When I first skim read information for this game, I thought it would be one that I'd probably have a hard time finding in order to play in the first place. It's a Neo Geo Pocket Color title, a handheld that I've never seen in my life. In my experiences, you either had a Game Boy Color to play Pokémon or you didn't. There was no Neo Geo round our way.
The Neo Geo Pocket Color itself had such a hard run competing against Nintendo devices that the number of games available for it wouldn't even fill a top 100 list, but, according to this 1001 list, there is a title that simply must be played, and it is SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash.
Take a bunch of SNK characters, a bunch of Capcom characters, make them into a Magic: The Gathering-style card game... oh we're going to be all up and down on this one, I can feel it.
Fun Times
I didn't immediately know what on Earth SvC: Card Fighters Clash was until reading up on it while trying to find a ROM. The title should have given me a clue, but I eventually learned that it was a card game in a similar style to Magic: The Gathering.
For those that don't know: MtG is a rather popular card game from the 1990s. I am a big fan of card games - an absolute sucker for some of them. I think MtG sucks.
But... I think Street Fighter is pretty cool, and that's mostly what Capcom bring to these kinds of crossover titles. So I've got things going for it, and things going against it, and I've not even gotten past the title screen yet.
There are two versions of Card Fighters' Clash, one focused on SNK characters and the other on Capcom offerings, and if it's not obvious by the screenshot or the previous paragraph, I've opted for the Capcom version. I want to feel comfortable, with familiar characters, while I bemoan the card play...
We jump in, quite literally, to a rather in-depth tutorial about arranging decks of 50 cards, and already I'm wondering just how deep this rabbit hole will take me. Thankfully, after remembering that I've not been told about that actual game itself, that tutorial gets going.
I'm fairly sure 'choose' should be 'draw' here, and in the next step too, so it's a good job I know a little bit about card games before going into this one, but I'll chalk this up to translation issues. What I really want to know is what the main mechanism is, and how fun it is.
It's actually pretty simple as far as card games go. You pick a card or character to put into one of three slots in your battlefield, and depending on their attributes, they may give you resources that allow you to also/eventually play action cards to alter characters or affect the battlefield.
Cards can't be used to attack on the turn you play them, but once available, they have their own BP stat that acts as both their strength and their health and can launch attacks against the enemy player.
You don't want that to happen, of course, so you can throw in defenders - so long as they're already in play for you, and not tangled up in any fashion from previous attacks or actions.
This back and forth is further complicated by spending resources to combine your attacks, and have two or even all three of your characters fight one after the other, against whoever is unfortunate enough to stand in their way. They'll compare stats, deal damage, and move on until the whole attack is resolved, and play continues.
It is, essentially, a dumbed down Magic, in that you put people out in front of you to soak up and dish out damage, carefully choosing when to block and when to attack, knowing that you can only attack once each turn, and not knowing if your opponent will choose to counter it.
Your first introductory fight allows you to do whatever you want with your strategy and cards, so long as its legal to do so, and we draw into an Arthur card, from Ghosts 'n Goblins. Looking at your hand allows you to dive into each card to see whether they have any useful abilities, beyond their BP and SP values, and we see that Arthur is a dependable chump and little more.
There are places in this game for chumps, and human shields and chip damage and so on, so Arthur may well get his chance to shine. If we draw into another Arthur card, we can combine it with one already in play as a 'Back-Up' character, which adds 300 to the active characters' BP value.
Contrast that with Ryu, however, who we have also drawn into. He requires different characters for support, but is stronger than Arthur and has an ability that we can use if the situation presents itself and the conditions are met, in this case burning an action card to deal 200 points of damage to someone.
As an opening move, though, I went for playing Michelle, with a whopping +5 SP which will come in handy for paying for any action cards we use, or when attacking with multiple characters. While she can't attack on our first turn, it's not long before our second turn comes along.
