Already available on PS4 and Switch, the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection arrives on Xbox One on May 3rd as a digital-only release. The Switch version of the collection launched in mid-November of last year, while the PS4 version launched in March. To make up for the wait, SNK is adding in the genre-defining Baseball Stars as an exclusive for the Xbox One version. The persistent team features, create-a-player options as well as the actual baseball mechanics would go on to influence sports games for decades to come. The SNK 40th Anniversary Collection launches in early May, digitally-only, for $39.99.
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The addition of Baseball Stars to the list of games in the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection brings the total to 25 different arcade and early home titles. The full list is available via Siliconera, and the remastering of the games was handled by Digital Eclipse. While the name alone may not mean much, the Digital Eclipse brand has existed in one form or another since 1994, working to port high-profile releases to smaller platforms. More recently, Digital Eclipse produced the Mega Man Legacy Collection, the Disney Afternoon Collection, the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, and of course, the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection and features the work of Frank Cifaldi.
What makes the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection so remarkable is not simply the modernization of long-forgotten arcade games, but its existence as essentially a playable museum of SNK titles. With the major SNK names appearing on the NEOGEO Mini (Metal Slug, The King of Fighters series, and so on), this arcade collection was a chance to dive into SNK's existence and history wholesale. Digital Eclipse took advantage of the opportunity, packing in a staggering amount of content that would be otherwise inaccessible to the average player: old game soundtracks, advertisements, art books. As a piece of preservation software, the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection is every video game history nerd's dream. On May 3rd, Xbox One fans will get to experience it for themselves.
