Capcom Vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 (Arcade, 2000)

 

The turn of the century was a pinnacle time for fighting games, at least from Capcom and SNK. You had Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Marvel Vs Capcom 2, and this game right here, for starters.

Best of all, it's available on the Switch now via Capcom Fighting Collection 2, so you can play it on the go when your wife's boyfriend wants the TV, or when they kick you out of the house.

This game introduces grooves. This is way above my pay grade. Basically there's the Capcom style and the SNK style, and you can go with either. SNK style (a focus on dishing out big special moves) is probably more my way of doing things. It definitely has better character artwork.

Since this is above my scope, here's the rundown:

Capcom Groove has the more animation-like Street Fighter II art-style, while SNK Groove...

...has a more realistic King of Fighters series visual style. Everyone looks a little bit more real, with Ryu giving the player bedroom eyes.

This is a very strange, but interesting, character select. Each character falls into one of four categories: Rank 1 to 4. Rank determines character power level and how much space the character takes up on the team out of the four available spaces.

For example, a single Rank 4 character will fill up the entire team roster by themselves, but you might not need anyone else. Only three characters even fall into this category: Akuma, Evil Ryu, and Iori...whoever that is. Somebody from the KOF series.

Rank 3 contains the bigger bosses, like Geese Howard, M. Bison, Sagat, and Rugal. I believe that last guy is a big deal in KOF as well.

A little surprised Bison isn't Rank 4. Then again, Akuma being a league above him makes sense. So we have some interesting choices here. Do you go with four Rank 1 characters and use a diverse moveset, while each character gets thrashed one by one? Or one sturdy Rank 4 character and put everything you have into that one character? Or have two Rank 2 characters splitting the difference? Or perhaps one Rank 3 and one Rank 1 character? That last one seems like the most pointless one but yeah. Rank 1 characters are waaaay weaker than Rank 4 and there's a noticeable gap between each rank.

I go with a pair of Rank 2s for this, Morrigan and Guile. Though Morrigan also rocks a pair of Rank 5's if we're being honest.

Here's Guile, who I haven't spent enough time with in this series. He looks SO MUCH like Cody Rhodes in this game. That is a digitized Cody right there, 20 years before his time. Wild.

Either that or it's 50's movie sensation Yul Brynner.

-High-pitched shrieking is heard as I switch over to see how these characters look on Capcom Groove-

-high-pitched shrieking continues-

Oh yeah, there's this announcer guy yapping over the character select for an extended amount of time, giving the same speech every time you're there, just like in one of the MVCs. So tired of all the noise pollution in games; that one thing is driving me away from them like nothing else.

(for the 12th time in a row) "A tournament of the greatest fighters from all around the-"

Well Morrigan, we meet again. This Benimaru guy seems important to the KOF series. Maybe I should have played through more of that series before I did these crossovers. I figured it would be good to do them first to ease into SNK with Capcom's endorsement.

When Morrigan wins fights, she often turns into a human outfit version of herself to pose. Probably my favorite outfit is this Chinese martial arts outfit.

Morrigan is so turned-on by all the hot fighters in the vicinity that it starts to look like an all you can bang buffet. It's like the Olympic Village.

Morrigan has a sick flying kick, with USS Excelsior-like angles.

This game simplifies special moves a lot by having the L triggers pull them off, depending on what you're doing. Stand still and it fires projectiles, move around and it'll do the logical follow-up special. Duck and it'll do the Flash Kick. Was never that keen on the Sonic Boom, being a Hadoken guy, but it's worth noting that this move made it into Final Fantasy VI as one of Sabin's Blitzes.

Yuri counters the Sonic Boom with one of her grab moves, a PIMP SLAP.

Yuri is a great character, definitely one of the standouts on the SNK side. Just an in-shape martial artist with a lot of attitude. She doesn't have to show lots of skin like Mai does, her physique speaks for itself. 

I think she's from the Art of Fighting series, which basically combined with the Fatal Fury series to create the King of Fighters series.

(Editor's Note: Yeah, she is from that series. However, she's the Marian of the first game, meaning she's the one Ryo has to rescue. She might be playable in the second and third. Also, AOF2 is apparently ridiculously difficult. What am I getting into here?)

Ohhhh shit, here comes DAN.

His Hadoken is basically a melee attack. It pops out and poofs. It's the saddest thing I've ever seen.

Guile counters with a suplex, another Sabin move. And I'm just now remembering the long-forgotten fact that Sabin also has Guile's haircut, and is definitely based on Guile in general. Surprised he didn't have the Flash Kick too.

