Reminder: SNK 40th Anniversary Collection Receives 11 Games As Free DLC Today

I've got unfinished business with Time Soldiers and Beast Busters to attend to...

Free games are never a bad thing. I wish Sega took this approach with the Sega Genesis Classics collection to add missing games like Sonic 3 and Knuckles or the Thunder Force games.

Nice but I really hope they've added some other QoL improvements like being able to flip the orientation to portrait while in docked mode!!! My vertical monitor and I really need this......

Ozma Wars isn't SNK's 1st game.

Now if only Namco could do the same...

Nice! I have the collectors edition at home on the shelf, quietly tempting me to play it as the hours in Smash and Dark Souls rack up. This expansion will finally motivate me to go back to it again 😄

@Atariboy Can you elaborate? I'm genuinely interested in anything related to video games history.

I was already in love with the collection since it was first announced, and got to forgive the DLC part, because as they explained they were running out of time and it was this way or nothing. I'm glad they decided this way, then.

But there is something I don't understand and think it's not been explained: why 2 of the new games come via eShop?

If it were Nintendo, they'd probably charge you $7.99 per game.

I'd blow Athena anytime of the week. Anytime Anywhere! As per the Switch slogan!

Anyway, I am still in two minds of getting this collection. I see low quantity of Limited Edition, but not sure on biting the bullet. Plus would rather those had leader boards.

@ilikeike

Couldn’t agree more! No Sonic 3 and Knuckles, no sale for me!

@DockEllisD In fact, the Wikipedia says it's the first SNK game ever period.

But as a shooter... for sure. It's one of the first shooters ever (1979), following Space Invaders and running on the same hardware.

@ilikeike @presenttense I'm not going to defend them after they cut Wonder Boy games, present on Xbox One and PS4, from the Switch version, but they've always said Sonic 3 & Knuckles is a difficult thing to emulate, or put into a compilation. That's the explanation they gave when back in 2009 the add-on feature was not available in the Mega Drive Ultimate Collection for Xbox 360 and PS3.

But... back in 1997 they released Sonic Jam for Saturn and there we have the 4 Sonics and the add-on feature. I attest to it, this has been the only way for me to play Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic 3 & Knuckles until now.

That's a lot of good stuff in there by now!

@Pod It was already. I certainly miss the leaderboards, I don't need more online than that, but everything else is wonderful. It saddens me when people dismiss it because of "mediocre games". I'm having a blast with all of them.

I’m still tempted by this as I love retro arcade games , but I’d read there were performance and crashing issues .....is this still the case or have these been patched ? As for the Sega collection , I double dipped , having already got it for the xbone .....I can live without Sonic 3 to be honest , but I really wish they had included Super Hang On , one of Sega’s finest racers.

@Moroboshi876

You can buy Sonic 3 & Knuckles on the Steam version of this so there must be a way around it! I’d be happy with alternative music if the music is really the issue.

@Moroboshi876 I've heard Sega argue that way before, but then I have to ask why Sonic 3 and Knuckles was perfectly playable on the Sonic collections on DS and Gamecube. I know its tricky to emulate, but they've done it before multiple times already on less powerful hardware. It can't be so hard to do it again.

@presenttense Nah, don't need it, I have it on Saturn and this year I finally got Sonic 3 on Mega Drive for an acceptable price. Now I'm looking for a complete Sonic & Knuckles.

@Moroboshi876 Do the lack of leader boards bother you, when Hamster are releasing most of those ports (slowly)? My sway me in buying this.

@Moroboshi876

That’s cool - an actual original Mega Drive?

Another reason to actually get this game. I had no idea it was getting free DLC!

what's the point of having most of them as patch and 2 to download?

@NybroCymerej Well, Hamster has released 2 of these games I think, one being Alpha Mission and the other one I don't remember. It's not like this collection is going to be overlapped by Hamster releases. It's just SNK allows some releases, unlike DotEmu with Windjammers. Doesn't bother me, I wouldn't change this collection for the world, but it could have been implemented, yes.

@presenttense Yes, my original Mega Drive. But now I'm willing to buy an Everdrive cartridge because a lot of games aren't easy to come by, nor are going to be included in compilations, like Castlevania, Mega Man Wily Wars and others that justify this purchase even for a purist like me. I have to open my mind, and I prefer playing these games in an actual Mega Drive even when they're just dumped roms than playing them in a digital collection (which I'll buy anyway, but still) or a Raspberry.

