secret game club presents...
capcom vs snk 2: mark of the millenium 2001
[also released as カプコン バーサス エス・エヌ・ケイ 2 ミリオネア ファイティング]
words by lulu loveless
may 2025
Capcom Vs. SNK 2 is game about love. That might seem a little strange for game about competition and wooping your opponents ass, to have love as it’s main thesis, but I legitimately can’t think of any other word. Fighting games are inherently weird, they, more than any other genre are about pure competition, when you lose in a fighting game there’s no team members or level design or anything else to blame except your own skill, where loads of games are all about winning and playing god, where every death is just an obstacle to your state of winning, whereas, in fighting games, someone is always losing. This tends to inherently turn some people off, (I mean, it’s hard not to blame someone who might’ve spent their entire day doing shitty work only to lose and be told it’s their fault) as a result fighting games are in a constant struggle to keep the player having fun even when they are losing usually by way of trying to make the game more accessible. It's a genre you have to love a little for it to love you back, Capcom Vs. SNK 2 being no different.
When I talk about love here, it would be easy to talk about the games love for the titular game companies Capcom and SNK, and the fun it has with it’s presentation and references, but the truth is that the love runs beyond that of any franchise or company. Rather, CVS2 makes fighting feel like a warm hug from someone with six arms, you’re going to have to bear with me with that description as it’s really hard to find ways to describe what makes punching feel good. Yes, it’s a veritable playground of options that wants you to play around with every last character and option, but it also feels personal, uncompromising, like the people making this game weren’t making this game for everybody but for those who felt the same buzz in their heart they do where each K.O. it a handwritten love letter. It’s a game about fighting games, the genre of love.
our score:
