The Neo Geo Pocket Color - Review - Game Sack

hello and welcome to game sack we are finally talking about the Neo Geo pocket color mm-hmm a really cool handheld system with a really short lifespan in damp to bad but anyways as per usual why don't you take us through the system okay here's a little bit about the system itself the Neo Geo pocket color SNK released a Neo Geo pocket handheld in japan near the end of 1998 this was a black-and-white system with only ten games that were ever released for it that's because SNK released the fully backwards compatible Neo Geo pocket color in Japan in early 1999 and everywhere else later that same year the portable launched at $70 and features a 2.6 inch screen that unfortunately is not backlit it does have however a very nice micro switch d-pad the system would last nearly 40 hours with two double-a batteries and also had a lithium battery to power the calendar in the clock it has a 16-bit main processor along with the z80 to handle the sound it has a screen resolution of 160 by 152 and it can put up to 146 colors on screen out of a total of 4096 to choose from in addition to a standard link cable the Neo Geo pocket color could also link up to the Sega Dreamcast and share data with compatible games 83 games were released for the system and it sold just under 2 million units and it was discontinued in 2001 thanks to SNK being purchased by aru's a all right Joe thinks it was very informative and short just like everybody likes it okay and for this episode the in order to capture the gameplay we had to resort to emulation but you know it's a museum Neo Geo pocket color how else are you going to do it and you know whatever and in the meantime let's just get to looking at some games let's start off with Metal Slug first mission I was so happy when this game was released says it's one of my favorite running guns as you'd expect this game isn't as grand as the Neo Geo original but it's still a great game that's really fun to play the action is solid here and the game will give you a good challenge being that there are only two buttons on this system the developers had a hard time figuring out how to map jumping shooting and grenade tossing well they did it but it's kind of a pain in the ass there's a dedicated jump button and you toggle between your weapon and grenades by pressing the option button it works but it's an extra step and I found myself rarely using grenades because of this other than that the game is great fun the graphics are nicely detailed there's some good overlapping parallax scrolling which he did not been seen portable games back when this was new the sound is great and while the audio has fewer and weaker channels to work with the feel of the original music is there Metal Slug second Lisbon Metal Slug second mission was released a year later and it was mostly more of the same this isn't a bad thing as again you're treated to a solid experience the best part about this game is that they fixed the problem of tossing grenades now instead of toggling between your gun and grenades by pushing the option button they made it so that it just tosses the grenades this is much better than it was before as with the previous game everything looks and sounds great they even added some voice to the game when you pick up weapons which is really cool pineapple and just like the previous entry when you defeat enemies they often drop power-ups but you have to be fast because these things disappear only after a few seconds while both Metal Slug games are great I definitely do prefer the second one here more if you own the system these are two games that you cannot be without Heavy D machine gun rocket now true sonic the hedghog pocket adventure might have been the first time I saw Sega themselves develop something else for another console I mean the Dreamcast was still a thing at the time so of course I had to get it since I had a Neo Geo pocket already anyway basically this is kind of a stripped-down version of Sonic 2 but thankfully tails doesn't follow you around in this one if you've never played Sonic before the gameplay is pretty simple you just need to make it to the end of the stage and defeat the boss at the end of every second stage you collect rings and as long as you have at least one you can take a hit but then you lose all of your rings however you can recollect a few of them if you're quick enough collect 50 rings and keep them and then you'll go to a bonus stage these are taken straight from Sonic 2 as well I don't like them but if you do is the bonus stage commands by continuing to collect an increasing amount of rings you'll get a Chaos Emerald or something I really don't know because I don't like playing the bonus stages so I just try to make sure I don't finish the stage with 50 or more rings overall it's a decent rendition of a 2d Sonic game the scrolling is kind of hesitant at times and the control is nowhere near as good as the real Genesis versions it definitely takes some getting used to the graphics are pretty damn nice but I was kind of disappointed that there were no multi-layered scrolling backgrounds like there were in the Metal Slug games and for that reason it kind of looks more like a Game Gear