A Final Fantasy character based on a Street Fighter character...and now things have come full circle with Street Fighter 6 bringing in Tifa from FFVII.

There's the Flash Kick. Never been a fan of charge moves, so having one-button specials is good for me and playing as Guile for once. This move LOOKS pretty awesome.

Sakura fires back with a Superman Punch!

Kyo Kusanagi is, from what I can tell, the "main character" of the King of Fighters series. Or at least the frontman, the top face, the merch-mover. He seems a little generic to me, though to be fair I've barely seen him and don't know his story yet. Not sure how much of the series he has this role for.

Terry and Andy Bogard are the main dudes of the Fatal Fury series that gave way to KOF, and I figured they'd be the main dudes of KOF too...at least at first. Similarly, the villain of Fatal Fury 1, Geese Howard, quickly gets out of the way for new bad guys like Rugal and Iori. Even in his own series, I think Wolfgang Krauser kind of steps over him as the main villain before long.

TLDR: I think Terry and Andy Bogard are basically SNK's Ryu/Ken and then later they step aside for (the more traditional handsome lad protagonist) Kyo Kusanagi the way Ryu/Ken stepped aside for Alex (the big American beefy boi), as the new main character. That didn't last too long before Ryu became the frontman again in the following generation of games, but yeah.

Guile always struck me as the #3 guy in Street Fighter, the guy who WOULD have been considered the main character by everyone if Ryu didn't catch on. Either can pull off the role of main face, kinda like Johnny Cage and Liu Kang.

Morrigan also has a fireball, but it's nothing to write home about.

Ryo here has a similar name to Kyo, and hails from the Art of Fighting series. I think he's the main character of that series, so it looks like the AOF series copied Street Fighter 1 a bit more closely than the Fatal Fury games did.

 Yuri must be the token female of the AOF series. Ryo also has a similar name to Ryu, while looking like a Ken with short hair. So basically Ryo here is just a physical mash-up of characters.

Considering that Art of Fighting was pretty much the dawn of the SNK fighting universe, I should really play that and its sequels next.

Back to characters I'm more familiar with, E. Honda was the bane of my existence as a kid. A friend of mine would play as him in the arcade and just spam Hundred-Hand Slap. Not knowing how to do any projectiles, this made it impossible for me to get in and launch any offense. Maybe that's why it took me 20 years to start liking the Street Fighter series.

Morrigan SHOCKS THE WORLD by hurking E. Honda up into the air and PILEDRIVING HIM.

She bounces away from the piledriver in the most graceful, luxurious way possible. Whoever drew her animation frames decided to crank the dial to "sexy"

Here's the matchup the world has been waiting for. Their artstyles look so different that it's like I'm playing Mortal Kombat Trilogy again. All these mashups are wild.

Mai doing her best Undine Rising From The Water / Goddess From FFVI.

That's right, Guile isn't the only one who can channel FFVI.

Mai has an awesome soaring dive from the air.

She also has this dashing elbow attack that doubles as one of her supers:

Not to be outdone, Morrigan has the world's sexiest air-fireball:

That's it for Morrigan, from here on out I'm running a Yuri-based team.

Yuri has a great pre-fight pose where she coolly stares down her opponent. As cool as Yuri is, the only downside with her is that she's a tier 1 fighter, so she's stuck at that low power level. They really need to get characters out of these tiers and let you set the power ratios yourself for future games. It's an interesting idea and maybe this is the first iteration of it, but it needs improvement.

Let's see you dance, etc etc, nothin' on me, etc

Ken dishes out the SHORYUKEN and Yuri counters with... a flying butt slam! The Superman Butt?

"SUPERMAN BUTT! BY GAWD!"

Not to be outdone, Yuri has her own version of the Shoryuken. It's less flashy, but it'll counter an air attack.

KOF series bigwig Rugal has his own version of the Flash Kick and it's pretty sick. One of the things that stands out about the KOF series is how well-dressed everybody is.

Wonder if we'll ever get Capcom Vs DC Universe. Oh yeah, Supergirl came out this week.

Taking a paladin of a character and making them an alcoholic in 2026 when alcoholism has become pretty uncool to most young people (two decades too late but I'll take it) was a choice

It's a YURI OVERLOAD as SNK Yuri battles Capcom Yuri for Yuri Supremacy.

"Scissor me timbers!" says Dan as he looks on creepily.

