"Another shoddy port of a decent game by Playmore."

Ah, SNK, I miss your glory days, when you actually wanted to be the best in the arcade business, when you wrote good storylines, and when you made the games challenging, and fair.

Those days are long gone.

After being rumored for a long time, SNK Playmore finally released the arcade version of SVC Chaos: SNK Vs Capcom to the world, to little fanfare. The game just wasn't what most people expected. And this rushed-up PS2 port isn't any better.

Storyline:
There is no storyline that I know of. SNK Playmore just took some random SNK and Capcom characters, updated their graphics a bit [and in the case of Capcom characters, redrew them in SNK style], and put them against each other. There is no purpose to this madness, just go and fight.

Control:
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. I suppose others have said the same, but the PSX controllers just don't work with fighting games! Their pad design gave me cramps and made me stop playing after less than 20 minutes! If you're gonna play, get a third party pad instead. Once you get a decent pad, the game plays pretty well. The characters react quite fast to your inputs, the moves are easy to pull off [with the exception of Geese Howard's Raging Storm]. SNK Playmore did this well, at the least. The PS2 takes advantage of the four shoulder buttons and assigns them two button combinations by default: two throws, the dodge/safe land and the hard punch/guard break.

Graphics / Sound:
The graphics are just like the original Arcade version - well done, few colors, but still very well drawn. The returning SNK character that appeared in The King of Fighters series still use the same old sprites; however the Capcom characters got redrawn to fit in the game. Unlike Capcom Vs SNK, which had a very awkward look to it because of the many different art styles, all characters seem to fit well - for the most part. Some look a bit out of place, like Tabasa... or Hugo and Earthquake, who are way too big. The programmers just took their existing spritesets and recolored them so they would fit in. It looks good, if a bit strange. The backgrounds are well animated, not perfect, but still, just like the original game.

Music:
And here comes the one part of the game that I absolutely could not stand: The music. It's exactly the same as the arcade. There are no arranged versions, yet again, showing SNK Playmore's lazyness. Also, whenever something happens, the music lags by less than a second, because it's reading it from the disc instead of playing it back via the system's normal sound chip. It's very noticeable during the pre-fight dialogue.

Extras:
What makes this different from the arcade version, you ask? The addition of a survival mode in which you have to beat all 36 characters, an artwork mode that is present in most of SNK Playmore's ports, and the ability to use all the bosses with the exception of the two secret ones right from the start, by holding a button on top of certain characters in the title screen.

So, is this worth the ludicrous import price? Depends. If you're an SNK / Capcom fanboy that absolutely must have the game, yes. If you have $70 to spend, yes. But for the rest of us? No. It's the same as the arcade. The 'extras' don't make up for the fact that SNK Playmore refuses to put any effort on their console ports.

If you really want it, wait for a US release. But even then it wouldn't be worth your cash.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/20/04