For some fighting game fans, Capcom vs. SNK has represented the fulfillment of a dream that has long been felt to be unreachable. And it seems today that this dream was shared by the developers at SNK, who didn’t wait for the matter to be officially taken care of in order to create a highly unlikely crossover.
Also read: The King of Fighters XV will be revealed in videos and pictures released in 2021
The American side Polygon has just published a dossier in which he describes the development of Capcom vs. SNK in the company of personalities who were working for one or the other publisher at the time. Toyohisa Tanabe was one of the respondents for this dossier. “Pixel Art Supervisor
I have a secret to tell and I don’t know if to say this, but: […] Two years before Capcom vs. SNK was released, we produced King of Fighters ’98. And it turns out that after we finish developing the game, we’ll have some free time. So the team made a version of the game with Ryu and Ken (from Street Fighter). Few people know that. I also think that only the developers knew about it. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone myself. But yeah, just for fun and before Capcom vs. SNK there isn’t, I played Ryu and Ken in King of Fighters ’98.
I doubt there is another version of the game anywhere. We made a development kit so the game never ended up on a physical cartridge. Plus, and I just remembered, but we weren’t all having fun with Ryu and Ken. We also included characters from Dragon Ball like Goku.
A drama for fans and historians
This is what both salivates and makes many gamers cry. For legal reasons, it’s no surprise that members of SNK have never talked about this version on everyone’s roof. But almost a quarter of a century later there are restrictions.
In order to preserve the legacy of video games, it is regrettable that this very special version of KoF ’98 has a priori gone for good (the SNK that exists today no longer has much to do with the SNK at the time). Now, the most optimistic gamers can only hope that this development kit has been kept somewhere and will reappear one day.
In any event, such revelations raise new questions about the secrets and other internal projects of this nature that may be contained in the archives and other development kits that kept the oldest structures.
Since archiving and storage have not been a central concern of developers and their employers for a long time, it is certain that many original creations like this secret version of the famous fighting game have never disappeared.
What do you think of this revelation? Is she thundering you? Would you like this version of the game to reappear one day? Do you think such practices were common in development studios? Tell us everything in the comments below.
