Review – Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle (PC)
Over the past years, SNK has been digging into its legacy Neo Geo library, from collections of their ill-fated Pocket Color to bringing back franchises like Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, but in their recent bid they have decided to give giving select classic titles a cheeky re-release with gallery content and rollback netcode as improvements. The one
we are looking at today is Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle; while quite an obscure one, it also tells quite a tale!
we are looking at today is Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle; while quite an obscure one, it also tells quite a tale!
Time to pick a team and discover tag history.
Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle is the sequel to another little known Neo Geo fighter called Savage Reign – while that title aimed to emulate the success of weapon based combat from Samurai Shodown, this title was a standout in the genre being one of, if not the first tag fighter ever made, where you could switch out characters mid match. Originally released in 1996, it would precede titles such as Marvel vs. Capcom and SNK’s own King of Fighters, which wouldn’t add tag battle support until its 2003 iteration.
You have a roster of ten playable characters and two secret boss characters to pick from to make up your team of two and try to hold the crown title at the Battle of the Beast God tournament. The roster is quite a mix of your standard fighting game stereotypes, a few odd balls and two ninja clone characters with slightly different properties; not quite a world shattering roster of iconic characters, but there are enough there to find your favourite style and raise a smile or two at some of the more outlandish designs.
How Rude?!?!
Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle uses the traditional Neo Geo four button set up of A, B, C and D, the first three inputs being punch, kick and weapon attack, while D is your designated Tag button. Tagging works in a rather unique way compared to its peers, in that you can only tag your partner if you are in a so-called “Tag Zone”, giving in a layer of strategy and zoning as you are also tied to one knockdown. The aim of the game being isolate one character enough to KO them and win the match without them tagging out and trying to turn the tables.
Being that the game is quite an old title, fighters won’t be dealing with stuff like Super Meters and instead just relying on old-fashioned normal and special moves like fireballs, no desperation Super moves to eat away at health bars, giving the game a distinctively old-school feel about its match pacing.
Welcome To The Tag Zone.
Presentation it has that gorgeous 90s Neo Geo chunk to it, vibrant characters, gorgeous backgrounds and camera zoom depending on where the characters are; that is such a guilty pleasure of mine, it looks a little goofy by modern standards but those of you who appreciate the aesthetic of 90s Neo Geo and arcade cabinet culture will easily fall in love how it looks and the plethora of voice samples and quarter munching music this has to offer.
In terms of extras, Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle has your traditional gallery of artwork and design documents to flick through, options to tweak the visuals and game A.I to lower the intended arcade difficulty or raise it if you’re feeling especially masochistic. The developers have also included the 4-player multiplayer mode, meaning each player controls 1 character rather than the team of two.
Gritty streets meets a goofy cast.
The main reason for the re-release of this title, much like the previous offering of Fatal Fury Real Bout 2, is to give players the option of playing online against other players with the popular and quite rightly Rollback Netcode, which in my experience worked flawlessly both against a friend and against a random player, though I will say the player base is already quite low. It is a very niche title, after all.
What a man!
Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle is a fun though somewhat dated title that, above all else, serves more as a reminder or a history lesson regarding a small niche in the fighting game genre. It’s a fun title with decent quality of life enchancements, but when compared to its kin (be it more modern or from the same era), it feels more like a curiosity than your next fireball-throwing obsession.
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Graphics: 8.0 You’re going to either love or hate them, personally I love pixel art and NeoGeo managed to put out some of the most glorious chunky pixels around. |
Gameplay: 6.0 An interesting foot note in the world of Fighting Games but the lack of Super Moves and other little nuances much bigger titles were doing at the time puts this game into a dizzy state |
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Sound: 7.0 While not quite the heights of SNK’s sound team there are a few tracks here that absolutely hit the knockout blow, there are some dubious voice clips though |
Fun Factor: 7.0 It’s fun for a few matches but the small roster and dated mechanics age this game terribly, especially in the era of the tag fighter |
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Final Verdict: 7.0
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Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle is available now on PC via Steam .
Reviewed on Laptop running NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650.
A copy of Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle was provided by the publisher.