Like its predecessor, Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 Pro is a Dreamcast 2D fighting game that features a number of characters from popular games produced by both Capcom and SNK. And like in the original game, many of the characters in Millennium Fight Pro seem stripped-down and simplified because they lack the signature special maneuvers they possess in other games. And as you play Millennium Fight Pro, you'll notice more and more similarities between it and the original game...until you realize that Millennium Fight Pro essentially is the original game. That's actually a good thing if you haven't played the original Capcom vs. SNK; since you'll find that Millennium Fight Pro has a huge roster of colorful characters and quite a few different gameplay options to customize both the single-player game and two-player matches. Unfortunately, if you have played the original game, you'll find hardly anything new or worthwhile in the new game over the first.
There are very, very few differences between Millennium Fight Pro and the original Capcom vs. SNK. The most obvious is the addition of two new playable characters: SNK's loudmouthed kickboxer, Joe Higashi, and Capcom's even more loudmouthed "parody" character, Dan Hibiki. Dan is represented in the new game quite well. He has every single one of his special attacks, including his super taunt, though as with every other game he's been in, Dan's character sprite is nothing more than another character with a new head. On the other hand, Joe turned out horribly. He's barely got three of his most basic special attacks and a single super move, which makes him incredibly boring to play, despite the fact that he's evolved greatly in SNK's King of Fighters series into a rather interesting character. Joe has the same muscular, defined look he has in SNK's more recent King of Fighters games--the exact same look, since Capcom did the same lazy thing with Joe as it did with other the SNK characters: simply taking existing frames of animation out of SNK's games and tracing over them. In short, if you're a tremendous fan of Dan Hibiki, you might almost be able to justify the cost of buying this game instead of the previous game. But if you're a fan of Joe, just keep playing as him in whatever recent Fatal Fury or King of Fighters game you enjoy most, as Joe is far less interesting in Millennium Fight Pro than he is in nearly any other game.
Aside from the unremarkable addition of two new characters, Millennium Fight Pro really only has two other new features that distinguish it from the previous game. First, the game has all its secrets unlocked, including alternate versions of certain characters, color edit mode, and pair match mode (which lets you edit the "point ratio" of stronger characters, essentially allowing you to pick a full team of the strongest characters in the game). Second, the game features four new background stages. These four stages are all as colorful and detailed--and also as nondescript and generic--as those of the original game are. And that's basically it. If you played the previous game, you'll remember that it took an insane amount of playing time to earn every secret option. As such, the game's fully unlocked secrets are clearly Millennium Fight Pro's most attractive feature.
Otherwise, Millennium Fight Pro is essentially identical to the original Capcom vs. SNK. In the past, it's been customary for fighting-game developers like both SNK and Capcom to release a fighting game, make some significant additions and gameplay tweaks, and then rerelease it as the next edition in a series. Capcom hasn't done this with Millennium Fight Pro. Nearly every single character in this game is virtually identical to his or her counterpart in the previous game, and with very few exceptions, most have no new moves, win poses, voice samples, or anything else, for that matter. This is especially unfortunate in the case of the game's SNK characters, many of which lack several of their distinctive special attacks in the previous game and still don't have them in the new game. Millennium Fight Pro also uses the same character portraits, features the same thoroughly lame and forgettable techno music, and even has the exact same audio bug that sometimes completely muffles a character's voice samples for no apparent reason.
Millennium Fight Pro also plays exactly the same as the previous game. The pacing of both Capcom vs. SNK games resembles a stripped-down and sped-up version of the original Street Fighter Alpha, though both games have a turbo setting that lets you play at appreciably faster speeds. Both games have two different play modes that you can choose for your characters, "Capcom groove" and "SNK groove," each of which is better suited to certain characters than others. And both games put less emphasis on things like range and attack priority--since many characters' standard attacks are short-range kicks and punches--and put more emphasis on close-range fighting and combination attacks. As such, both games have rather shallow gameplay; a few characters have some interesting juggle attacks, but on the whole, they don't have the same level of depth and complexity as the characters in the later King of Fighters games or Street Fighter Alpha 3. But for what it is, Millennium Fight Pro's gameplay is enjoyable enough. It's got responsive control, and its sizeable character roster and play modes are varied enough and balanced enough to easily keep you and a group of friends entertained for an afternoon or two as you hand off the controllers between fights.
If you haven't played the first game, Millennium Fight Pro will seem like an impressive, colorful game with a huge array of characters and a number of different options to play. Though its gameplay isn't especially deep, Millennium Fight Pro is an enjoyable slugfest that'll let you play with teams of some of the most popular 2D fighting-game characters ever created. In fact, if you're a fan of 2D fighters and you didn't bother with the original Capcom vs. SNK, you'd do well to pick up a copy of Millennium Fight Pro. However, if you already have the first game and have played it long enough to unlock many of its secrets, you'll find that picking up an import copy of Millennium Fight Pro amounts to nothing more than paying full price for two characters--and that just isn't worth it.
