SNK 40th Anniversary Collection Will Include Entire Ikari Warriors Trilogy

God, I have memories of me and my best friend in front of my CPC 464 playing Ikari Warriors...

Good memories.

HUGE, HUGE, Ikari Warriors fan, so this is super-great news. Part 2 on NES was the one I played to death and can't wait to play it again. This series contains some of the oldest backlogged games in my gamer history as I never got to play part 1 and 3, but always wanted to. And now I get to experience the arcade games too?? I was on the fence for this collection, but I may just have to fall over to the "yes" side now. It's a powerful collection that's hard to pass up, and many of these I never even had an inkling to play.

I'm most happy about them being twin stick shooters to mimic the original joysticks of the coin-op.

As a side note...how can anyone be worried about ROM closures when we are getting some amazing retro remakes and bundles.

Pre-ordered the deluxe edition. Lovely stuff.

This has been known for months. I wish they would talk about the supposed "more" games they haven't revealed yet.

@Cobalt
I think my family got a copy in Amstrad Action back in the day. It was a fantastic machine.

Cool. Now it should be nice of them to reveal the full list of games, hopefully 40.

@GrailUK because their are 100s of niche titles that are excellent and will never see light of day again if they go.

We shouldn’t burn all other books coz we have a batch of good books.

Games need preserving.

Programmers and those in the industry agree.

I can not wait for this collection! Ikari Warriors is my all time favorite arcade game.

@Stocksy They don't need to be freely available to download though if the owners don't want it lol. Anyhoo, this SNK 40th is amazing. I wonder how many sales they lose because some folk have downloaded them.

We already knew this, Nintendo Life.

Come back when we hear about the unannounced titles. Hoping for some more golden age arcade releases to go along with Vanguard.

I thought that was a given.

@GrailUK the thing is at least 50% the publishers are long since gone. The rights have lapsed or its impossible for anyone to ever release them.

“Owners” aren’t fighting for this.

There is more to this than simple SNES ROMs and most are roms that aren’t ones people are trying to
Protect.

These would lost forever. Especially as hardware starts to fail.

Arcade machine roms are even more important.

I am a close friend of someone that manged to preserve an ultra rare arcade Rom fairly recently that was massive news at the time. He found the machine abandoned in an old arcade store that had been closed for years.

The game was rubbish (which is why barely any were made) but literally no one had a working version of that game.

This is the history of the industry and so many people try to simplify it to theft or like stealing a movie coz it’s not on TV. Its nothing like that....

@Stocksy but for many it is theft mate. Listen to some Youtubers arguing for why it should be legal. Their argument is literally 'woohoo free games!'. I agree there are sensible applications for ROM sites, but I do fear it's the case that the majority are just in it for the beer and skittles.

This sounds nice for Switch owners. However I am deeply concerned that ROM sites that are offering those games out of the kindness of their hearts for free download will be forced to pull the games in fear of being shut down. Worthy newspiece, so such sites get a voice?

It is very selfish that companies like SNK are trying to profit from their IPs.

Sweet, the arcade edition of the original sells this for me. I’ve been wanting to play this again since my buddies and I used to blow quarters on the machine back in the 80s.

@Atariboy Maybe we get Dexterity on Gameboy (although Filip Wars seems to borrow a lot from that game so maybe not.)

*Erm...Omg, I meant Flip Wars.

@shaneoh

The CPC was absolutely fantastic during the 80's.
I did my first graphic designs with that machine. The CPC has a special place inside of my heart.
I love the Amiga 500 and the Atari ST but the CPC with its lower specs stays my favorite because I have really special memories with it.

Still waiting on baseball stars nes version to be confirmed.....then I will order

@Cobalt
I started using it from about 1990 when I was only a couple of years old, it was all we had to play games on until about 5 or 6 years later when there were a few gameboys introduced into the household. I regret that my father gave it away, I would love to own one again. Minder (based on the UK TV show) was probably one of the first games I remember playing. I learned a bit of spelling and the concept of buy low sell high to make money from that game.

A B B A

Maybe when this has been out for quite a while and gets a drop to like 20 bucks, but at 40 or 60 i don't know if there is enough SNK titles I liked to want it.

