This morning, SNK and NIS America announced SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, a new crossover fighting game starring the glorious women of SNK’s numerous games. It’s coming to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, and it looks fantastic.
SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy brings together women from a wide variety of SNK games for two-on-two battles. It’s basically a successor to SNK Gals’ Fighters, a little-known fighting game released for NeoGeo Pocket Color in 2000 (and another game that could do with a port to modern consoles!). Like Gals’ Fighters, SNK Heroines includes items for use in battle, and various accessories and whatnot with which to adorn your fighters.
At the same time, the game looks to change up the fighting game formula somewhat. Just emptying the opponent’s health bar isn’t enough to win; you also have to land a “Dream Finish” move to win the match. SNK Heroines will also feature one-button special moves, though it isn’t clear of there’ll be an option for more traditional inputs.
Five characters are confirmed for the game so far: Mai Shiranui, Leona Heidern, Athena Asamiya, Kula Diamond, and Yuri Sakazaki. They’re all wearing different outfits to their standard designs—Kula, for example, wears an outfit inspired by The King of Fighters’ Angel. Kukri, one of the new characters introduced in King of Fighters XIV, also features on the cover art, though it’s unclear what role he’ll play in the game itself.
Here’s hoping that we’ll see more characters from a wide cross section of SNK games, rather than just The King of Fighters and the games that preceded it. I’d love to see Charlotte (Samurai Shodown), Hibiki (The Last Blade), Rosa (Kizuna Encounter), and Bonne Jenet and Hotaru from Garou: Mark of the Wolves.
With NIS America publishing the game, we can also look forward a very nice collector’s edition. The SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy Diamond Dream Edition, as it’s called, includes the usual artbook and soundtrack, as well as a set of lapel pins, a workout towel, a wrist sweatband, and SNK tank top, and Terry Bogard’s famous Fatal Fury cap—only now it says “Fatal Cutie”. That hat alone is enough to make this the first collector’s edition I’m buying in years.
SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy is due for release later this year on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.