game though I do think this game is better than the Game Gear versions the music is pretty good and I really appreciated how it was different in each and every zone I really like the boss music anyway if you have a Neo Geo pocket color I say go for it especially if you like 2d sonic kinga fighters are one was a black-and-white game for the Neo Geo pocket of course this one works on the color model as well basically you can play a single match like normal fighting games or you can choose team mode this lets you choose from three different characters to win a match you must defeat all of the other teams different characters in that stage everything controls really well and this one is lots of fun but the sequel called King of Fighters r2 is in full color this is based on King of Fighters 98 and I've got to say it's a very solid game as everyone knows playing a fighting game with only two buttons must automatically suck but damn SNK really did a good job making this game not suck at all you still have a light and heavy punch and kick and it's really easy to pull off moves tapping a button will do a light action while holding the button down will do a heavy action the gameplay is great feels very true to the arcade games and as you can see it has really nice character designing good-looking backgrounds you can't go wrong with either of these titles but King of Fighters r2 is definitely the one to have dark arms beast Buster 1999 is kind of a horror themed action RPG it's actually a spin-off of one of s and case earlier arcade games called beast busters anyway your main gun has a spirit catcher and you're tasked with killing and capturing spirits of demons and monsters the gameplay takes place with an overhead run and gun style once a monster dies you obtain its soul because monsters have souls they're people too anyway you feed these souls to your gun to power it up sound weird well that's probably because it is you want to power up and evolve your gun as quickly as you can because initially it's extremely weak it has its own gauge which needs to have some life on it before it can fire and it refills fairly slow so you often need to be defensive while you wait the game itself is pretty cool you wander around collecting hints and keys and whatnot there's even some puzzles you need to solve in order to advance the game has day and night settings and different monsters will be present depending on when you visit some places are inaccessible during the day and vice-versa you'll eventually get some weapons that kick ass and these can kill monsters quickly and even recharge more quickly but you need to be using your default gun for the killing shot if you want to collect the monster soul and feed it to your gun later the graphics are all pretty good with a lot of variety in the places that you visit even the music is somewhat entertaining and it never got on my nerves this is one of the best original games for the system and I highly recommend you give it a go if you can Samurai Shodown appeared in black and white on the Neo Geo pocket this one is based on the first game and you can choose from 12 different characters it plays quite well for a portable game if a touch slow the graphics look really nice all things considered unfortunately it doesn't have the scaling of the original Neo Geo game but that's not really surprising since it doesn't even have the color of the original Neo Geo game the music has that ancient Japanese feel to it that fits so well Samurai Shodown 2 is also a great entry for the portable system this game is based off of Samurai Shodown 64 on the short-lived hyper Neo Geo 64 arcade system it retains 99% of playable characters what's really impressive is that you can choose between slash and bust mode and most of the moves for each character at present it's really amazing what SNK was able to do with their system I don't know what it is about handhelds but they hold a certain charm I love the music and backgrounds because they're trying their best to be like the original game and on some levels it works and captures the feel quite well Samurai Shodown 2 isn't my favorite fighting game on the system but is very enjoyable oh buzzer buzzes rockman battlin fighters is kind of interesting basically it's kind of a megaman boss battle fighting game you start by choosing who you want to play as then you get to choose which set of games you want to find a few of the bosses from then off you go into battle the bosses don't fight exactly like they did in their original games but they do share similarities once you defeat a boss you steal his weapon and you can use it in future battles if you have enough weapon power I really didn't find any of these tremendously advantageous over the normal gun sometimes your enemy will run off the screen and that can be kind of annoying especially if he starts attacking you from out there there's also another mode of the game where it chooses the order of the bosses for you and you collect coins and even get helper items like your rush dog the graphics are bright and colorful and the music's pretty good as well though it doesn't sound anywhere near as good as the original NES versions overall the game is kind of fun but it