Kizuna Encounter

Kizuna Encounter is a unique game with a fascinating history in the Neo-Geo collecting community. First, let's dive into some history then we'll move onto the review.

Kizuna Encounter is the sequel to SNK's 1995 weapons-based fighter Savage Reign. Itself more of an experimental title, Savage Reign basically plays like a futuristic Fatal Fury Special mixed with elements from Art of Fighting. In fact, it takes place in South Town's far future with ties back to the gameplay of Fatal Fury in its two-plane design and other clever nods. Unfortunately, while Savage Reign has some good ideas, its execution of those ideas leaves a lot to be desired. 

Always the innovator, SNK retooled the Savage Reign concept completely for the 1996 sequel. Kizuna Encounter is such a radically different game that one can only assume that SNK thought the base designs and premise of Savage Reign were just strong enough to revisit and retool despite lackluster sales in the arcade. Sadly, there are no developer interviews or details available in the modern era on what led to Kizuna Encounter's eventual development, so this is my own conjecture as an enthusiast. There may be details left to be found out about this game in classic Japanese game publications like Neo-Geo Freak, so the eventual discovery of additional information on Kizuna may not be entirely off the table. 

Coming out in the early fall of 1996, one could mistake Kizuna Encounter to be a "me too" game after the massive critical success of Capcom's first crossover, tag-team title X-Men Vs. Street Fighter. Capcom's game came out in the arcade two weeks prior to Kizuna, so just like Fatal Fury and Street Fighter 2 in 1991, both games were in development at the same time. Arcade sales data for Kizuna Encounter is non-existent as of the time of this writing. But since MVS cartridges for the game are still lower than $400 in 2023, one can assume it had decent circulation but certainly not the wide-spread success of other SNK fighters in 1996.

Kizuna Encounter stands as one of the more uncommon Japanese AES releases in today's market, commanding prices upward of $4000 for a complete copy in good condition. It is said that there were about 5-10 official Western cartridges created for the US/Euro market, but that the production was axed quickly after it began with no hard facts available as to why SNK decided to pull the plug. Rumors have been swirling around the internet for the last couple decades of the extremely limited Western release selling to high-ball collectors for as much as $50,000. Although, given the recent astronomical spike in prices in Western branded AES games, you could assume that a game of this rarity in 2023 would be worth well over $100,000 at this point given that Western copies of Metal Slug - a rare but not quite this rare of a game - exceed that mark already. 

Shawn McCleskey of Neo-Geo.com and the Neo Store apparently has one of the five purported Western (specifically European) copies of the game. Given that high-dollar game sales like this are kept exceedingly private, it's impossible to know for sure who else owns these highly sought after collectors items. The only "official" piece of the Western version currently available on an open market is the purported English manual for the game being sold by the long time, infamous Neo-Geo community member Neotropolis (aka KennyBoy) for an absurd $50,000 (it's been sitting on eBay for over two years). 

Our story picks up one year after the events of Savage Reign with Hayate landing King Leo a humiliating defeat. Not one to take failure lightly, King Leo and his minion King Lion set up a second Battle of the Beast Gods tournament with one key rule change: tag-team battles. All characters minus Carol and Nicola return to enact revenge against the Lion Kings, and are joined by newcomers Rosa (leader of an anti-King Leo militia group) and Kim Su-il (Korean decedent of Kim Kaphawan from Fatal Fury and private detective). Players who make it past King Leo in the final match of the tournament will face a new final boss, Jyazu - leader of some terrorist organization with a shady past. 

Like Savage Reign before it, Kizuna Encounter is more of a test-bed of ideas built on the combination of other games' mechanics - namely Real Bout Fatal Fury and Samurai Shodown 3. Unlike Savage Reign, though, the mismatch of ideas from these two games work in Kizuna's favor and presents a cohesive, polished experience that is a blast to play.

Kizuna's button set up is odd, but works well. A, B, and C are your punch, kick, and weapon strikes while the D button acts as your tag trigger. Rather than rely on pressure sensitive access to your heavy normal attacks, you now must press forward + an action button to perform the heavy version of the move. While this set up sounds less than intuitive, you quickly come around to it and it allows for some excellent variations in the flexible combo system.

The combo system can best be compared to Real Bout as the game is based around chain combos that flow easily from button to button. Using a mix of light normals, chaining into heavy normals, and ending with a special move will be your most basic combo flow. You can also perform short combos mid-air much like Capcom's Vs. series. Unlike the Vs. series, though, Kizuna is a more grounded affair mostly due to the huge character sprites taking up much more screen real-estate than Capcom's games with similar functions. 

Rather than take the "tag anywhere" approach of Capcom's Vs. series, Kizuna will only allow you to tag in your partner when they enter the player specific tag zone on either side of the arena. Also unlike Capcom's Vs. games, once one of your characters are KO'ed it's game over, much like Tekken Tag Tournament (which released years later). While it would have been nice to be able to continue the fight until all characters are KO'ed, it does keep the tension up by adding more layers of strategy to your battles because of all the tag restrictions. To make up for the one character KO mechanic, all combatants have two life-bars (again, like Real Bout) so bouts won't be over as quickly as you'd expect. 

Tied to the tag mechanic are the two universal desperation moves. You can perform a dashing Suprise Attack by doing a quarter circle down (back, down-back, down) and punch when in the tag-zone and on your second life bar. The dash must connect with the opponent in order for the full expression of the move to come out. Similarly, you can also input a half-circle back then press forward + punch to perform the Desperation Attack which is the main come-back mechanic that does a ridiculous amount of damage. Either option you take leaves you wide open to a counter if blocked, so either move should only be used when you know you have an opening.  

