When Capcom vs. SNK appeared last year, the novelty of pitting favorite characters from games like Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Darkstalkers (well, if your favorite character from that game was Morrigan, that is…) and Street Fighter was enough to make many gamers overlook the fact that the game itself was seriously flawed. It seems, however, that Capcom didn’t overlook this fact when planning the sequel, now in arcades and available for import on the Dreamcast. Almost all of the problems that plagued the first game have been fixed, and CvS2 goes far beyond its predecessor with new characters, play modes and techniques.

Sit back, get yourself a sandwich, and settle in; this is going to be a long review.

Many gamers were upset when they found that Capcom vs. SNK used only four buttons for attacks, similar to their other major 2D fighting franchise, Marvel vs. Capcom 2. It seemed as though they were attempting to strike a compromise between the traditional six-button layout from Capcom’s Street Fighter series and SNK’s four-button setup. In Capcom vs. SNK 2, Capcom has returned to their familiar six-button form, with three punches and three kicks for every character. This comes as welcome news for Street Fighter fans everywhere, and adds another layer of playability to the game.

Capcom has also beefed up the roster considerably this time. New to the Capcom side are Maki (from Final Fight 2), Eagle (from the original Street Fighter), Kyosuke (of Rival Schools fame), Yun (SFIII), and Rolento (SFA2). Over on the SNK side of things, you’ll find Haohmaru (Samurai Shodown), Hibiki (Last Blade 2), Rock Howard (Mark of the Wolf), Todo (Art of Fighting), and Chang (King of Fighters). Also, both Joe Higashi and Dan, from the barely worthwhile CvS Pro update that was recently released, make appearances here as well. Chun Li has received something of a graphical makeover for this game – Capcom decided to replace her SFA sprite from the first CvS with her SFIII: 3^rd Strike look. They also replaced several frames of animation, restoring Chun Li’s jumping animation from Street Fighter II and her fireball animation from Super SFII. Chun Li fans like myself will not be disappointed.

Because Capcom has decided to retire the ratio system used in the original game, they were faced with the daunting challenged of balancing all of the characters equally against one another. To accomplish this, they made a number of changes to the game. First, all of the characters inflict relatively equal damage on each other. Second, there are no longer normal and EX versions of certain characters. Finally, many of the previously ratio 1 characters have been beefed up considerably. Take Joe Higashi, for example. In CvS Pro, he had a few special attacks and only one super. Also, his specials came out very slowly. In CvS2, most of his moves have been sped up, he’s got a couple of additional special attacks and he has a full compliment of three supers. In CvS2, Joe is well-suited to take on just about any other character in the game.

Capcom vs. SNK featured the ability to choose between two different play styles, or grooves, one based on Capcom’s Street Fighter Alpha series, and one based on SNK’s Art of Fighting games. In CvS2, there are 6 grooves to choose from, 3 for each side. They are designated C, A, P, and S, N, K. Basically, rather than choosing a generic Capcom play style, you can now choose your favorite specific style - Street Fighter Alpha’s familiar A-ism, Alpha 3’s V-ism, or SFIII’s single super meter and parry system. On the SNK side, you can choose between King of Fighters, Art of Fighting and Samurai Shodown styles. This diversification of play styles makes CvS2 the deepest fighting game yet, and opens up entirely new fields of strategy. This addition alone guarantees that you’ll spend weeks trying to perfect the different grooves and choosing a favorite.

On the graphic end of things, Capcom has left most of the returning characters alone for the most part. There are some subtle animation additions, but on the whole, the returning characters from the original are mostly untouched. The brand new characters (i.e., fighters that Capcom had to draw from scratch rather than import from a different game) look great. Maki, Kyosuke, Eagle, Rock, Hibiki, Todo and Haohmaru all demonstrate the very pinnacle of Capcom’s 2D animation style. Of course, the one complaint that always manages to rear it’s head whenever a game contains characters from a variety of different games is present – older characters looks badly out of place compared to newer ones. Morrigan, for example, who last appeared in Vampire Savior, represents an out of date sprite when onscreen with the likes of just about any of the other characters in the game. I know that asking Capcom to redraw all of the older characters just so they "fit" graphically with the rest of the crew may be a bit much, but I still think that this is a valid complaint. On the other hand, the fact that Capcom can easily pull complete characters from a variety of other games means that there are well over 40 characters to choose from in this game.

CvS2 borrows a page from another of Capcom’s 2D fighters, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, when it comes to the backgrounds. Each background is comprised of both 2D and 3D elements, and they are, for the most part, gorgeous. The immediate standouts are a stage in which SUVs racing over sand dunes fly "into" the screen above the fighters during the match, and another stage in which a luxury cruiser steams through an iced-over lake and sends out a variety of colorful flags and provides an instant audience for your battle. Capcom also took a cue from its own Pocket Fighter, in that the stages are brimming with familiar characters from both Capcom and SNK games past and present.

The audio is well done this time, thankfully. This is always a touchy subject for me ever since Capcom decided to get experimental with the easy-listening jazz soundtrack of MvC2 and the hip-hop rap tracks on SFIII. Luckily, the tunes in CvS2 compliment the action for the most part, while still managing to range the gamut of genres from rock to pop. Voice work and the effects of attacks are uniformly well done.

Features include training mode, survival mode, and the fan-favorite color edit mode from the original game. This time around, you can even change the character’s names along with their color schemes, and save your own "custom character" to your VMU. Also, there’s a groove edit mode, which allows you to pick and choose between the 6 different super meters and all of the amenities like air blocks, parries, rolling, safe fall, dodge, etc. You’re given a limited number of points in this mode, and each selection you make costs a certain point amount, so you’re not able to go nuts and throw in all of the available techniques into a single groove, but you can do things like having P groove parries along with the A groove super meter and the S groove dodge move. You’re allowed to save up to two edited grooves to your VMU. Using the color edit mode and the groove edit, you can almost customize CvS2 into a completely different experience – I’m pretty sure that within a few weeks we’ll be seeing all manner of customized characters and grooves popping up on the net.

Capcom vs. SNK is perhaps the most ambitious 2D fighting game to date. Some might argue that MvC2, with its 56 characters, represents the greater achievement, but for me, CvS2 is the ultimate form of the game Capcom started a decade ago. CvS2 manages to retain the feel of Street Fighter 2, with its 6-button control layout and slightly slower game speed. There’s so much packed into this game, with so much strategy and different techniques to learn, that it’s pretty much guaranteed to be the tournament game of choice for the next few years. With a lot of luck, a company like Sammy or Agetec might pick this game up for a U.S. release. I wouldn’t get my hopes up, though, and since playing imports on Dreamcast is so easy, I’d highly recommend picking this one up A.S.A.P.