Yuri rides a unicycle!

Yuri has great jumps. Really terrific jumps, with firm haunches.

Wish I had more to say about this game. I don't have much point of reference, having not played the KOFs or SFs around this time to really know what they're mixing. Going to change that soon.

If Terry and Andy Bogard are the big two protagonists of SNK's early years, Joe Higashi is the #3 man of the group. The Guile of SNK. His whole thing is being a kickboxer and throwing tornadoes. Behold his rising knee strike.

Joe Higashi is awesome. He's like a good guy version of Sagat or Adon.

"I did it!" he says, looking suspiciously like AEW superstar Hook. No word on if an Action Bronson song played.

Besides Yuri and Morrigan, I had to have a third character to round out the team. So I went with level 1 Dan.

...go get 'em, Dan!

Oh, huh, Dan actually did it.

....what?

Anyway, get back into the gimp box, Dan, we're all set for now.

It's AOF versus KOF as Kyo interrupts Yuri's meditation to announce that HE shall be the face of SNK! Not some Art of Fighting poser! "Me-uh! The Game-uh!"

Yuri takes him out with a KNEE TO THE ASS as the screen freezes, "Hang up the chick habit" plays, and the credits roll.

There are two final battles. Far as I can tell, play most of the game in SNK mode and you get Geese Howard as a final boss. Play most of it in Capcom mode and you get M. Bison and his secretary Balrog as final bosses.

Look at Geese sizing up this motley crew.

Geese Howard is one of the more interesting fighting game villains out there. He's a bit like Heihachi, a younger, more well-dressed, hipper Heihachi. He's a more realistic antagonist than your Shang Tsung or Shao Kahn types. Or even M. Bison for that matter, the dictator who controls psycho energy.

Geese Howard is just a businessman, one who can fight, and is involved in all sorts of seedy operations in South Town (more or less SNK's version of Capcom's Metro City)

Some Geese Facts for any Geesethusiasts we have here.

SNK bosses are known for being insanely hard to defeat (similar to MK series bosses, but worse). This, however...is a Capcom game. So it's at least fair, and the CPU hates flying kicks.

Since Geese doesn't have a goon like Bison does, you get to fight him twice. He's pretty strong (rank 3) both times, so this is almost definitely the harder of the two potential final battles.

I finally eke out a win by switching over to his nemesis Terry Bogard and spamming his iconic ground waves.

"What kind of a man beats another man and doesn't finish him off!"

Geese asking the important questions.

Terry Bogard just swooped in at the 11th hour and took the win. Who is this dastardly rapscallion? I'll find out in Fatal Fury.

 In the meantime, here are some Yuri Facts:

Likes: Her Thighmaster

Dislikes: Junk Food

Hobbies: Working the Thighmaster

Favorite Food: Rare Steak

Forte in Sports: All of them

Favorite Music: Calabria 2008, like literally all women

Weapon: Legs

Fighting Style: Legs

Go the other route and we get a different final boss: Bison. He's rank 3 and accompanied by rank 1 Balrog. Was wondering why Balrog was rank 1 when the other Street Fighter 2 bosses are all rank 3. It's so he can be Bison's Goon.

Geese is also rank 3 and you have to defeat him twice in a row. Bison has an accomplice but you only have to defeat them once.

I bring rank 4 Akuma to dust these guys.

Bison refers to Balrog as a "light warm-up" which is pretty insulting.

Always liked Balrog myself, with his punch-based offense. Now here he is, playing the role of Bison's secretary.

This still isn't as bad as what they'd do to Balrog in SVC Chaos but I'll get to that.

....annnd that's it for Balrog, as Akuma strains nearby.

Yeah, rank 4 characters bulldoze rank 1 characters. This is basically just to give you an injury before you face Bison.

Bison is one of the coolest fighting game bosses out there. I'm just glad to see bad guys I recognize at the end of this game, rather than weirdoes like Pyron.

Akuma vs Bison seems like it'd be a huge deal in the canon. In practice, a rank 3 CPU final boss is a very worthy challenge to a rank 4 player character.

Bison runs off, as Capcom villains do. One of these days he'll succeed in his plans of world domination or whatever.

They really missed an opportunity to have this guy team up with Dr. Wily in one of the crossovers.

Before I go, here's Hadoken Battle '26. All of these Hadokens were executed legit with the proper inputs, and if I missed one that probably would have been a wrap. That was intense, especially for me, since I always used to have issues reliably pulling off a Hadoken.

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