didn't keep my interest like a real Mega Man game would oh and this game was released only in Japan here's the last blade which is a portable version of the NeoGeo game I've always liked the fighting games on the Neo Geo pocket color even if they are kind of simple actually I take that back they only look simple but the gameplay is actually very deep and involved it's a lot more than one usually expects of a portable game back in this day and age anyway this is a weapons based fighter with a very Japanese flavor to it you can choose from nine different characters since the Neo Geo pocket color only has two buttons that's what you have to work with here one swings your weapon and the other is a personal attack like a kick the microswitch d-pad works extremely well for pulling off moves maybe that's what makes fighting games on the system so enjoyable I'm glad that they kept the cool stage introductions from the Neo Geo version here they definitely add to the overall presentation the backgrounds usually look great but the characters look extra simple as they're just in black and white with one single color but that doesn't affect the gameplay at all the music is also very simple but still enjoyable I definitely recommend this one SNK vs. Capcom match of the millennium is the first crossover game that I ever played if you haven't played it then you're definitely missing out it's a fighting game that features characters from both SNK and Capcom this game is amazing it's filled with so much awesomeness that you might feel like you've died and gone to heaven so firstly you have tons of fighters to choose from from each franchise you can choose whether you like the capcom style where you build up a level meter and unleash super attacks or an SNK style where you build up a charge meter you can fight battles as a single fighter or you can tag-team the control works really well thanks to the nice d-pad and I never had trouble pulling off moves that I'm going for and to top it all off this game has great music and really good graphics also included our two really fun minigames the first one is from the Metal Slug series in this one you shoot down aliens with crosshairs there's also a ghouls and ghosts game here the object of this game is to grab bags of gold all while dodging firebrand fighting games don't get much better than this on the portable systems especially ones from the late 90s this is easily my favorite game for the handheld and one of the only reasons where I turn the system on to this day you all right Dave you liking the Neo Geo pocket color so far I'm liking it I've always liked it of course I'm like this Joe cool so what the hell are we doing here let's get back to more games I bought neo turf masters on a whim back in the day when it came out I didn't expect a whole lot but I was very pleasantly surprised this is a great portable golf game don't worry I won't waste too much of your time talking about a dumb old sports game but it's a really good one anyway it has an overhead view and it's extremely easy to get into you can choose from different golfers each with their own attributes but I always choose the young hero since I myself in the hero playing golf and saving lives that's what I do anyway the young hero has average stats all across the board and I myself am also average you also get to choose from three different courses the graphics and the music are simple but great at the same time I'd always play this one at work on my downtime and it really helped the end of the day or night come more quickly imagine my surprise years and years later when I discovered that this was based on a neogeo game of the same name oh yeah definitely get this one if you like video golf games there were also a couple of baseball games the first of which is baseball stars color that's right there's a black and white version of this game on the original Neo Geo pocket you pick from fictional teams and playing your choice of a dome or a stadium overall pretty much everything about this is average at best I feel that the fielding is really slow and trying to throw a ball to a base is like an exercise in frustration it's certainly not horrible but it could have been done so much better I do like the crazy graphics when you get a home run though there was also dynamite Slugger by ADK the same peeps behind magician Lord for the Neo Geo this one was only released in Japan here is countries battling each other for the literal world series again the game is pretty average the batter and pitcher graphics are a bit better than baseball stars but the fielding graphics are extremely simple the music seems like it's old royalty free stuff kind of like the stuff you'd hear in early arcade games I guess you just can't get an amazing baseball game on the system and that's too bad you another fun sports game is pocket tennis color of course Joe lets me cover this one since he despises everything about tennis his loss though as it's a pretty damn good game you start by picking your character each with a different set of skills of course the one named David is completely bald just like me he also kind of sucks at playing tennis also just like me anyway you then choose your court and these arrange