Seeing that video reminds me of why I used to want the arcade version of everything so much in the '80s - better graphics, better sound and faster gameplay. Ikari III looks better than I expected too (I didn't know about it beforehand).

@MetalKingShield I can remember as a kid thinking home computers would never over take arcade machines. Nowadays, you get people thinking mobile technology will never over take home technology.

See this is why I love the SNK collection more than most of the Capcom ones. Capcom only give us arcade Street Fighter no console specific version like Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold and Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max which are many times better than their arcade original, games like Street Fighter the Movie the Game are different from their arcade counterpart and games like Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers console versions had exclusive Turbo features and modes not seen in the arcade. There's also the fact that in most home version like Alpha 3 Max you got exclusive characters like Fei-Long, Guile, and Eagle which were never in the arcade original, characters we would love to play again. With SNK you got to play both and experience both complete with their original exclusivity intact, with Capcom collection it doesn't seem that way.

This is huge... I remember playing these in the arcade and my local 7-11 in the 80s. I remember beating Victory Road very well at that 7-11 after maybe 2-3 stops over a summer period. I also own the original first print edition of Ikari Warriors on the N-E-S, and not the Ness! 😂

So I am stoked! This is rad!!!

@GrailUK There are a number of reasons to still worry about ROM site issues. But to keep it tied to your comment, I have found through experience not to get excited about these retro game collections, even though I love the concept and have several on past systems(partly to show support). To get to the point, there's a long history of retro compilations being substandard, from lack of useful customization, to emulation issues and glitches. Capcom thought it was acceptable to release mobile versions of Mega Man that were quite choppy for no good reason. Sega had some issues with their mobile stuff too. Console compilations have had their problems too. Metal Slug Anthology on Wii had forced motion control, for an arcade run-and-gun game. As for me, what convinced me was getting a bunch of Sega games on PC that had broken input mapping. I understand the issues of legality and piracy, as well as keeping great, usually-licensed games available. I also understand your sentiment. But I wouldn't celebrate any retro bundle until it has been released and examined. The publishers need to do far better.

@sdelfin Well, I agree publishers can do more. But, I love the effort Dotemu put into their Wonderboy game. The service M2 do by retaining an originals spirit but add features to it. Wild Arms Reloaded adding extra characters. Some folk are going above and beyond. But again (and I am not aiming this at you) there are just far too many folk that still think these games should be free (or cheap) based on the factor of age as opposed to the amount of entertainment they can provide lol. I find it weird.

Day 1 purchase!!!!

@GrailUK thanks for replying. Those are good examples and I agree. M2 may be the gold standard. Hamster sounds excellent too. And the remakes you mentioned are also good examples of things getting better. I hope things continue in that direction.

@sdelfin Toki is another one on the horizon! The new artwork looks amazing.

Can’t wait

Will pick this up day one.

@electrolite77

Yep !
I add to your list :

Rainbow Islands
Dragon Ninja
Sly Spy Secret Agent
The New Zealand Story
Shadow Dancer
etc...etc...

Awww, great memories...

This information is not new - they were announced as well months ago. But for whatever reason SNK decided to release this trailer as a catch? We may be getting separate trailers for games included, it seems. I hate that their names were changed from "Paul" and "Vince". 🙄

Still ordered the limited collector's edition months ago, so excited!

@electrolite77

Pang is awesome, I played it on the GX4000.

I still play Pang sometimes but the original one (arcade) and I still have my PCengine CDRom2 version which is a great version too !

@GrailUK I see what you did there 😉

@Neofan99 At least someone noticed my genius lol!

@electrolite77

Do not search for PANG but POMPING WORLD if you wanna try the PCEngine version.

Pang is not the original title, I mean in Japan...

Will they substitute the twisty joystick with twin stick controls?
Ikari Warriors was the first N-E-S cart i picked up alongside the Control Deck. Man, what a disappointment it was compared to the arcade version, but still sunk hours into it. ABBA'ed all the way to the end, hoping your hours-long playing session didn't end because you got stuck behind a rock or pipe after continuing!
SNK redeemed themselves on the home front with Guerillla War, and I'm stoked that's coming as well!