SNK’s scene likes to boast and brag about their numbers. But come tournament time they can barely pull enough people to run a round robin tourney. Plus a lot of their “figure heads” (Dark Geese) are tools and no one likes them.
The only SNK games I like are NGBC, Garou (I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like Garou) and KOFXI.
And the reason SNK games are so popular in other countries is because they are super easy to hack. A lot of the cabs are mame cabs.
What SNK scene exactly are you talking about, and since when?
Not a mistake.
Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay etc. In all these countries KOF has always been more popular and more played on the arcades than any other fighting game.
Anyways, the reason why SNK isn’t so popular in the USA is that SNK didn’t advertised their titles back in the day. Another reason is the consoles thing already mentioned by someone. And another thing is the learning curve for begginers also already mentioned.
Street Fighter appeals more because it is the easiest fighting game to get into. Because of that, lots of people end up playing SF and that’s why the comunity and the tournaments scene is so huge.
I’d say KOF is easier to get into than Street Fighter and really makes a person really understand the importance of normals and spacing. Being able to hitconfirm crouching light attacks into knockdown specials is much easier than games such as Street Fighter Alpha 2. Once you strip away hops, super jumps, hyper hops. chaining command normals, and add two medium attack buttons, you could really play Street Fighter like KOF but paying mind to the limitations of forward movement and the committals to jumping. Then naturally the player would play “footsies” and make great use of walking and exemplify a good understanding of normals and spacing while under the restriction of Street Fighter’s movement. I would say vice versa as well. If you already play high level Street Fighter (in regards to being able to space well and understand how all normal attack works and play a strong footsie game), you could transition into KOF pretty easily. If one already has a strong neutral game, then understanding and being able to punish rolls should come naturally as rolls are essentially the same application as full jumps are to Street Fighter. One is able to control space with normals well, but could expand that control with being able to move in new angles such as hops and super jumps.
In the end, I’d say KOF is quite similar to Street Fighter, but Street Fighter is a bit more disciplined game and is a game of attrition and patience with a greater emphasis on a ground game and jumps are of high risk and committal (again similar to rolls). KOF allows for more liberal aerial and ground movement but places less emphasis on footsies, as in being able to walking in and out of range of ground normals and being able to counter poke the opponent before making a big committal on a projectile to make sure one can’t counter poke, or jump. While there are more subsystems to get around projectiles in KOF but more means to punish those subsystems, bad players will still be too undisciplined to just wait and block and just exercise bad rolls, hops, and jumps. Overall, I’d say KOF is easier to learn; but for most people in the US, they don’t really understand normals or spacing that well in Street Fighter as well (most people being just intermediate or beginning players or players that think they’re good but just average) and that lack of understanding just shows even more in KOF. Also doesn’t help that certain KOF games just have some really silly gimmicks that are hard to understand for the new player and just turn off people to the game. Nor do public really understand which KOF games are the solid ones and think stuff like 94 or 01 are actually good, relevant games.
I respect your opinion, tho I disagree.
Interesting post Laban. I don’t exactly think people will get much mileage out of comparing the two games, but you take it about as far as it can go.
Pinning the issues SNK in the US has on the existing players or other games with more momentum isn’t productive. Play whoever, whenever your schedule allows it. Keep finding opportunities to play and improve. Everyone with a decent computer and the tech know-how to forward ports can do this.
Wait what? There is so much wrong with this post, that I’m not sure where to start.
There is not a single person that will argue that our scene is big. It’s incredibly small both in America and Europe. Nobody plays except for a select few. We are by far the smallest FG scene. I wish it wasn’t the case since KOF is the best fighting game series ever made, but that’s how it is.
SNK scene does not have a figure head, and Dark Geese definitely isn’t one. He doesn’t even care about america. There’s not a single person in the american SNK scene that will argue that he’s not a tool, and in any way or form their figure head. If anyone is a figurehead it’s Dandy J, who has more or less left the scene because he can’t get anyone to play.
WHAT? That game is retarded. I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t play Garou at an extremely scrubby level (at which it indeed is fun) who says Garou is good.
Not MAME cabs, Neogeo roms are just easy to copy. I’m afraid you’re right about this.
O.k, I’ve gone to Peru, and Argentina (I’m from Chile, I don’t speak english, so you may notice some grammar mistakes xP) and I can tell you, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are more popular than K.O.F
Even, KOF population here is almost 0 %, some gamers may know it… but if you ask about KOF to a random guy, he may say: What’s KOF??
I love fighting games, that’s why I like K.O.F, but I’ll always say that Street Fighter, MK, and Vs Capcom series are better, because I know K.O.F since 2009 and is not something that I loved since I was a child.
And most of K.O.F arcades I’ve seen here, are Hacked Arcades, and they contain “Metal Slug” “Art of Fighting”, and even hacked roms of K.O.F (Magic Plus 2k2 etc)
Never understood this disparity myself. Growing up in NYC I had access to pretty much all Capcom and SNK games in the arcades, and they all got played. Hell, if any single game was dominant, I would say it was MK, not SF or any SNK game. But everyone played everything. Visiting China and HK as a kid though, I -did- notice everyone was on KoF primarily, and I wasn’t very sure why. Anecdotal evidence, but reports from friends who have visited South East Asian countries in recent years say the same thing.