from a typical tennis court to places that have weeds growing all over them the game plays pretty well and it's easy enough to figure out what's kind of cool is that during a set is sometimes changes from day to night as the matches go on and on I thought that this was a pretty cool little touch I also like the lively music the graphics are good but one thing that kind of bothers me is that the screen is constantly scrolling up and down sometimes my character almost goes off screen and that's not good it's kind of distracting but other than that this is a great game if you like tennis there's even more fighters to choose from on the system like fatal fury first contact this one is a competent one-on-one fighter gone is the ability to switch planes like in normal fatal fury games but I'm totally ok with that because I never really cared for that anyway the fighting action is wait did my just blow fire out of her ass hmm I guess that's one of her special moves anyway the fighting action is pretty good so if you see this one for what appears to be a good price I say pick it up SMK gals fighters is an all-female fighting game featuring SNK is best it seems like a more modern 2d fighter with plenty of humor and flashy special moves in fact I described as fast and floaty feel to that of a Darkstalkers game and trust me that's a good thing the only downside is that it might be a bit too easy but just turn up the difficulty if that's an issue for you the control is great with moves that are fun and easy to pull off which is extremely not the norm for SNK fighting games you build a gauge of did she just show me the corpse of someone she killed anyway as I was saying like most SNK fighters you fill a gauge at the bottom of the screen which lets you do extra special attacks you can also learn items as you play if you choose to use these they'll make your game even easier by lowering your opponent's life bar from the get-go and things like that I really don't think that game is hard enough for these to be necessary but hey maybe you do anyway check it out it's light bouncy fun cardfight oh this is card fighters clash SNK vs. Capcom it's a card battling game that lets you battle it out with a friend or the game's AI there's two versions of this game one for Capcom and the other for SNK the differences between the two are simple if you pick the capcom version you're starting deck of cars will have more Capcom characters and vice versa for the SNK version each version does have some specific cards so you'd have to buy both versions of the game if you want to have them all so the goal of this game is to win lots of card battles with many different opponents you have cards to attack your opponent's card and they can gang up and whatnot if you have any attacking cards left over after attacking the other card so then your opponent is directly attacked and loses HP this goes on and on until you or your opponent's HP reaches zero you do have an overworld map that you can traverse and find other players to get into battle with there's not a lot going on graphically but the music is pretty enjoyable it's a pretty simple game to play and I honestly found it to be kind of boring a lot of people liked this game but it's just not for me cardfight Oh do a sequel called card fighters to expanded edition came out only in Japan gameplay-wise is pretty much more of the same the overworld now has an isometric view and there are some new cards of course which is the main draw for people who like this kind of game there's really nothing in this one to change my opinion of this series biomotor Unitron is an RPG believe it or not there's no epic saga or anything in the beginning but instead you're using battle robots from an old war to enter and win tournaments and whatnot you start out by picking your characters and there's quite a few to choose from then you visit a round town which has done digital comic style which is cool but the absence of music during these scenes feels a little odd your goal is to become the ultimate Unitron master but to do that you need to build yourself up you can choose to roam the world fighting random monsters to gain experience and money these dungeons basically only exist for you to grind and find stuff and you'll be doing a lot of it you can also buy new parts and stuff like that as well then you have your teammate develop new parts for your Unitron and this is all kind of weird I've never really gotten into games where you need this to develop that and other similar things it's just something that never really appealed to me but anyway you eventually get to fight in the arena and you rise in rank if you defeat multiple enemies in a row then it's back to dungeon crawling and every time someone says Unitron I of course immediately think Unicron from Transformers the movie anyway this is a decent if somewhat simple RPG there's not a whole heck of a lot going on here at least not for me and I did get kind of bored fairly quickly but celli is a really interesting strategy game first you're greeted with an intro with a real song okay okay it doesn't sound that great but it's still cool that it's there anyway this is one of the harder to find rarities on the Neo Geo