(Checks non-existent watch) Well, it’s about time someone else mentioned this ACA Samsho sale, LOL ;-p
This sale finally pushed me to pick up SS III (I mean, it costs $4 worth of quarters that I’ve basically paid for in continues already), which I don’t feel is as bad as people make it out to be. I mean there’s the ridiculous ‘Upper Grade’ mode, which I love, which keeps you at max rage all the time in exchange for losing the ability to block, and hitboxes feel a little wonky, but overall it was an important game that the rest of the (NEOGEO) installments would continue to build up and refine itself on. On the technical side of things, SNK nearly doubled the usual amount of shades per colors used on the backgrounds (compared the rest of the games following III), and an extra 1 or 2 shades on the characters, for some very smooth gradients. And on certain stages the mid-ground where the characters stand on scale a bit vertically whenever someone jumps which create a sense of depth. Nakoruru’s stage with the shallow water next to a rock wall and Haohmaru’s stage with the Sakura trees are exceptionally colorful.
I now have all the ACA NEOGEO SS’s except for V, which is the only redundant entry to the series (similar to Fatal Fury 2 in that sense). All that aside, I still plan on picking up the collection because of all the extra museum content Digital Eclipse will pack it with. I saw a preview of some of the original dev notes and sketches at MAGfest earlier this year and I was sold!
@cheesedude If anything, there’s always the old school method of training and that’s going through arcade mode. SNK’s AI isn’t a pushover. Heck, bump the difficulty up to 6 for even more fun (you can go higher, but the AI’s patterns and tendencies start to funnel you into an anti-AI pattern yourself, which is counter productive). If you have a 2nd controller, you can also have player 2 join in as a neutral dummy. It’s definitely not ideal, but at least it’s something.
https://www.sickgaming.net/blog/2019/12/...tch-eshop/