This is a 2D fighting game coming to Super Nintendo in 2017. Before the novelty sinks in, know that former SNK developers are behind it – the same ones that brought us King of Fighters 98 to 2002. Still with us?
Revealed as a playable demo at the RETRO.HK – Hong Kong’s Vintage Game Expo 2016, Unholy Night is a fighting games planned for release in February 2017. Reaching no less than 32 MB in size, it’ll also be the largest SNES game ever released in physical format – this means, the actual cartridge you’ll be able to buy.
Unholy Night sports both gameplay and aesthetics reminiscent of popular 2D, anime-styled fighting games, with characters designs that have more than a passing resemblance to those of titles like Guilty Gear, and even SNK’s own Darkstaller series.
Indeed, with a little digging you can parallel each of the 6’s total characters’ designs to some popular character like Sol Badguy and Morrigan Aensland, but then again, Unholy Night is an homage of this genre of games if there ever was one.
The lore explores the western legends of vampires and werewolves, following the story of a group of monster hunters known as the “Dark Family”. We can see this reflected on the characters’ artwork, featuring some religious motifs and what could as well be Silver-made weaponry (also, the werewolf).
It’s interesting to note Unholy Night premiered in the same show that, just some months ago, saw the release to the only prototype left for the Sony Super Nintendo CD-ROM console, the original concept of what ended up as the PlayStation 1.
Be it novelty, nostalgia bait or legit homage (probably a combination at varying degrees of all), Unholy Night will release February 2017 in the Asian market.
No word yet on a western release, and it’s not hard to see it staying in Japan cause of its super niche market (the SNES-integrated TVs it was shown off on during the Hong Kong expo were never released in the west, for starters); but the NES Classic did see an international release, so we can’t rule out something for the Super Nintendo, if at least a spot on the Virtual Console.