SNK HEROINES: TAG TEAM FRENZY

All tag, no drag

This crossover fighter where female SNK favourites have been kidnapped and forced to fight in a mysterious pocket dimension wearing compromising outfits1 shouldn’t work. But, like a burlesque show, there’s a huge amount of craft on offer here that results in a fighter that really has no right being as good as it is. 2

Casual is the name of the game. The joy of SNK Heroines lies in how far it leans into being a more approachable take on a fighter, all put together by the veteran hands at SNK. Your two fighting gals share a health bar, but have separate special bars. With r you have a weak attack you can combo easily, w is a stronger attack, e can be modified for a range of basic specials, and there’s a grab on q. o blocks, and moving during it results in your heroine pulling off a classic King Of Fighters-like evasion. There’s no crouch. Repeat: thereisnocrouch.

With everything pared down so much, competition revolves around simple exchanges, reducing human players down to trading off the fundamentals in a delightfully pure fashion. Adding interest are things like items that you can unleash with the right thumbstick. All matches must end with a Dream Finish, achieved by hitting u once your opponent’s life is in the red. The tension of pulling these off can lead to some great recreations of the sort of hype stakes the bigger fighters get at high-level play, but reachable by all players.

Content here, like the fighters’ costumes, is slight, and mechanically it only goes so deep. But that’s sort of the point, and it pulls off the look it’s going for very well indeed. Oscar Taylor-Kent

In a twist, some of the unlockable outfits are much less revealing than the defaults. The bizarre story is bare-bones, though it does justify the crazy outfits in a strange way.