#oneaday Day 96: HOW ARE YOU I'M FINE THANK YOU AIIIEEEE

I'll be writing more on this in the coming weeks, but I've been really enjoying the games in the SNK Anniversary Collection so far.

As I noted in my piece on MoeGamer on Friday, it's been a real pleasure to discover some SNK games that aren't Neo Geo games and that aren't fighting games. As good as SNK fighting games are, fighting games are one of my least favourite genres — with a few notable exceptions — and thus I'd rather see other stuff from a company with such a long history.

I've been especially intrigued by some of SNK's early shoot 'em ups, of which there are several in the collection. Thus far I've been particularly enjoying Bermuda Triangle and its sequel World Wars. Both of these have an interesting power-up system where you build up a bar, and at various points on the bar all your weapons increase in power. You also have the ability to aim your air to air guns in 8 directions, though your air to ground bombs always drop in front of you.

Athena and Alpha Mission supposedly drew inspiration from RPGs for their power-up systems, and it's clear that games like Bermuda Triangle and World Wars followed suit. Following these conventions in disparate genres is starting to give me a feel for a very distinctive sense of identity that SNK's pre-Neo Geo games have, and I like it!

I also have to give mad props to the games that make early use of digitised or synthesised speech. Fantasy's opening dialogue of "How are you?" "I'm fine, thank you! AAAIIIIEEEEEE!!" is right up there with "ON THE GLEEN!" from Neo Turf Masters for me now.

Anyway. I'll be exploring each of these games in a series of articles in the coming weeks, and possibly in some videos too. Please look forward to it!