SNK

SNK Corporation
Type	Public
Founded	1978
Headquarters	Suita, Osaka, Japan
Key people	Eikichi Kawasaki
Industry	Video Games
Products	Video game hardware and software
Website	SNK Corporation
Article on Wikipedia	SNK

SNK (Shin Nihon Kikaku, lit. "New Japan Project") is a Japanese video game hardware and software company. Founded in 1973 by Eikichi Kawasaki as Shin Nihon Kikaku Corporation in the computer electronics industry, shifting fully into coin-op video games in the late 1970's. The company was nicknamed "Shin Nihon Kikaku" in katakana at first, but since 1981 it has been changed to "SNK" by taking the initials from the Roman alphabet (Shin Nihon Kikaku). The English copyright notation was also "SNK CORPORATION". It established itself in Sunnyvale, California, to deliver its own brand of coin-operated games to arcades in North America. SNK chose John Rowe to head its American operation. In April 1986, the company name was changed to the nickname "SNK", but the registered trade name had to be SNK Corporation. This is because the Ministry of Justice at that time did not approve the registration of a trade name using the alphabet, as for ADK, NMK, TDK and RKB Mainichi Broadcasting. In November 1986, the American subsidiary SNK Corporation of America was born in Sunnyvale, California, and released a string of successful arcade games such as Alpha Mission, Ikari Warriors, Athena and Psycho Soldier, with all having successful home console ports. In March 1988, SNK staff moved to a building in Suita, Osaka, Japan. This inspired SNK to start the Neo-Geo family of arcade and console hardware in 1990. The hardware would be the home of many classic franchises, like Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, The King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown and Metal Slug. However, revenue would slowly dry up throughout the 1990's and SNK would fall onto hard times, with multiple key staff members, including Kawasaki, departing to start their own companies. SNK closed all American, Canadian and European operations, on June 13, 2000. The company sold rights to distribution in North America for MVS arcade systems and Neo Print photo systems. It licensed North American localizations of some console releases to outside companies. With a total debt of about 38 billion yen, SNK gave up on voluntary reconstruction, and on April 2nd, 2001, SNK applied for the application of the Civil Rehabilitation Law to the Osaka District Court, effectively going bankrupt. The application was accepted, and the revitalization procedures were once proceeded, and the head office returned to Suita City, Osaka Prefecture. The district court decided to abolish the civil rehabilitation proceedings on October 1st, 2001. On October 30th, 2001, the Osaka District Court declared to SNK bankruptcy and went bankrupt, SNK filed for bankruptcy and placed the intellectual property rights for its franchises up for auction. Properties were auctioned off and floated between developers until Kawasaki's new company, Playmore Corporation would buy all up all SNK properties in 2003 to form SNK Playmore. The company would once again achieve modest success through the 2000's and into the 2010's, but nowhere near their peak. In 2016, Hong Kong based investment firm Leyou Technologies Holdings acquired a majority stake. SNK also dropped the Playmore brand at this time. Under this new ownership, there has been a push to restore the brand name by releasing more games and making established franchises known to a new generation. In November, 2020, the Mohammed Bin Salman Foundation (MiSK) acquired a 33.3% stake in the company, which was upgraded to a 96.18% stake on April 7, 2022. Alongside producing the Neo-Geo line of arcade systems and consoles, as well as several franchises, SNK has collaborated with multiple companies on various projects, such as antagonist Geese Howard in Bandai Namco's Tekken 7 and their dedicated crossover series with Capcom, Capcom vs. SNK.

In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Terry Bogard, the main protagonist of Fatal Fury and regular combatant in The King of Fighters, was confirmed on September 4, 2019 to be the fourth DLC character in the Fighters Pass Vol. 1 for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. He was released on November 6, 2019, along with his stage King of Fighters Stadium and 50 music tracks not just from Fatal Fury, but also from the The King of Fighters, Alpha Mission, Ikari Warriors, Athena, Psycho Soldier, Art of Fighting, Samurai Shodown, and Metal Slug series. Alongside spirits from Fatal Fury, spirits from Art of Fighting, The King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, Psycho Solider, and Ikari Warriors also appear. Finally, Mii Costumes of SNK characters show up as DLC, with Ryo Sakazaki from Art of Fighting and Iori Yagami from The King of Fighters as costumes for the Mii Brawler, and Nakoruru from Samurai Shodown as an outfit for the Mii Swordfighter.

Trivia

• SNK is the third company represented in the Smash Bros. series to have competed against Nintendo in the console market, after Sega and Microsoft. As with the former, however, it stopped producing its own consoles before providing content for Smash Bros.
  • Unlike the former two, one of their consoles is mentioned in-game, as the NEO GEO logo appears on one of Terry's hats.
• SNK is the third third-party company to be introduced to the Super Smash Bros. series as DLC, the first two being Square Enix and Microsoft.
• SNK's The King of Fighters series actually played a part in the creation of the Super Smash Bros. series, as Masahiro Sakurai got the idea to create a newcomer-friendly fighting game after effortlessly winning against a young couple in The King of Fighters '95.
  • Fittingly, the King of Fighters series was the first to introduce a short-hopping mechanic to a traditional fighting game, and may have inspired the use of short hops with aerial attacks in the Super Smash Bros. series, along with other mechanics like the run (likewise borrowed from SNK's Samurai Shodown), spot dodge, and roll.
  • Additionally, the concept of characters from multiple SNK games colliding in The King of Fighters also directly inspired Masahiro Sakurai for the premise of Super Smash Bros.
• SNK is currently tied with Disney for the least amount of playable characters in Smash out of all third-party companies with a playable character, with only one: Square Enix, Sega, Konami, and Capcom have three each while Bandai Namco and Microsoft have two each.

References

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at SNK. The list of authors can be seen in their page's history. As with SmashWiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.