Oh yo. You’re mid-west right? Do you know a guy that goes by the name Sparkster? His real name is Andrew and I think he played against you at some bar in 98 or something. He’s my good bud on skype and I helped him by playing against him and taught him the ropes. You could play against him more as well, I’d say he’s pretty solid and knowledgeable for a US born player.
KOF didn’t take off because either actual or good fighting games aren’t popular in America.
(See Marvel 3)
I think we are misunderstanding the words “popularity” and “most played”.
Street Fighter indeed is the MOST popular fighting game in THE WORLD. You can ask any joe on the street what Street Fighter is and he will tell you.
Now, competitive scene on arcades, rivalry, etc, is another story.
Just check Cyberfanatix and see the events and results of Brazil x Argentina, Brazil x Peru and many others, I think they still have the threads, just search a bit.
Also look for the Duelling the KOF events, wich are Japan vs Korea, Japan vs China, Japan vs something, etc.
Also, you can check GGPO and you will see MUCH more KOF players (98 and 2k2) than SF players, playing on a daily basis. KOF2k2 alone has more players than all the SF titles on GGPO. I don’t wanna mention 98 wich has 3 rooms.
I would say that while SF is indeed the most popular fighting game in the world, a huge of it’s playerbase are just casuals. Yes, there’s casuals in any game, but in SF it just appears that has more.
Also remember, KOF scene is on the arcades, competitive KOF players never really liked consoles.
If you want to know about Brazil and Argentina, here it goes:
[LIST]
[]Street Fighter was and will always be more popular in terms of people knowing that the game existed. If you pick a girl at the age of 30, she probably knows who Chun Li is, for instance;
[]Street Fighter was vastly more popular until the 2000’s, when Capcom abandoned the fighting games. At late 90’s, MvC was probably more popular. By then, Most SF cabs had some version of Alpha (2 or 3, mostly);
[]Cost and no way to pirate the boards prevented SSF2 and SSF2T to be available at many arcade saloons. Those would keep CE cabs from early to mid 90’s and Alpha cabs by the end and so on;
[]Most players have never seen a 3rd Strike or a MvC2 cab;
[]From 2000 on, with the anime and, later, emo trends growing, KoF became more popular in arcades. Many would and still have many KoF cabs, with different versions;
[]As of now, the most popular version is 2002;
[]ST and 3rd Strike can only be played on MAME cabs;
[]Now that they have SSF4, it is more popular than KoF2002, at the local arcade;
[*]Most arcades went out of business in Brazil due to ilegal slot machines returning more money and due to the crisis in Argentina. “Most” means 95% or more.
[/LIST]
Personally, I have never liked how the projectiles (projectiles???) sucked in KoF. In some versions, they even vanished before you could recover from the move. This makes no sense to a Street Fighter or Fatal Fury 2/Special player. I also did not like dodging: felt like a get out of jail free card to avoid pressure from normals. And I do not enjoy the heavy emo design and weird poses many characters use, not only in their stances, but in attack animations.
I’ve said this I don’t know how many times now but, here goes one more: I think one of the larger contributing factors as to why “no one” plays SNK games in a competitive fashion is because there isn’t like a single GO TO game to practice. If you asked 10 different people what 3 snk games should be played competitively, you would get 100 different variations of KOF98, KOF98UM, KOF02. KOF02UM, NGBC, KOF11, KOF13, SAMSHO6 and so on. If the SNK community ever wants to be apart of the larger community of more organized events, just gonna have to pick a fucking game. Pick one, everyone play and support it. I love KOF and and have since 97.
TL/DR:
SNK community for progress, please support KOF13. 
if unity is what you’re looking for shouldnt everyone focus on XIII then? i know it has its faults (Raiden, K’) but its still amazing and one of the best KoFs out there. hopefully it’ll revitalize the SNK scene when it hits consoles.
Yeah, I actually said that at the bottom of the post but, yes. Snk community, get behind KOF13 as a WHOLE and push/promote the game. It is way easier for new players to find information, set up gatherings, play in tournaments for this 1 SNK game then the 27 that are tournament worthy/fun. Not to mention having all those games that everyone shoud take serious creates smaller pools of players for each game, who has time to learn 4 SNK games on top of the others that are already out? KOF13 for EVO2K12.
Yeah man, recently we had a gathering for SNK games only that i missed as well. We have another player who’s kind of off the radar and pretty strong. I’m not that good because I don’t take my own advice (yikes…). I’ve played for a good number of years on and off but nothing too indepth since my main focus was VF.
Very true. Now that XIII has a release date, I’ve gone back to focusing on XIII at dreamcancel.com. It’s time for unity in the community.
I’m sure most of the “SNK community” will be asses and will not support the game, saying that they prefer to play vanilla 98 until the end of time.