@manu0 That's my only question here.

@Moroboshi876 ah i just looked at the two DLC games...from the looks of it they have a lot more blood/gore than all the others..so probably age rating related.

@manu0 Hm. Interesting theory. But I wonder how many parents really control the games they children play. And isn't the "vanilla" collection already 16+ and violent enough?

@gimmi_c It is weird that the option to rotate the screen isn't present like it is in handheld mode. Maybe something to petition them on?

@Iacobus it sure is weird. Other vertical games just have it baked in and haven't gone through the effort of restricting it in docked mode...which is actually really cool that you can just rotate your monitor and play it....I'm pretty internet/social media phobic so I e mailed them to ask and also groans tweeted them from an account I use when I get no replies to e mails...fat lot of good that was, I didn't even get a reply there!!! Lol

@Moroboshi876
I don't really worry much about leaderboards. But that's not to do with the quality of the games, more that I don't feel I need to compare my skills to strangers worldwide.

High score lists made sense in terms of local communities in the arcades, but online, I feel there always is thousands of people that are just better, for whatever reason, and knowing that I am number 2781 in the world at something gives me very little.

I love this collection so I will definitely pop it in tonight. I just got a Flip Grip...I assume you can flip the screen in handheld mode?

@Moroboshi876

People who weren’t around in the 80s to play them originally aren’t too impressed, but for those of us around that time, this is a must have collection. I too love the collection and can’t wait to go home tonight to pop on the added games.

@Agent721 You definitely can; it's the only way to play tate mode right now.

@gimmi_c I'm looking all over for a support email. Who to contact? SNK? NIS America?

Cool but still can’t understand if the update is free, why they just couldn’t all be on the cartridge in the first place! Small files I’m sure! Nonetheless i will grab them all! 😊

@Iacobus I contacted Digital eclipse as they I believe they are the developer...do you have the same set up then? Rotatable monitor arm?? Ive posted this in the NL forums and your the only other person to show any interest lol

@Moroboshi876 - Yeah, Hamster are very slowly going to put all the SNK titles that predate Neo Geo. I think I will add this to my wish last anyway. Thanks.

can't say I've heard of these, or most of the games in the SNK collection

how do you acess the dlc bundle on the eshop which has the 2 games beast busters and s.a.r.?

Any free dlc is a good sign and most of the announced games are new to me. I played many of these games many years ago and now it can be played at home!

@Agent721 My FlipGrip is apparently in the post but it's shipping internationally so may take a while. I am dying to give it a go though as it's a shmup dream (Zen Pinball will be fun too). How is it? Does it all work as you hoped it would?

@blgmadresh0000 It took a bit for the DLC to show up for me; it should appear under the main game's listing in the eShop.

@gimmi_c I do have such a setup that I use for the pinball games (like Pinball Arcade) and Namco Museum.

I don't see anyone mentioning it, but the best part about this patch is that it gets rid of the screen tearing on Crystalis!! This alone makes me 100% happier with this collection.

@NybroCymerej I didn't catch that information. The only thing I ever read about future Hamster releases are their intention of bringing us more than 800 games, the Nintendo arcade games planned and the fact that any game already released for PS4 could potentially arrive to Switch, and those are in a list on the Wikipedia. Konami games don't seem to come, though.

@Agent721 Yes, but although I was around back then I wasn't really interested in anything more than my MSX, but I feel nostalgic nonetheless. I love that period and its games the way they are.

@Pod I agree, but I like the leaderboards to see my own improvements. And this collection doesn't really show you how far you got, or at least it shows only the highest score, not the different tries. And only if you remember to save game. I'm just saying it could have been better handled is all.

@Moroboshi876 collections like these give me a tiny bit of hope that we might see an MSX collection on Switch at some point. I would love to play those that came out in Japan for PS1 and Saturn.

I’m actually getting this game as a Christmas gift. 11 more games to look forward too.

Just updated my game. SAR and Beast Busters are missing?

Yeah, two games have to be manually downloaded due to ESRB stuff - as DLC it can get its own rating separate from the base game, but if the files are downloaded as part of a patch they’d have to resubmit the whole thing for a new rating.

@TNLGUY Go to the eShop page (search for: SNK) and scroll down past the description to the download bundle link.

