But the overall effect is a huge leap over what was seen in Sengoku 2 and could have easily challenged its peers if it were transported back to the early 90s on looks alone.
On the other side of the coin, some parts of the game don’t look as great such as when the artists tried leveraging what look like digitized stock photos of certain things (like city skylines) in with the brightly colored sprites for the heroes, bad guys, and much of the scenery. Flesh melts from enemies revealing their skeletal bodies before reforming, a villain’s clothes ripple in wind that seems to follow only them, faces have expressions, the animation is fluid, and the fighting looks great as a result of this care. Noise Factory’s artists made this a great looking game with detailed heroes, villains, and even trash mobs. On the other hand, the visuals are amazing. That moped in the background can also be attacked and broken up, like many other props in other beat ’em ups, only it takes a ton of damage before flying apart. The sprite art in Sengoku 3 was really something to behold. It’s especially jarring when SNK introduced a bit of that in the first Sengoku and then ramped their efforts up with the sequel, only to see even less of a story with the third iteration. While some may not care about a story in a beat ’em up, efforts by both Konami and Capcom in the past have also proven just how effective it can be in small doses complimenting the action. Sengoku 3’s not much on story and compared to Sengoku 2’s talkative bosses and cut scenes, might as well have gone into the arcade without one though it does include text for a few of the characters such as the really big bosses. The teaser tells the story of a “Timeless Soul” that will come and of four heroic ninja destined to face it before all is lost. The “golden age” of beat ’em ups in the arcade was long over and it had been eight years since Sengoku 2, but that didn’t keep Noise Factory from trying to improve on the original formula, succeeding in some ways and falling short in others. It’s hard not to look at Sengoku 3 and feel that it came a bit late to the party. Also in 2001, a Japanese game company called Noise Factory came out with Sengoku 3. SNK fighting game in 2000 and its sequel in 2001. For example, Capcom came out with the hugely popular Capcom vs. In 20, SNK licensed out its IP to others to make games. SNK was essentially reborn as the company that it should have stayed. Brezzasoft, another company formed by ex-SNK employees, was also bought up by Playmore.
SENGOKU 2001 KURENAI SPRITE HOW TO
After SNK was placed into bankruptcy, Kawasaki bid for and was awarded SNK’s IP placing it back into the hands of those that knew how to use them. SNK’s founder, Eikichi Kawasaki, had left SNK after the acquisition (as well as accusing Aruze of under-funding SNK exacerbating its eventual collapse) to form Playmore in August, 2001. Because of that neglect, SNK’s fortunes fell even further until Aruze placed the company into bankruptcy.īut that wasn’t the end of SNK. The company, reeling from financial losses in the late 90s and having retreated from the North American market in 2000, was acquired by Aruze who didn’t much care for its games as it did in using their IP for pachinko slot machines which was its main business. As explosive as this flyer looks, the game falls pretty short. The US flyer (credit to the Arcade Flyer Archive) features some great art complimenting the fantastic pixels in the actual game.