In December 1986 an advertisement in CRASH announced Elite’s Spectrum version of Ikari Warriors “by SNK Corporation”, under the line “From a new name in coin-op”. SNK was not new. Eikichi Kawasaki had founded it in Osaka eight years earlier, and its shooter Vanguard had been a hit in American arcades in 1981. But most players met SNK’s games under other companies’ names, and it took another four years, and a machine of its own, before the name meant something.
That machine was the Neo Geo: the same hardware and the same cartridges in the arcade and in the living room. On it SNK built the fighting game series that were the main challenge to Capcom’s Street Fighter II in the 1990s. The company went bankrupt in 2001, but its founder bought back its games, and SNK is still making them.
Fast facts
- Founded: 22 July 1978, in Osaka, by Eikichi Kawasaki, as Shin Nihon Kikaku (“New Japan Project”).
- Early arcade games: Ozma Wars (1979), Vanguard (1980), Ikari Warriors (1986), Athena and Psycho Soldier.
- Hardware: the Neo Geo MVS and AES (1990), the Neo Geo CD (1994), the Hyper Neo Geo 64 (1997) and the Neo Geo Pocket (1998).
- Fighting game series: Fatal Fury (1991), Art of Fighting (1992), Samurai Shodown (1993), The King of Fighters (1994).
- Owners: Aruze from January 2000; bankrupt in 2001.
- Successor: Playmore, founded by Kawasaki in August 2001, which took over SNK’s games and became SNK Playmore in 2003 and SNK in 2016.
From Osaka to Vanguard
Retro Gamer’s history of the company describes SNK’s start as a business making hardware and software for corporate clients. Watching Namco and Taito succeed, Kawasaki moved into arcade games. SNK’s first two, released in 1979, ran on Taito’s hardware for Space Invaders: Ozma Wars, a vertical shooter, and Safari Hunt.
The first hit was Vanguard, released in Japan at the very end of 1980. It was a side-scrolling shooter in which the player’s ship could fire in four directions, and it measured progress by distance as well as score. Centuri licensed it for North America in 1981, and Retro Gamer reports that Centuri’s revenue forecasts for the year were met within a month. Atari licensed it for its home systems. In October 1981 SNK opened an American subsidiary, SNK of America, in California.
A new name in coin-op
Through the mid-1980s SNK licensed its games to other companies, which is why so many players did not know who made them. SNK’s first American manager, John Rowe, left to found Tradewest; Retro Gamer reports that he was replaced by Paul Jacobs, formerly of Universal’s arcade division.
Ikari Warriors (1986) was the game that made SNK’s name in Europe. Wireframe calls it “cheekily similar” to Capcom’s Commando, released less than a year earlier: an overhead war game in which a soldier fights his way up the screen. Elite Systems converted it for home computers, and CRASH previewed it in December 1986 as a game that “takes the basic style of Commando and puts a lot more variety and gameplay in”. Amtix readers voted it the best sound effects of 1986. In October 1987 The Games Machine introduced SNK to its readers as a well-known producer of arcade games, naming Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier among its successes, and reported that Imagine was converting three SNK coin-ops, among them Athena and Psycho Soldier.
SNK also made games for home consoles. Crystalis, a science-fiction adventure for the Nintendo Entertainment System, came out in America in July 1990.
The Neo Geo
“We believe our business watershed was 1990 when we established and released the Neo Geo MVS,” Kawasaki told Retro Gamer. The name, he said, came from a member of the development staff, and “means ‘New Frontier’”. The Neo Geo entry explains the hardware. For SNK, the point was that one design served two markets:
| Version | What it was |
|---|---|
| MVS (Multi Video System) | The arcade version. An arcade cabinet could hold several cartridges, so an operator could change games without changing the board. |
| AES (Advanced Entertainment System) | The home console, running the same games as the arcade. At first SNK rented consoles and cartridges in Japan. |
| Neo Geo CD | A cheaper CD-ROM console, launched in Japan in September 1994, with games at CD prices but slow loading. |
| Neo Geo Pocket | A separate handheld with its own hardware, launched in Japan in October 1998, followed by the Neo Geo Pocket Color in March 1999. |
The home console was famously expensive. ACE reported in 1991 that it cost $649 in America, with games at $199 each. A reader wrote to ACE in 1990 that the British price of £425 “seems fair, but the software is £230 per cartridge. Who is going to pay that sort of money for one game?” ACE‘s buyers’ guide called it a machine “for the very rich indeed”.
The fighting game years
In 1991 Capcom’s Street Fighter II filled the arcades, and SNK answered with its own one-on-one fighting game, Fatal Fury, released a few months later. Retro Gamer reports that its home version on the AES sold for $250 in America. Art of Fighting followed in 1992, zooming in and out on the fighters with the Neo Geo’s sprite scaling. In May 1993 SNK’s own Official Neo Geo Newsletter previewed Samurai Shodown, a sword-fighting game with twelve warriors set in medieval Japan, which “takes the current style of fighting games and turns them on their head”. Kawasaki later said that it had started life on paper as a horizontally scrolling action game.
The King of Fighters ’94 brought SNK’s characters together. Nintendo Magazine System reported in October 1994 that it had “24 fighters split into eight teams”, each of three, with the Fatal Fury team of the Bogard brothers and Joe Higashi fighting the Art of Fighting team. SNK released a new edition of The King of Fighters almost every year, named after the year.
