• $1.79 • -70% • ART OF FIGHTING 2
• $1.79 • -70% • FATAL FURY SPECIAL
• $1.79 • -70% • GAROU: MARK OF THE WOLVES
• $1.79 • -70% • IRONCLAD
• $1.79 • -70% • KING OF THE MONSTERS
• $1.79 • -70% • METAL SLUG
• $1.79 • -70% • METAL SLUG 2
• $1.79 • -70% • METAL SLUG 3
• $1.79 • -70% • METAL SLUG X
• $1.79 • -70% • REAL BOUT FATAL FURY 2: THE NEWCOMERS
• $1.79 • -70% • SAMURAI SHODOWN II
• $1.79 • -70% • SENGOKU 3
• $1.79 • -70% • SHOCK TROOPERS: 2ND SQUAD
• $1.79 • -70% • THE KING OF FIGHTERS 2000
• $1.79 • -70% • THE KING OF FIGHTERS 2002
• $1.79 • -70% • THE LAST BLADE
• $2.99 • -70% • SAMURAI SHODOWN V SPECIAL
• $2.99 • -70% • THE LAST BLADE 2
• $3.89 • -70% • THE KING OF FIGHTERS '98 ULTIMATE MATCH FINAL EDITION
• $3.89 • -70% • THE KING OF FIGHTERS 2002 UNLIMITED MATCH
• $5.99 • -70% • THE KING OF FIGHTERS XIII GALAXY EDITION
• $14.99 • -50% • SNK 40th Anniversary Collection
• $17.99 • -70% • THE KING OF FIGHTERS XIV GALAXY EDITION

Apparently, the 40th Anniversary Collection includes Crystalis, which is very unlike the other games in the collection; it's more like the Ys games, to be honest. (Although there's no bump combat; there is, however, the ability to charge up for a ranged attack. There's also hard level requirements for boss fights; if your level isn't high enough, the boss is impossible, as your attacks fail to do damage.)

(Are there any other SNK games like that, or that don't fit into the usual genres? Also, are both NES and GBC Crystalis included, or just one?)

How about an exclusive discount 75% for KOF XIV along with your DLCs? Or an option for how to buy the game all at once (Ultimate Edition). GOG, send the code!

Don't forget to check who owns SNK, before you decide to send them money.

Yup, owned by a Saudi prince now, but so far nothing bad came out of it afaik.

So which of the King of Fighters games is the most newb-friendly/solo-enjoyable: '98 Ultimate, '02 Ultimate, XIII, or XIV? The last fighting game I've played more seriously was Mortal Kombat 9 and we all know that series tends to be not nearly as complicated when it comes to attack/combo maneuvers.

Why would that be any worse than microsoft,chinese, money groups like zenimax, corrupt or SJW indie groups or co-opted companies like Sony.

98 UM / 02 UM are pretty good for single player. XIII is good but it feels kinda odd compared to the other games. XIV has an interesting training mode where Antonov (the tournament organizer) explains the basic play system and later goes into more advanced stuff that you don't need to win. I tried it, and it feels like it was designed for newbies to get the basics quickly.

You don't need to pull off huge combos in these games to win against the CPU, but you might get frustrated by the end bosses. They're not nearly as bad as XI's boss, that dude is the absolute fucking worst.

My question is can I use 3rd party fighting arcade joystick for those fighting games? It's not that bad tho. A lot of Saudi princes born from the sultan's 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th wife and not eligible for throne so they're bored af and have too much money to spend. Many of them became nerds and actually doing something nice like saving gaming franchises by buying them and it's a good thing fbecause they're western educated and like popular media as well. Some of them even funded an anime movie about a Saudi hero with a Japanese studio.

One of the most memorable was when this Saudi guy keep sending rare games to CGR (Classic Game Room) youtube channel.

That's roughly my opinion as well. When they first announced the transfer last year, I was a bit worried what direction they would steer, but then figured that the prince likely played those snk games in his youth, probably even had niooo-giooo with some huge cart collection, unlike us mere mortals. So it's quite likely that it's in better hands now compared to some chinese corporation which began to censor old snk games (art of fighting 2, baseball stars 2) on all platforms in a form of sneaky "updates". Time will tell though.

I'm also interested in physical goods they might make in the future and how this acquisition might influence it, maybe some quality arcade controllers/fighsticks, or an official fpga retro system compatible with old carts would be made, etc.

I got curious, what got censored in the SNK games? What they removed from AoF2 and BS2?

The 40th Anniversary Collection only features the NES version.

As for other typically un-arcadey games from SNK, you may want to consider Dark Arms for the Neo Geo Pocket Color. That particular game has just been rereleased on the Switch through the Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection and may well end up on the PC at some point.

I'm sure many of them are very nice and decent people, but that's not what Jamal Khashoggi would describe this one as.

In art of fighting 2, they removed the Japanese rising sun flag in one of stages. Game still has rollback, so you can revert to the old version prior to censorship.

Baseball stars 2 has national flags of teams removed (dunno if all or not) and any notion of Taiwan is gone. Rollback is disabled, so one has to restore it manually.

That's from top of my head, happened like ~9 months ago, so there might be more details that got changed.