I'm a bit surprised this topic was never made.
http://www.mmcafe.com/cgi-bin/forums/bbs/messages/13326.shtml#60491
Inspired by the recent SF2 "uncensored" thread, SNK during the Neo-Geo era (coming from someone who's supposedly a former employee, so believe what you will).
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- With AOF1, they were originally thinking of running a campaign where players can write down all the special command moves, send it to SNK and win a prize from lottery. But one of the developers came up with the proposal of adding in a really flashy move that's completely hidden, and that's how the Ryuko Ranbu move came about. There was a lot of dispute, one of the reasons being the debug deadline, but looking back, it was a good turning point.
- Fatal Fury 1's aerial special bug was left in there because SNK's president thought it felt like Dragon Ball.
- King of Monsters was actually an idea that was brought in by a manga artist.
- The Quiz games on the Neogeo, as well as other misc genres like Mahjong, were focused towards the adult consumers since a lot of them were moving into the fighing games. The quiz games are hard because they've been tuned to bring in fast income.
- Back in those days, the company was like they hit a gold mine. They were having parties in hotels together with their affiliates. They were giving out stuff like cars for their bingo prizes. On the other hand, the workplace was hell. The designers and pixel artists probably hated it.
- On the other hand, a lot of the people also thought that it was 'just a gold mine', and they knew there'd soon come a time when they came to a split road where they can become big like a Nintendo, or couldn't. They had to keep releasing games quickly with good quality, but everyone also knew that their company didn't have the stamina. So while everyone was having a good time, they were also sort of planning out their future.
- The character design concepts from back in those days were "they look like they could exist in real life, but they might not, but they actually might! that's the kind of hero that everyone loves!".
- Terry's outfit is based on a costume worn during a live concert by Skid Row.
- There were talks with Converse about a collaboration since Terry wears them, but it didn't become a reality due to issues with their anime sponsor.
- There were no debates about cloth ripping because, after all, they're in the arcade business. (note: Remember that those were the good ol' days when strip mahjong were in all the arcades)
- Fatal Fury 2 was when SNK implemented canceling. It was a rippoff of SF2, but they didn't have the knowledge of balancing out the game, so they gave up and made the hitback motions invincible so that they won't combo.
- He doesn't remember why they started to take out bonus stages, but there was an atmosphere like 'it's not needed', somewhere after Capcom released Super Turbo.
- If he remembers correctly, the vast system change from KOF95 > 96 was so people won't get bored. Back then, they were like that. But that's also why things started to slowly go into weird directions.
- By the time a game was developed to the point where they were doing balancing, their minds were already filled with the next game project.
- The Neogeo pocket didn't sell, but it didn't contribute to the company's downfall as often said.
- He wasn't involved in Last Blade but remembers it to be a project that was really worked on. He remembers the developers throwing kind words at each other, disputing whether they should throw in ambient sound effects for the BGM.
- One of the mistakes back then was the castings for a certain summer anime. They were put into a pressured situation where they couldn't say no.
- Samurai Shodown RPG was actually a facelift of a defunct project that they bought off from elsewhere.
-Jeff Bogard was a candidate as the guest character for Fatal Fury Special. Others included Ryo, Hanzo, Fuma. (note: and as we all know Ryo ended up in the game)
- He doesn't know much about the plans the teams had for storylines after MOTW, but they were running out of ideas.
- Their president was the kind of guy who was constantly thinking what the value of a 100 yen means to a kid. (note 100yen = the price of 1 credit). He was also the kind of guy who thought that 'thinking of a red painted banana as an apple is more fun than the real thing'.
- Art of Fighting was supposed to end at 2. Gaiden/3 was an extention like how Dragonball was extended to the Z' series.
