Savage Reign
  

  
STORY:  Savage Reign is set in the first half of the 21st century in the fictional city of South Town (the same city used in the Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting series), which has now been upgraded and renamed as Jipang City. A mysterious legendary fighter known only as King Leo has risen up from the shadows of secrecy and issued a challenge on television for the strongest of fighters to battle against him in a fighting tournament known as the Battle of the Beast God. He promises immense wealth beyond anyone's dreams and legendary fame beyond imagination. Nine fighters have come to the tournament, each with their own sole purpose and reason for battling against King Leo.

 

 
REVIEW:  By 1995, SNK had established an impressive variety of solid and growingly popular fighting game franchises. However, there were a variety of fighting games showing up on those NeoGeo cabinets (and elsewhere) that were very commonly being dubbed as "Street Fighter II clones". With so many mid 90s "me too" fighting games joining the bandwagon (too many for a normal person to count), being lead by games like Fighters History and World Heroes, it's understandable if you've never even heard of Savage Reign (until visiting this website?). It was a rare fighting games that not many overseas arcades had, in my experience at least!
 

  
While offering new types of character concepts for a 2D fighting game, the idea didn't really pan out in the long run. Savage Reign ended up being a very obscure and rare fighting game to see at arcades and never received a proper console release until decades later. Most NeoGeo cabinets featured games from the more-popular SNK series, like: Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown and The King of Fighters, which fans were drawing to and most arcade owners were also comfortable taking a chance with. While there was never a Savage Reign 2, the game evolved into a tag-team fighting game released in 1996: Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle. The sequel offered greater character variety and more enthralling gameplay.


In typical mid-90s "me too" fighting game fashion, the character designs of Savage Reign take obvious cues from a variety of already existing fighting game characters, and then some (for better or worse). The cast of Savage Reign is definitely what you'd call obscure, off-the-wall, and just downright strange. The weird characters attempt, but don't really succeed at bringing out the loose "futuristic" theme of Savage Reign, and don't really have the lasting appeal of other fighters out there. On a more positive note, the characters do have a certain charming Japanese anime aesthetic that seems to work. I've definitely come to appreciate the roster more with time.

 

Savage Reign's large sprites and colorful character sprites are reminiscent of those seen in Art of Fighting, but the animation was rather uninspiring if you ask me. Clearly, SNK tried to make Savage Reign stand out by adding a variety gameplay and graphical trademarks from several of their more famous franchises such as Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, and Samurai Shodown. (However, all of those games were clearly much better than this game. A lot better, in fact.) 
 
To its credit, Savage Reign's hand-drawn character sprites and stages are nice on the eyes for the most part. Just like Terry Bogard over in Fatal Fury, the savage fighters of Savage Reign can jump in and out of the background. Besides that, your staple punching, kicking, and weapon attacks make up a pretty straight-forward 2D gameplay system.

Page Updated: October 11th, 2025 Developer(s): SNK Publisher(s): SNK Platform(s): NeoGeo, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 4 Release Date(s): Apr. 25th, 1995          May 25th, 1995         June 21st, 2007           in Fu'un Super Combo - PS2 Dec. 20th, 2016           in Fu'un Super Combo - PS4 Characters:  Sho Hayate, Max Eagle, Carol Stanzack, Gordon Bowman, Chung Paifu, Gozu, Mezu, Joker, Nicola Zaza, King Lion News Links:  Oct. 2025: Kizuna Encounter Now Available on Steam with Rollback Featured Video: Related Games: Kizuna Encounter, Art of Fighting 2, Fatal Fury 3, Real Bout Fatal Fury, NEOGEO Battle Coliseum, Card Fighters Clash, Card Fighters Clash 2, Double Dragon, Fighter's History, World Heroes Perfect, Aggressors of Dark Kombat, Samurai Shodown 3, Mortal Kombat 3, Darkstalkers 2, Killer Instinct 2, Street Fighter Alpha, Marvel Super Heroes, Cyberbots, TEKKEN 2, The King of Fighters '95, Golden Axe: The Duel, Galaxy Fight, Urban Reign    Gameplay Engine  6.0 / 10 Story / Theme  3.5 / 10 Overall Graphics  7.0 / 10 Animation  7.0 / 10 Music / Sound Effects  5.5 / 10 Innovation  3.5 / 10 Art Direction  6.0 / 10 Customization  4.0 / 10 Options / Extras  4.0 / 10 Intro / Presentation  5.0 / 10 Replayability / Fun  3.5 / 10 "Ouch" Factor  5.0 / 10 Characters  3.0 / 10 BOTTOM LINE  5.3 / 10  Review based on Arcade version        Final Words: I only played Savage Reign once or twice... and that was more than I ever wanted to play this game. There's not much to the gameplay or graphics that hasn't already been done in 1995... and Savage Reign's characters just seem to be trying too hard to distinguish themselves. Old school, nostalgic SNK fans might be able to appreciate Savage Reign in some way, but there's no arguing that there were tons of better fighting games to be spending your quarters on in 1995 arcades. Seriously, "most" of the other new fighting games in 1995 just made Savage Reign look silly. I'll admit that the "tribute" artwork SNK released around 15 years after the original release (which you can find below) was pretty cool. The sequel to Savage Reign, Kizuna Encounter, ended up being a slightly better game (keyword = slightly). ~TFG Webmaster | @Fighters_Gen      Click Here for all Posters / Box Artwork! Click Here for all Animated Stages! Click Here for Screenshots! FOLLOW    ON:                             TFG NEWS CHARACTERS GAMES