Gaming Companies – Looking Back: SNK
Every arcade in the 1990s had one: a cabinet with a little game-select screen, offering four or six games in one box. You fed it a coin, picked a fighter, and lost to someone’s older brother. That cabinet was a Neo Geo MVS, and the company behind it — SNK — spent the decade making some of the best 2D games ever drawn, on hardware almost nobody could afford to take home.
From Osaka to the Arcade
SNK began in Osaka as Shin Nihon Kikaku — roughly, “New Japan Project” — founded by Eikichi Kawasaki in 1973 and reorganised as a proper company in 1978. Kawasaki spotted how quickly the coin-op market was growing and moved the business into arcade games. By 1981 the name had been shortened to the initials, and SNK built its reputation through the 1980s with top-down action games like Ikari Warriors, along with well-received ports for the NES.
One Cabinet, Many Games
The big idea arrived in 1990. The Neo Geo MVS (Multi Video System) was an arcade board that took cartridges, and a single cabinet could hold several of them at once. For arcade operators it was a gift: instead of buying a whole new machine for every new game, you swapped a cartridge. It was cheap, compact, and everywhere. Around a million MVS units shipped worldwide.
The home version was the bolder bet. The Neo Geo AES used essentially the same hardware as the arcade board, which meant the games at home were the games in the arcade — not a cut-down port, the real thing. It launched in Japan as a rental-only machine, because SNK thought it was too expensive to sell. When it did go on sale in North America, it cost $649.99, with individual games often costing around $200. In an era of Mega Drives and SNES consoles, that put the AES somewhere between luxury item and fantasy. SNK’s cartridges boasted their size right on the boot screen — the famous “100 Mega Shock” — and for a while, nothing else came close. (If you’re tempted to own one now, our Neo Geo guide covers the practical side.)
The Fighting Game Years
A key figure in all of this was Takashi Nishiyama, who had directed the original Street Fighter at Capcom before moving to SNK. He was central to the MVS hardware, and he went on to direct Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters.
Once Street Fighter II had turned fighting games into the arcade’s main event, SNK went all in. Fatal Fury (1991) gave the world Terry Bogard. Art of Fighting followed, then Samurai Shodown (1993), which swapped fists for swords and treated every hit like it mattered. In 1994 The King of Fighters threw SNK’s casts together into three-person teams, and it became a near-annual event for years after. Capcom had the bigger name, but SNK had the volume, the swagger and a house art style that nobody mistook for anyone else’s.
Then, in 1996, a small studio of ex-Irem developers called Nazca delivered Metal Slug for the MVS — this month’s Looking Back game, and arguably the best-looking thing ever made for the platform. SNK was so impressed it bought the studio.
Running Out of Road
The late 1990s were harder. SNK stopped making home consoles by the end of 1997, although games for the original Neo Geo kept coming. Its 3D arcade board, the Hyper Neo Geo 64, never found its feet, and the Neo Geo Pocket Color — a lovely handheld with a clicky little joystick — ran straight into the Game Boy. At the turn of the millennium the company was sold to pachinko maker Aruze, which showed little interest in its games. Kawasaki and other executives walked out, and in October 2001 the original SNK went bankrupt.
It didn’t stay dead. Kawasaki had set up a new company, Playmore, which bought back SNK’s intellectual property. It became SNK Playmore in 2003 and dropped the “Playmore” in 2016. Since 2022, SNK has been majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s MiSK Foundation.
Why SNK Still Matters
The Neo Geo’s real legacy is a promise SNK kept before anyone else did: the arcade, exactly, at home. That idea is having a strange second life. SNK and Plaion’s NEOGEO AES+ — a new console built with custom chips rather than emulation, compatible with original cartridges — was meant to launch in November, but has been pushed back to 16 September 2027 because of component shortages. It will cost £179.99, which works out at a good deal less than the original once you account for inflation.
Metal Slug turned 30 this year, a collection of the series is on the way, and Fatal Fury’s wolves are still fighting. The selector screen is still lit.
Looking Back: Companies is a monthly series on the studios behind the games. Previous: Sega. This month’s game: Metal Slug (1996).