And so the battle progresses, card by card, turn by turn. You can play one character to the table, back-up one character, play an action card, and finally attack - if you're able to pull all of that off with your hand. Usually, I found myself just putting in whoever was stronger, and likely to survive a few turns.
Discovering what each card does is as easy as looking it up before you play it, either on the Data option or in the glossary on the main window. You can check the status of each players hand and deck, see which characters are on the table before deciding what to do... you really are able to stop and think about every step.
They're often thematic cards, and it's nice when you recognise their original game. The art style might be hit or miss, and for me, it's mostly a hit. The colours of the background are probably the worst parts of the game so far, which is nice - it's not that gameplay that'll drag the game down...
After a fight you'd expect to win, you're rewarded with your first of many cards, hopefully getting better and better as the game goes on, and your challenge increases.
With a win under our belts, it's a good time to start our journey. What's the reason we're playing this game, anyway?
Aahhh. It's Pokémon...
Who's the first victim?
Frustration
It was me. The first victim was me. The first seven victims were me, as I went around fighting people again and again and just kept losing. This sucked! There are ways to buy and trade cards but if you don't win extra cards to trade in the first place, you're not going to get anywhere, and for an hour I found myself losing again and again.
When I called it a day, I then found out all my screenshots were unusable or outright garbled. Great. A game I really want to talk about, which means a game I really want to show to people and hope to convey my enthusiasm, and it's kicking my arse and in no state to be seen.
Often, when I hit a wall, I accept that the wall is better than I am and I go elsewhere, but when there's something I like behind that wall, I just get angrily determined to try again - and this time to record it with video.
Further Fun Times
For some reason, at the second time of trying, I had a better time. You can see for yourself. How did I manage that? Where was I going wrong first time around? Was I just not thinking enough about what cards to play and when? Was I making rash decisions or ill-timed moves?
You could analyse it to your heart's content, but at the end of the day, I don't think I care about Card Fighters' Clash to want to know where I went wrong - I just want to see all the cards and play the game.
Final Word
But I don't want to play through the game itself. It's not like Pokémon. Pokémon is sign-posted, and while there are only five places to be in this game (I think), it seems like it'd be easier to get lost. You just sort of amble about town looking for players to compete against, and I suppose at some point one of them at each location gives you a coin and then you enter the tournament and win and go home and that's that.
Yeah, the plot sounds rubbish, the characters are literally meaningless... it's just a word to wrap around this concept of a card game, and it's not half bad.
I'm not as on top of the mechanisms as I need to be to get anywhere successfully, and I don't think I have the patience to micromanage a deck. Though come to think of it, that's exactly what I did in both Metal Gear Acid games, which are card games with Metal Gear plots attached to them.
We shouldn't compare the two - if anything, we should compare Card Fighters' Clash with the digital version of the Pokémon Trading Card Game, but I've not played it, so Metal Gear Acid it is - but it seems that if the game around the game is good, that's fine. Here, the game around the game is just a generic run around town chatting to people. It gets in the way of what I want to be doing, which is playing a card game with Street Fighter characters.
There are actually a few physical card games that meet that criteria. There's one on my shelf. Hell, there's even a fan project that brings Card Fighters' Clash to the table. Clearly, the game is fine, but the game around the game is my stumbling block this time out.
If you ever cross paths with this title, you should give it a go. It's nice when it goes well. The series even saw a release on the DS, but it sadly appears to have absolutely killed the franchise, so I probably won't recommend that - reading about it even puts me off playing it at all.
I'm not sure why it's on the 1001 list, but I'm glad that it was. I don't think I'd ever be aware of its existence if it wasn't.
Fun Facts
Naturally, the sound of a sequel with hundreds more cards from even more franchises sounds great, until you read that it was only released in Japan.
SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash, developed by SNK, first released in 1999.
Version played: SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash Capcom Version, Neo Geo Pocket Color, 1999, via emulation.
Version watched: SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash SNK Version, Neo Geo Pocket Color, 1999 (Saki Fatih)