Topic: SNK 40th Anniversary Collection

Considering the news about this collection got may comments, I'm surprised it doesn't have a thread yet. And sad, because I see that this release hasn't had almost any impact on people.

Well, I was excited for it since its announcement months ago and I'm enjoying the games I've tried so far.

What I've played by now is:

Ikari Warriors: Damn difficult. I can't play with twin sticks, I'm sorry, so I'll probably disable it.

Psycho Soldier: I just discovered by reading the info that comes as extras that what appeared to be traps were actually power-ups. Dumb me.

Athena: It gets quickly difficult, but it reminds me, for its game design and graphics, of Alex Kidd.

Prehistoric Isle in 1930: I really loved it. Great graphics for its time, wackyness and fun. It might be the best of the bunch.

Other things: really missed online leaderboards, the bare minimum online functionality with this kind of collections, even Hamster has them. It makes no sense to achieve scores and not having the chance to share and compare them.

Saving feature: it only works when exiting a game, which prompts the question. If you just push - button and save, when you exit you might choose "exiting without saving" because you know you already saved, but it doesn't work. So you have to save whenever you exit.

Extras: great info about games, but promo pictures and sketches is kind of a poor section, sadly.

So far I'm loving the collection, I knew what I was buying (they never said it would include Neo Geo games, so stop complaining you uninformed people!) and it delivers.

It's an excellent collection of mediocre to average arcade games. Crystalis is probably the standout game, ratings wise. As an SNK fan, I think this collection is very well put together. My only gripe is that...I was hoping Baseball Stars for the NES would've made the cut. But it is a series of games from the Neo Geo era of SNK, so I understand why it wasn't including in this collection.

Regardless, I'm eager to see what the collaboration between SNK and NIS America produces in the future. This collection and SNK Heroines was a good start. Now how about King of Fighters? A new Samurai Shodown was also announced earlier this year.

Do the arcade games give you unlimited lives to go through them (simulating constant quarters)? Are there settings you can adjust to change the number of lives, difficulty, etc.? Do the NES games have similar options, or are they set lives/continues exactly as they were back then?

@Magician I can't 100% agree. Definitely there are some dated games, but some other ones are still enjoyable, although it's a matter of taste.

About Baseball Stars, I don't think that's what happened, because here there is Alpha Mission, whose sequel was a Neo Geo game, so they could have put Baseball Stars in the collection regardless of where the sequels were released. I think the problem is they didn't want to include console-only games (NES games, I mean, because they don't want to put it this way but "console" means "NES" in this collection), except from Crystalis, but this one is a worthy exception. That's my theory.

@DoomTurtle You have unlimited credits, but depending on the game you either see the credits you have or you don't. You can adjust difficulty and some other settings such as how many points you need in order to get an extra life, yes. About NES games, honestly I haven't tried yet.

The collection is real nice but I just wish they'd add the ability to go portrait when docked so I can flip my monitor sideways and play like that! I can do it on other games but this collection locks it for some reason

These days I've been enjoying P.O.W. and Prehistoric Isle mostly. Ikari Warriors too, but it's too damn difficult and with no continues whatsoever.

Well, today is the day we'll receive the remaining 11 titles via free patch or DLC. Digital Eclipse was very transparent on the production of this collection on Twitter, but they stopped talking about it, they don't even remind us that today 11 more titles will become available.

So I haven't found any information about why 2 of them come as free games in the eShop and the other 9 are in a patch. Does anybody know?

Picked up a copy of this today. Got no prior experience of any of the games, but first impressions are really good...

...but with one reservation: is there any way to fill the screen width? I've put it in portrait mode, which does increase the size (from very small) compared to landscape, but there are still quite large borders around the sides that I don't understand.

@gcunit I don't quite remember if this collection lets you choose widescreen mode and stretch the sprites, but if it doesn't it's for the best. These games were intended for 4:3 screens, and honestly tje borders with pictures are the best thing they could do in my opinion.

I'm glad you're liking it, it's a great collection of obscure games.

@Moroboshi876 But when you're playing in portrait mode, there is spare screen real estate that could be used without altering the screen ratio.

@gcunit You mean handheld mode? I do remember that there are two zoom options and one of them fills more of the screen than the other. Not 16:9 though.

@Moroboshi876 I've googled it and found the answer I was hoping for.

When you go to the Pause screen you get presented with 3 options at the bottom. I'd seen that 'Sharp screen' was one of the defaults and not explored the alternatives because I'd assumed it would just offer varying degrees of sharpness. But it turns out the alternative options are 'Full screen' (which removed the vertical borders in portrait and fills the width of the screen - just what I was hoping for) and 'Stretch screen' (which fills the entirety of the Switch screen, producing a very acceptable result in Portrait on first impression).

Quite why they went for Sharp screen as default I don't know, because when you play in landscape the display is tiny.

@gcunit Interesting, but... What do they fill the screen with?

And you keep saying landscape, but isn't this de default way to play on Switch?

@Moroboshi876 Sorry for the delay getting back to you. Here are the six display options:

Portrait - Sharp screen

Portrait - Full Screen

Portrait - Stretch

Landscape - Sharp screen

Landscape - Full Screen

Landscape - Stretch

So you can see how much screen I was losing with it defaulting in 'Sharp Screen'.

The black borders can be filled with other options, but I prefer playing 'stretch' (portrait or landscape, depending on the game - Guerrilla War I prefer in Portrait Stretch) to fill the screen.

@gcunit Thanks. I haven't tried vertical yet, and honestly I doubt I'll do it. I tried it with Arcade Archives Donkey Kong and the Switch is a little too heavy for my hands, so I end up tired.

Stretch is the option nobody uses to choose because it... well, stretches the sprites. But I'm glad you like it and use it, apparently there was some public for it.

I always use full screen, because side borders don't bother me, but borders on the sides and also up and down I can't deal with.

@Moroboshi876 You oughta get a stand to play in vertical.

@gcunit Do you know about any flip grip really cheap? In that case I wouldn't mind