SNK
Template:Current-GCOTW SNK (now SNK Playmore) is a Japanese video game hardware and software company.
Basic history
SNK is short for Shin Nihon Kikaku, or "New Japan Project." The company was founded in Osaka, Japan, in July 1978 by Eikichi Kawasaki with the intention of designing and producing software as well as hardware components for a variety of clients. When Kawasaki noticed the rapid growth that was occurring in the coin-op video game market, he expanded the company to include the development and marketing of stand-alone coin-op games. The first two titles out of the new coin-op division were Ozma Wars 1979, a vertically scrolling space shooter and Safari Rally 1980, a maze game. Game quality improved over time, most notably with 1981's Vanguard, a side-scrolling space shooter that many people consider the precursor to modern classics such as Gradius and R-Type. SNK licensed the game to Centuri for distribution in North America, who ultimately started manufacturing and distributing the game themselves when profits exceeded expectations.
On October 20, 1981, the North American division - SNK Corporation of America - was opened. They established themselves in Sunnyvale, California with the intent of delivering their own brand of coin-operated games to arcades in North America. The man chosen to run the American operation was John Rowe, the eventual founder of Tradewest and current (2005) president and CEO of Sammy Studios.
SNK Corporate in Japan had at this point already shifted its focus solely toward developing and licensing video games for arcade use and (later) for early consoles. Between 1979 and 1986 they produced 23 stand-alone arcade games. Highlights from this period include Mad Crash (1984), Alpha Mission (1985), and Athena (1986), a game that gained a large following when it was ported to the NES in 1987. Their most successful game from this time frame was Ikari Warriors, released in 1986. Ikari Warriors was so popular that it was eventually licensed and ported to the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, and NES. They followed up Ikari Warriors with two sequels, Victory Road and Ikari III: The Rescue.
Even at this late point, the home market was still suffering from the fallout caused by the video game crash of 1983. Nevertheless, one console manufacturer in particular seemed to weather the crash fairly unscathed: Nintendo. SNK signed up to become a third-party licensee for Nintendo's Family Computer (Famicom) system in 1985 and opened a second branch in the United States, based in Torrance, California and called SNK Home Entertainment that would handle the North American distribution and marketing of the company's products for home consoles. By this time, John Rowe had left the company to form Tradewest, which went on to market SNK's Ikari Warriors series in North America. Subsequently, both halves of SNK America were now being presided over by Paul Jacobs, who is notable primarily for having helped launch the company's NeoGeo system outside of Asia.
In response to strong sales of the company's NES ports SNK began to dabble in the development of original software designed specifically for the NES console. Two games came out of this effort: 1989's Baseball Stars and 1990's Crystalis (God Slayer in Japan). 1989 also marked the release of two new home video game consoles in North America: the Sega Genesis and NEC's joint project with Hudson, the TurboGrafx-16. Nintendo followed suit with a new system in 1991, the SNES. Rather than become involved in the early 90s system wars, SNK Corporate in Japan jointly with SNK of America chose to refocus their efforts on the arcade market, leaving other third parties, such as Romstar and Takara, to license and port SNK's properties to the various home consoles of the time with help from SNK's American home entertainment division. With console ports mainly being handled outside the company, they moved on to developing SNK branded arcade equipment.
During 1988 SNK began toying with the idea of a modular cabinet for arcades; up to that point, arcade cabinets typically contained only a single game. When an arcade operator wanted to switch or replace that game, they would have to completely remove the internals of the existing cabinet or exchange the entire setup for another game. SNK's new system, called NeoGeo MVS (short for Multi-Video System), featured multiple games in a single cabinet and used a cartridge-based storage mechanism. The system debuted in 1989 and could contain one, two, four, or six separate games in a single cabinet. In order to swap in a new game, all the operator had to do was remove one cartridge and exchange it for another.
The MVS was an immediate success. Arcade operators loved it because the setup time required for each game was nearly nonexistent, the floor space required was minimal, and the cost outlay for new cartridges was barely $500--less than half of what a traditional arcade unit cost at the time. But SNK also wanted to take advantage of people's desire to play arcade games at home, but without making the same compromises on CPU and memory performance that typical home consoles were forced to make. In 1991, the company released a home version of the MVS, a single cartridge unit called the NeoGeo Advanced Entertainment System, or more simply, the NeoGeo AES. Initially, the AES was only available for rent or for use in hotel settings, but SNK quickly began selling the system through stores when customer response indicated that people were willing to spend the money. Compared to the other consoles of the time, the NeoGeo AES was incredibly powerful. It featured two CPUs: a 16-bit Motorola 68000 main processor running at 12 MHz and a Zilog Z-80A backup processor running at 4 MHz. The system's main CPU was 50% faster than the 68000 processor found in Sega's Genesis console and the NeoGeo AES also had the benefit of specialized audio and video chipsets. A custom video chipset allowed the system to display 4,096 colors and 380 individual sprites onscreen simultaneously--compared to 64 simultaneous colors and 80 individual sprites for the Genesis --while the onboard Yamaha 2610 sound chip gave the system 15 channels of CD-quality sound with seven channels reserved specifically for digital sound effects.
Nonetheless, this type of power carried a large price tag; the console debuted at USD $599, which included two joystick controllers and a game (either Baseball Stars or NAM-1975). Within a few months of the system's introduction in North America, SNK lowered the cost of this package to $399 and added Magician Lord to the list of pack-in options. Other games cost $200 and up - each. Each joystick controller was a full 2 1/2 inches tall, measured 11 inches long by 8 inches across, and contained the same four-button layout as the arcade MVS cabinet.
They also produced a Neo Geo CD and CDZ, a failed, 64-bit Neo-Geo 64 system and two handheld systems, the Neo Geo Pocket and Pocket Color. Several of their more famous franchise titles, originally created for the MVS and AES systems, have been ported to other consoles such as the Genesis, Saturn and Dreamcast, SNES, PlayStation and PlayStation 2, and Xbox.
Collapse and rebirth
The company collapsed in fall 2000 due to (purportedly deliberate) under-financing by then-parent company Aruze, filed for bankruptcy and began sell off their intellectual properties to several other companies such as Korean-based Eolith and Mega Enterprises and Japan-based Noise Factory.
In an (eventually successful) attempt to regain control of the company, Kawasaki founded a new holding company by the name of Playmore, and spent most of 2001 and 2002 chasing down the rights to the intellectual properties SNK had once owned. As of mid-2002, Kawasaki had regained all of SNK's property, most recently the SNK name itself. As such the company name was changed to SNK Playmore in 2003.
Games
SNK Playmore has continued to release former SNK franchises under the Playmore and (later) the SNK Playmore banner, including games in:
- The King of Fighters series
- The Samurai Shodown series
- The Metal Slug series
- The SNK versus series