Kizuna also includes a bevy of defensive mechanics, with many of them coming straight from Samurai Shodown 3. 

• A+B will dodge an attack.

• Forward + A & B will make your character hop to the other side of the opponent (handy for corner traps). 

• B+C will perform a universal overhead attack - great for meaty okizemi (on the ground) options.

• Down-forward + punch is a universal low attack that *must* be blocked low and can be chained out of.

• Quarter-circle forward + punch immediately after block will perform a guard cancel that will leave you at an advantage.

• Press forward or back upon being knocked down to roll in either direction upon get up. 

• Air-Blocks can now be performed, and you can counter moves blocked in the air with damaging combo attacks. 

In addition to the generous defensive options, all characters have access to forward and backward dashes that travel a good distance across the screen. Kind of like in Sunsoft's Galaxy Fight, you can cancel out of your dash by pressing Back on the control stick when in mid-dash. Overall, the general flow of a bout is much faster than most other SNK games of the time, and moves at a speed about as fast as Capcom's Darkstalkers series...only with character sprites double the size. 

While not the most handsome game from SNK in 1996 - a year that saw the release of the stunning Samurai Shodown 4 and Art of Fighting 3 - it is still a rather handsome game. As mentioned previously, the character sprites are huge and extremely detailed. Unfortunately, the returning characters from Savage Reign didn't see many upgrades to their general animation sets so they look a little janky next to the two new characters Kim Su-Il and Rosa. Their animation sets are noticeably a step above the rest of the cast. At only 10 selectable characters, there isn't a lot of choice here making the lack of smooth animation on some of the fighters truly baffling for such a small cast and big memory footprint. Thankfully, the entirety of the cast is a blast to play with and all characters were reworked from the ground up for this game including multiple new special moves and controller inputs that actually make sense. 

The overall presentation in Kizuna Encounter isn't the strongest, and the game looks admittedly a little rushed out of the gate. With only a few backgrounds on rotation, they do get stale quickly. That said, they are generally well designed but not the strongest in SNK's stable of games. Each stage gets a little intro sequence, though, which is a nice touch. Like Art of Fighting and Samurai Shodown, the camera pans and scales depending on how close the characters are to each other leading to a more dramatic approach to tag-team style play than Capcom's take on the sub-genre. 

Like the presentation, the music is serviceable but it's nothing that will get stuck in your head. Hayate's theme from Savage Reign is carried over as the main theme, so there are some reprises from that game sprinkled throughout with more instrumentation and better quality samples than what came before. Some of the new music is reminiscent of King of Fighters using many of the same instrument samples you'll find in that series. Sound effects and voice overs are excellent overall - which is not surprising coming from SNK at the height of their popularity.

Kizuna Encounter is a fast, frantic, and sometimes beautiful game that is only marred by some presentation woes and uneven animation. Despite that, though, there's an excellent fighting game under the hood and is a welcome change of pace to the very samey feel that Capcom's Vs. games carry across that series. There really is nothing like Kizuna Encounter on the Neo-Geo, and even in our modern world of 2023 there is no parallel. Kizuna stands on its own as one of SNK's most unique and innovative fighting games that never got its time in the sun. 

Is it worth a play? It sure is! I've had a lot of fun with this game, and after a while the weirdness kind of grows on you and you begin to wish that modern developers would take more risks like classic SNK. Thankfully, unlike the 1990's there are multiple ways to play this game in the modern area so you aren't stuck taking out a second mortgage on your home to afford a physical copy of the game. 

You may be thinking, "This game is from 1996, so surely I can pick the game up on Neo CD!?" While you aren't wrong to assume that, Kizuna was never even a glimmer in the Neo CD's eye - and we're probably better off for it. Despite the lower amount of animation compared to other games with similar memory sizes in the arcade, the Neo CD would have had to load four characters worth of data at once which would be a tall order with the level of the detail on display and sheer size of the sprites. 

Probably due to a combination of low arcade and AES sales, and the significantly lower amount of RAM in the 32-bit home consoles of the day compared to the Neo CD, Kizuna was unfortunately left in the dark. This is a shame, really, as it would probably be better remembered today if it had a wider release. Whle it's seen some resurgence in the modern fighting game community, Kizuna Encounter is the very definition of a "hidden gem" on the hardware. 

Thankfully for modern-day retro enthusiasts that MUST have a physical copy, SNKP (SNK Playmore) released a Fuun-Super Combo Pack for Playstation 2. You can snag an import copy pretty cheap these days, or even download it in any territory on PS4/5! This combo pack includes both Savage Reign and Kizuna Encounter. What's more is that this is the first instance of an arranged soundtrack for Kizuna and it's quite good all things considered. Since the back-end code is not based on emulation, these are true ports and are relatively arcade perfect. 

Emulation is also an option if you don't mind a digital version. If you want the strictly legal route, you can grab the game on most modern digital storefronts in Hamster's Arcade Archives series - which is both good and bad considering there is no online play. If you want some competition, though, you'll want to download the Fightcade 2 arcade game client on PCs. Running on modern Rollback netcode, you can play this excellent game against the handful of folks from around the world that have taken the time to learn how to play the game effectively. This avenue gets my hearty recommendation if you don't pick up the PS2 combo pack. 

If you want a copy of Kizuna for your Neo-Geo collection, be ready to pony up. It is a super fun game that didn't get the praise it deserved in the 90's and is still more obscure today in the fighting game community. Like I said at the start of this review, even the MVS version will run you at least $400 in 2023, which is more than most people can afford on a single video game. There's a lot to be said for owning a copy of this game on AES or MVS, but is it worth $4000? That will have to be something you decide - I mean, you could also use that money as a down payment on a nice new car...