Late to the Party: SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy

ou all should know by now that we love a good fighting game here on Press Pause Radio and SNK is a mainstay that is responsible for some of our favorites over the years. Games like King of Fighters '98 (and its fantastic Dreamcast update, Dream Match 1999), Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Shin Samurai Spirits (Samurai Showdown II) and so many more. It’s hard to discount SNK after all of these years, and their work will always have a space on our shelf and hard drives with each new port in the future. So, when SNK announced a new fighting game for the Nintendo Switch featuring an all-female roster of fighters from across SNK's history, I knew I needed to check it out at some point.

 Developed by SNK (The Future is Now!) and published by NIS America, SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy is a versus fighting game that, at first glance, seems to be a fan-service-y re-skin of the typical SNK fighting game formula. Players start the game with a primary attacker and a secondary supporting character. However, simply diving into the game with this expectation will only lead to confusion and frustrate the player, as there is actually a completely unique system under the hood that needs quite a bit more understanding if players want to make any kind of progress.

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QCF: Marvel Vs Capcom Infinite

hange is ever constant in anything and everything we do, and that sentiment couldn’t be more apparent than the latest installment to Capcom’s Versus series, Marvel Versus Capcom Infinite.

While the previous entry was able to exercise a surprising amount of creative control within the aftermath of Disney’s startling acquisition of Marvel, the landscape is now far more different than it was six years ago, and the Comic Publisher’s ongoing licensing struggles have made their way into the development of the sequel.

To top that off, the recent resurgence of the fighting game craze in the mainstream from games like Killer Instinct Season 3, Injustice 2, and Pokken Tournament DX have raised the bar for on what the fans of the genre anticipate out of new releases, especially when it comes to the pedigree expected out of something like the Capcom Versus Series.

With the odds seemingly stacked against development, the direction of Infinite shifted, seemingly geared more towards accessibility, and a new narrative-heavy approach that emphasized all the zany fan-service that Capcom could squeeze out of the crossover.

The end result makes for a competent entry that manages to introduce a few compelling new concepts, but ultimately plays it way too safe with everything else, delivering an experience that leaves a lot more to be desired.

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QCF: Project X Zone

he video Game Crossover is definitely nothing new. Much like many comic and cartoon series have in the past, quite a number crossovers have been mashed together over the last three decades or so in North America, including notable entries such as Battletoads & Double Dragon, Aliens Vs. Predator, Capcom Vs. SNK, and of course, Super Smash Bros. But in Japan, the sheer amount of crossovers is kind of mind-numbing. Perhaps the greatest crossover series ever is Bandai and Banpresto's Super Robot Wars (oddly titled in its original Japanese name for releases in North America, despite Japanese stickers on merchandise reading “SRW”). Super Robot Wars collects a simply ridiculous amount of giant robot anime series together and crossses them over in a hugely deep strategy RPG setting. So it's no surprise that Banpresto was the one to collect over 50 different characters together in Namco Bandai's Project X Zone (pronounced Cross Zone) on Nintendo's 3DS.

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QCF: Sonic: The Fighters

hat pops into your head when you see these next three words?

"Sonic the Hedgehog."

Were you thinking about a fighting game? Probably, because you've more than likely seen the title of this article, and you're reading this review. But hold on there, did you think of a good fighting game? Probably not, right? Well, buckle up, because this could be an interesting ride.

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QCF: Fighting Vipers (PSN)

irtua Fighter, at the time of its release was an innovative, incredibly fresh experience that set a new standard by which fighting games in the future had to measure up to. At the time, no one did it better than Sega AM2, and a year after the release of Virtua Fighter 2 came Fighting Vipers, a brand new franchise in the same vein as Virtua Fighter – complete with the same level of depth and absurdly huge move sets - but with brand new characters and an new dynamic: Body armor.

Fighting Vipers also released on the Sega Saturn alongside its Virtua cousins, and is now available in HD on the XBLA and PSN marketplaces.

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QCF: Dead Or Alive 5

Team Ninja has seen better days. Their recent efforts towards a blockbuster action game failed since Tomonobu Itagaki left after the completed development of Ninja Gaiden II. In the aftermath of Metroid: Other M and chasing after the same goal of Ninja Gaiden 3 to appeal to western sensibilities, Dead or Alive 5 is the latest installment in the storied 3D fighting franchise that aspires to be relevant again in the emergent renaissance of fighting games 2012 has seen.

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WarTech: Senko no Ronde REVIEW - Bullet Heaven HD, Episode 55

Round one... FIGHT... er, DANMAKU! SHOOT! DASH! ... umm, ALL OF THE ABOVE! In this episode of Bullet Heaven HD we take a look at the genre bending WarTech: Senko no Ronde for the Xbox 360. Is this fusion of Fighter and Shmup a worthy entrant, or will it fall flat in the arena?

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PAX East 2012: Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown Hands-on Preview

As we circled around the Sega booth, the distinctive sounds “Hooh-Ah!” of Virtua Fighter’s Jackie Bryant performing his signature flip kicks immediately entered my ears and perked them towards that direction. I came across the latest project to be released in the series, Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, and had the opportunity to have a hands-on preview and discuss details of Final Showdown to find out whether or not this updated version of the game would be worth your time.

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