sound Trax

Randomly found this CD, which i bought in Hong Kong about 12 years ago, whilst looking for something else. Thought i'd back it up onto my laptop as the disk was pretty scratched and since i went through all that trouble anyway thought i'd might as well share it with everyone else.

Track details can be found on VGMDB, i believe the last song 'Present Holiday (Athena Asamiya)' on the CD is actually sung by Haruna Ikezawa (Athena's voice actress).

01 CIPHER (Title)
02 ESAKA (Kyo Kusanagi)
03 FANATIC WALTZ (Shermie of the Raging Lightning)
04 MAD FANTASY (Chris of the Flames of Destiny)
05 IN SPITE OF ONE'S AGE (Master Team)
06 Stormy Saxophone (Iori Yagami)
07 THE ЯR (Rugal Bernstein)
08 Showdown R & D (Omega Rugal)
09 ZERO (Staff Roll)
10 PRESENT-HOLIDAY (Athena Asamiya)

Anyway it's uploaded to Mediafire here, so enjoy!
(BTW the files are in wma file format, my Windows Media Player isn't working properly so i'm not sure if it was possible to make them into mp3 or anything else, so they were just ripped as wma.)

King of Fighters XIII Collection - Chibi Figure - A Quick Look/Unboxing

As previously mentioned i ordered one of the new KOFXIII figures from Playasia just before the New Year and received that this morning in the mail. Though i'd take a couple of photos and do a little 'unboxing of' video as the figure comes blind boxed.

Was a little dissapointed with the figure i got, i really wanted Raiden so i could make him dropkick the other little figures on my desk...Not too bad to get Leona though i suppose. 

The quality of the figure is quite average (not poor, not excellent), i think for it's size though it is fairly expensive though (£5 from Playasia) and thought it was more like a £2/3 figure. Not too bad, though not sure if i would buy any more. Maybe if the price drops a bit.

Anyone interested in buying them they are available on Playasia, i think it was about £7 including shipping for one figure.

Check out more pics below.

KOF94 - Neo Geo Station - Online Play vids

Played a few games against Jericho MPM the other day on PSN, thought i'd film and upload them.
Got the crap kicked out of me, since aside from the off the floor grab infinites i don't know much else about 94, but did learn some new things like Athena being able to have more than one fireball on the screen at once (o_O).

As we both live in London the connection was pretty much silky smooth, i've embedded a few of the vids in this post but you can check out the rest of the vids on my youtube channel.







Also SNKP have been uploading loads of vids to their Youtube channel, in particular the Magician Lord playthroughs are worth watching. (Considering how tough that game is, it's pretty cool to see someone playing through it with ease!)



Right now they have only uploaded up to stage 3, they also have videos showing how to beat Amakusa in Samsho and Rugal in KOF94. Check out the Neo Geo Station official blog to see more details.

No More 'Arcadia Magazine - A Quick Look'

Although it has made up a large part of my blog content i have decided to cancel my subscription of Arcadia Magazine. This is due to trying to put money aside to set up a fund to do a Working Holiday Visa to Japan.

As it seems lately the 'big' SNKP news is becoming less frequent it feels like a lot of money is being wasted importing the magazine every month for £15, which could be used for other things. 

Apologies to those who did read the updates i did regarding Arcadia, it's just not currently feasible.

For those who can read Japanese you can normally preview the next/current issue of the official website or follow their Twitter feed.

I did however order one of the KOFXIII chibi figures, which were recently made available on Playasia, whilst clearing out the remainder of my refunded store credit. Will take some pics when that arrives.

As for this blog itself, even though i will be busier from now on i will continue to update it when i can.