SNK vs Capcom: Card Fighters Clash on the Neo Geo Pocket Color is a game that got me through a tough break-up in my mid-twenties. After a spectacular failure in a long-term relationship where I got cheated on, I was in a bad place, and needed something that had absolutely nothing to do with anything that had happened. During those nights where I couldn't sleep, I found comfort in getting comfortable in bed, turning on my Futurama DVDs with the commentary track on, and playing this game, and it got me through to the otherside faster by getting me so into it that it became contagious, and just about all of my friends ended up buying NGPCs and Card Fighters Clash.
Card Fighters Clash takes the structure of a simple, addictive card game, in which the goal is to play characters in your three slots, defeat characters played in your opponent's three slots, and if you have charcters undefended, directly attack your opponent's HP. Deplete their HP first to win the game. It's simple and straight forward, and special abilities for characters and action cards provide the strategic nuances to take the game beyond simply trading punches into some semblance of strategic deck building. In many ways, it's like a simplified Yu Gi Oh, but starring all of your favorite SNK and Capcom characters.
The game world is structured like a light RPG, and you roam around picking card battles in order to win new cards, or occasionally find new ones by solving puzzles or buying them from a vending machine by turning in doubles. You can, of course, also trade and battle over link cable, and there are a handful of exclusive cards to each of the Capcom or SNK versions of the game. There are also tournaments, cameos from game designers, and loads of cool abilities to discover, making the single player experience a fan-service-filled romp that's legitimately enjoyable all the way through.
The graphics feature neat portraits of each character, and it's fun to see who will pop up next, be it a Red Arremer or Roddy from Top Hunter, favorites and obscure characters are great to come across. Games move quickly, and the music is pretty catchy. The only real negative I can put out there is that there's not much to do endgame, as you eventually become way too good for the computer, and there kind of is a best formula to build a deck, so everyone ends up playing similar cards once they figure it out for multiplayer. Still, collecting the cards is tons of fun, and it's a wothwhile play even just solo.
Played this one? Do your memories feature significantly less David X Cohen?