@manu0 @Moroboshi876 The 2 download games were for ESRB reasons. Check out this twitter thread from Frank Cifaldi, one of the devs from the SNK 40th Collection. Lots of interesting stuff, but here's some highlights:

"...The games on the cart are cool and all, but this DLC pack is, to me, a better representation of what SNK was in the 80s. Innovative, funny, and REALLY WEIRD."

"For the on-cart games we had to make sure the games were marketable...all of the titles, for the most part, had to be games that might make someone buy. For the DLC, it really was "anything goes," so we got to focus on games people might otherwise ignore."

"It also gave us the opportunity to restore games that were "damaged" by inaccurate emulation. Ozma Wars in the DLC - arguably SNK's first original game - finally has the actual audio you would have heard on a real board. MAME, and the previous SNK releases, did not use this audio"

"We also emulate the audio correctly on Fantasy: MAME has a bug where the game plays the wrong sound effects in the later levels, but our sound is accurate to the original board. This is the first time you can hear the correct audio outside of the (rare!) arcade board."

"Maybe the most important part to me: With this DLC, the package now has ALL of the digital Loop Lever games. Since we took the time to add twin-stick support to these titles and make them actually playable on modern controllers, we wanted to make sure all of them were included...One of these titles, World Wars, is super obscure. As a studio we actually volunteered the work on this one to include it in the collection: Our contract was only for ten DLC games, but we did the work on World Wars for free so that Loop Lever support was 100%."

So World Wars was the mysterious extra game for the DLC, good to know. (Originally, only 10 games were announced for the DLC)

@joey302 What was on the cart was going to be it, at first. Then NISA and SNK wanted to add more games. As to why there not on the cart, my theory is that while there was time to actually work on the games, they may have missed the time window for actually getting them on the cart (as submissions for cart production need to be done months in advance of the release date).

https://twitter.com/frostman007/status/1042580512747868160

@NybroCymerej Too bad the Athena game has not aged well at all (other than the charming colors and the titular ageless protagonist). However I’d love to see the company that tackled the Wonderboy remake to make a new sequel entry, or perhaps for WayForward to take it on.

Athena is a cute, cool character so it would a shame to have her ever-sidelined as a fighting game unlock

@Paperboy Has there ever been an MSX collection on consoles?

I hope other retro companies take note of this sort of thing.

I thought the new batch only had 5 games. Of the now 11, I still only know of Time Soldiers! And that's still fine with me!

@Moroboshi876
Maybe the ones enabled via patch were allllmost done, already inside the main game, but were disabled because of glitches etc.

I wish there would something similar as a "Konami Arcade Collection" ( Vendetta, Sunset Riders, Mystic Riders...) or a "Irem Anniversary Collection" ( Gunforce 1&2, In the Hunt, Mr. Heli, Ninja Spirits, Legend of Hero Tonma ... )

@Bisylizzie Oh thank you! Found em on the shop.

@DockEllisD It was subsequently updated to correct the error, DockEllisD.

It's an easy mistake to make by the way. Ozma Wars is widely held to be SNK's 1st game on the internet. Heck, until two months or so ago I had been thinking it was for 20 years at least.

But the timeline in SNK 40th Anniversary Collection tells a very different story.

@Moroboshi876 Here's a presentation Digital Eclipse did for this project several months ago. I set it to start at the portion where they show the time line that they carefully researched and assembled.

https://youtu.be/LjO-zrLUhcU?t=5m30s

Micon Kit (1978), Safari Rally (1979), and Yosaku (1979) predate Ozma War's release. Only Safari Rally is out there on the internet today.

There's at least one Japanese gamer with a variety of Micon Kit (There were somewhere between 3 and 6 variants of this Breakout style clone) and Yosaku, with videos posted to YouTube. But he sadly wasn't cooperative when approached by Digital Eclipse (Whom very much wanted to include Yosaku and talk as if they'd patch it to include it if they ever get their hands on a rom dump).

Shame Safari Rally is awol. Not only is it the earliest SNK game that they had access to, but it was slated to be a PSP Mini a few years ago, was finished by G1M2, and was even rated by the ESRB. But SNK ended their PSP Minis program before it was released, leaving it and at least one other finished game on the shelf. So it missed the cut a second time here when Digital Eclipse passed it over.

@masterLEON Very interesting stuff, thanks. I checked his Twitter account too, but didn't find it all. I was looking for information about the decision to include games after release, because I could have sworn I had read that it was because SNK asked for them when the package was already made, but it turns out it was just a matter of running out of time.