Not every hit was made in-house. The small studio Nazca, formed by former Irem staff, made Metal Slug for SNK in 1996, and Kawasaki liked the game so much that he bought the company.
3D, handhelds and Capcom
The arcades were turning to 3D. SNK’s answer, the Hyper Neo Geo 64 of 1997, was a disappointment: Retro Gamer counts seven games in 18 months before it disappeared. Kawasaki turned instead to handhelds. The monochrome Neo Geo Pocket launched in Japan in October 1998, a week after Nintendo’s Game Boy Color, and was replaced by a colour model five months later.
For the colour handheld Kawasaki signed a deal with Capcom, the old rival, and the two companies’ characters met. SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium and the card game SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters’ Clash came out for the Neo Geo Pocket Color in 1999, and Capcom’s arcade game Capcom vs. SNK followed in 2000.
Aruze, bankruptcy and Playmore
The money had run out. In January 2000 ownership of SNK passed to Aruze, a maker of pachinko machines, and in June 2000 SNK stopped selling the Neo Geo Pocket Color in America and Europe. Retro Gamer reports that Kawasaki left rather than watch the company stagnate. SNK applied for court-supervised rehabilitation in April 2001 and was declared bankrupt that October; Wireframe gives 22 October 2001 as the day it ceased operation.
Kawasaki had already set up a new company, Playmore, in August 2001, and it acquired SNK’s games and characters. Many former SNK staff joined it. “SNK Playmore can be considered as a continuation of SNK,” Kawasaki told Retro Gamer. Playmore took the name SNK Playmore in 2003.
After 2003
SNK Playmore kept making Neo Geo games for a few more years. In 2004 Edge reported that it was “abandoning the aging Neo-Geo system” and moving King of Fighters, Metal Slug and Samurai Spirits to Sammy’s Atomiswave arcade board. The Neo Geo X of 2012, a handheld with Neo Geo games built in, was abandoned in less than a year.
In 2015 Kawasaki sold his controlling stake to Ledo Millennium, part of a Chinese group, and retired; Wireframe put the price at £49.5 million. The company dropped “Playmore” from its name in December 2016, the year it released The King of Fighters XIV, and marked its 40th anniversary in 2018 with the NeoGeo Mini. In 2020 the Electronic Gaming Development Company, owned by Saudi Arabia’s MiSK Foundation, bought a third of SNK, and by 2022 it owned almost all of it.
Sources
- Mike Tooley, SNK history, Retro Gamer issue 38, 2007, pp. 35–36 (part one): Kawasaki, the July 1978 founding in Osaka, the corporate business, Ozma Wars and Safari Hunt on Taito hardware, Vanguard and its licences to Centuri and Atari, SNK of America in October 1981, John Rowe, Tradewest and Paul Jacobs.
- Mike Tooley, SNK history parts two and three, reprinted in Retro Gamer Collection vol. 2, 2008, pp. 204–209 and 244–249: Kawasaki on 1990 and the name Neo Geo; the $250 Fatal Fury AES cartridge; Art of Fighting; Kawasaki on Samurai Shodown; the Hyper Neo Geo 64; the deal with Capcom and the Neo Geo Pocket Color games; Aruze, Kawasaki’s departure, Playmore and SNK Playmore; Kawasaki’s “a continuation of SNK”.
- “SNK at 40”, Wireframe issue 3, November 2018, pp. 50–51: the founding date and name; the end of SNK on 22 October 2001; Playmore; the Neo Geo X; the Chinese takeover and Kawasaki’s retirement; the 2016 renaming and The King of Fighters XIV; the NeoGeo Mini.
- Wireframe issue 7, February 2019, p. 50: Ikari Warriors and Commando.
- CRASH issue 35, December 1986: the Ikari Warriors preview (p. 164) and Elite’s advertisement in the same issue.
- Amtix issue 18, April 1987, p. 42: readers’ awards for 1986, as set out in the Elite Systems entry.
- The Games Machine issue 1, October 1987, p. 108: SNK’s arcade titles and Imagine’s conversions.
- Nintendo Power issue 100, September 1997, p. 108: Crystalis, SNK, NES, July 1990.
- ACE issue 35, August 1990, issue 36, September 1990, and issue 47, August 1991: the British and American prices, as set out in the Neo Geo entry, which also gives the sources for the MVS cabinets, the Japanese rental scheme and the Neo Geo CD.
- The Official Neo Geo Newsletter issue 4, May 1993, p. 4: the Samurai Shodown preview.
- Nintendo Magazine System issue 25, October 1994, p. 13: The King of Fighters ’94.
- Retro Gamer issue 39, 2007, pp. 76–77, and Wireframe issue 18, July 2019: Nazca and Metal Slug, as set out in the Nazca entry.
- Edge issue 66, December 1998, and issue 69, March 1999; Retro Gamer issue 20, 2005: the Neo Geo Pocket, Aruze’s purchase and the withdrawal from the West, as set out in the Neo Geo Pocket entry.
- Edge issue 135, April 2004, arcade news: SNK Playmore’s move to Atomiswave.
- Wikipedia, “SNK” (web, secondary): Capcom vs. SNK in 2000; civil rehabilitation (2 April 2001) and bankruptcy (October 2001); Playmore (1 August 2001) and SNK Playmore (July 2003); Ledo Millennium in 2015; the renaming on 1 December 2016; the Electronic Gaming Development Company’s stakes in 2020 and 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNK