At SNK's
GDC demo room, the Wii versions of
SNK Arcade Classics, King of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga, and
Samurai Shodown Anthology were
available for play, and I went through a few of the games on each set, looking for controls and features, and, of course, basic performance. All of the games seemed to be running in 480i even on HDTVs, and it unfortunately showed.
Bizarrely, it's entirely possible to play any of the games with the Wiimote. The Neo Geo controller has four buttons, and so does the Wiimote. This is not recommended! The
Neo Geo Stick 2 was nowhere to be found, or there would be a lot more exclamation points in this post.
The awesome news: SNK just went ahead and decided to throw
KOFs '94 and fan-favorite
'98 onto the collection, meaning that the set is now an almost-complete record of the 1990s'
KOF games.
Samurai Shodown does in fact include 1-6. The demos I had (mostly the
KOFs) had significant lag, but I'm willing to believe that this will be ironed out by release. It would
have to be.
The bad news, and the answer to pretty much everyone's question: SNK hasn't figured out whether this or the Virtual Console is The Way to go, meaning that they intend to give the VC games a chance to sell before releasing the collection. Because of this, the Wii version of
Arcade Classics is being held until Q4. All versions (PS2, PSP, Wii) of the other collections are also scheduled for Q4.