@Atariboy Thanks for the info!

@Antraxx777 Yes. Konami Antiques: MSX Collection Vol. 1, 2 and 3 voor PS1 and an ultra pack containing all three volumes for Saturn. Only released in Japan though.

Beast Busters isn't on it.

@Iacobus

Thanks!

@BionicDodo

I like it a lot. I’ve played the Psychio collection 1, Ikaruga & Danmaku Unlimited with it and it works great. It’s easy to use and to put in and out. Joycon attachement feels tight & solid. I’m glad I bought it!

@Agent721 Brilliant, thanks. I'm even more hyped now!

I haven't had the time to test the new games, but I have, after searching on Google Images, the disturbing feeling that borders of these games have been rushed and are simple, with no pictures unlike the first 13. Can anybody confirm? I don't have my Switch on me today. Thanks.

@Moroboshi876 That's right, the borders are a plain silver with a green stripe running vertically each side. Not exciting but maybe the design is based on something relevant, so could be a nice detail I just don't appreciate yet. Also, soundtracks for the new games have not been added to the museum. They all have a 'watch' mode though and some have regional variations too.

My biggest complaint so far though is the game is still super prone to crashing when I'm simply navigating the menus.

@ToneDeath Yes, that happend to me a couple times too.

About the borders, well, I hope they'll patch the right ones at some point.

@Moroboshi876 Just found out if you change the screen size from full screen to 'sharp screen' the border has a couple of SNK logos at the top.

@ToneDeath Yeah, that's what I've seen in screenshots, but that's not the way it should be. I guess it's part of the rush that made them give the games as free updates/DLC, but it certainly doesn't match the rest of the collection.

@Moroboshi876 It's a little disappointing but still nostalgic. It's a throwback to the old SNK NES box design released in NA. There is cabinet art, pics of the cabinet itself, maybe some screenshots they could use if they want to patch some new borders in later. That's what the rest of the original games do anyway, so I hope that's not much of a stretch for them to do. I wouldn't mind if they added the NES box borders to the actual NES releases in the collection that used the silver borders.

For @YANDMAN and anyone else who still needs it:
-put "SNK" into the search bar

-scroll past the description to get the download link (you can do this with any game that has specific DLC you want to check out or buy)

-go to "Free Download", then keep going a couple more screens until you're done

@gamekill Hm, 247MB is kinda big for on-cart DLC. In my experience, on-cart/on-disc/baked-in DLC is typically 1 to 2MB, to tell the game that you now own it.

@masterLEON Precisely. Being these games arcade only it doesn't make sense. But well, I guess if they can they will do it right.

@masterLEON Yeah i found it last night, but thanks. They really missed an opportunity by not making Beast Busters run on the joycon pointers. This would of worked great as the light guns. As it is the analogue is terrible to play with and completely over calibrated. As you mentioned the screen bezzle is too a bit disappointing seeing as thjey had already loaded so much great artwork into this. It wouldnt of been difficult to get the real arcade bezzels working, also the nES box style they optyed for doesn't even fit the screen correctly. But this aside i still think this is a great apckage and i love all the history and flyers etc.

@YANDMAN Oh man, the first thing I did was go through the entire museum from beginning to end. I didn't even expect I'd do that, I just got caught up in the fascinating evolution of SNK!

Yeah, Beast Busters really needs an option to fine tune the analogue or give us motion controls. The game's already unfair as it is (in single player) without the cursor going all over the place. That said, I did kind of get used to the flow of the game. But clearing it on less than a handful of credits with these controls still seems so out of reach.

@masterLEON The music, the music playing in the background of the hgistory section is absolutely perfect. Tranquil, electronic museum vibes. I think it was the music that pulled me in. I too read through the whole lot and i probvably knew most of it already. A really lovely experience. I think i enjoyed it more than the games so far. Yeah that analogue is sloppy.

@masterLEON
I agree. Had no idea it was 200mb+
That said, maybe I still think they were supposed to be part of the main pack, so the main "directory" or listing or headers, or whatever for these games were already implemented, but the main content of the games was cut from the package. They were "lucky" to be already accounted for as part of the main game's structure, or so to speak, in non-technical terms.
The others were not so as DLC, they use the main game's internal separate gateway for additional games. That is what would make sense in my head, with the little info we have.