pocket color but not too hard because you can currently get a cart only US version for around $65 and I'd say it's worth it anyway you are at war and you're in charge of a mech what's interesting is is that your allotted a number of blocks each time you move so you use one of these blocks to advance forward one space and then another to simply turn to the right there's other blocks you use to fire and use items and things like that as well now this sounds extremely tedious but trust me it's not the combat isn't really turn-based and everything seems to do their moves all at once after you press ok I find that this really helps to keep the pace up but it can also mean that your plan moves may backfire when an enemy walks out of the way from where you wanted to attack them now suddenly he's attacking you great move dumbass but seriously the combat is interesting and I found it really fun between chapters you can buy new parts for your mech and even add new moves like slipping left or right so you don't have to waste three blocks doing one move why I have to buy these upgrades from my own base is beyond me knowing you want to win too anyway if you like strategy RPGs be sure to check this one out and grab it if you can there's even a version of pac-man I've never been a huge fan of pac-man I'd much much rather play miss pac-man anyways it's a decent port they give you the option for a full or even a scrolling play field personally I like seeing where all the ghosts are so I chose fool the sound quality isn't as good as the original arcade what else is there to say it's pac-man or how about bust-a-move pocket the object of this game is to line up the arrow and shoot the coloured ball to match other coloured balls get at least three touching and they break away clear the screen and you win that round this is pretty fun but my wife likes it more than I do but she prefers bust-a-move on other systems since this one doesn't have a backlighting is pretty simple looking by comparison and here's poyo pop by Sega this is a really cool puzzle game where you match colored jelly blobs to make them disappear just like in every other poll poyo game or dr. robotnik's mean bean machine as it's known in the u.s. what's weird is that there are voices but no music during the match the voices sound nice and clear but if you turn them off in the option screen then you get some music hit much prefer this mode this is a great king and then there's magical drop pocket this one takes a bit of getting used to basically you need to grab the colored balls with one button and release them with the other if you connect three or more when you release all of the same colors will disappear actually it's not just the color that matters but the design on the ball as well this is all going on while the ceiling is closing down very fast it's a very fast paced game and at first it's easy to lose but once you get the hang of it it becomes really fun and crazy intense I definitely recommend this one finally we have puzzle link by you cube Yumiko bow this is an interesting one basically you're creating links between same colored jewels or objects or whatever they are if you create a link between two groups of the same thing they pop in the game keeps going pop the two c''s and the stage is cleared it's fun for a short while I guess there's also puzzle link to this is more the same but with card symbols instead and of course as the name implies you can link up against another Neo Geo pocket owner BIGBANG pro-wrestling is kind of cool you can choose from eight different wrestlers and each of them has their own unique entrance music the graphics are detailed and animate nicely with cool cutaways here and there when something special happens but I've never really been able to get the hang of controlling wrestling games so I got bored quickly but hey if this looks good to you try it out you and here's cool borders pocket which never made it to the US this is a snowboarding game centered around avoiding obstacles and doing tricks the problem is is that the isometric view doesn't allow you to see very far ahead and you'll end up getting game overs really fast I can see why I didn't come out over here it's just not really very interesting now let's take a quick look at evolution eternal dungeons from Sega and ESP based on the Dreamcast game of a similar name this is another dungeon crawler RPG basically it seems like you're on a quest to find valuable treasures and sell them to a museum and of course that means what else battling a lot of monsters the town scenes are pretty cool and they're presented in a digital comic style which is easy to navigate and looks great the dungeons themselves don't look bad but they're just dungeon so what can I say you'll find lots of items to help you out the battles are not randomly generated and you can avoid them if you're careful but I found that these battles can get tedious just waiting to get a turn to do anything the music is pretty nice and it does add to the atmosphere this game never came to the US and is pretty tough to find a UK version there's even a port of cotton fantastic night dreams on the system this is a key time up and sorry if you hate that term but it works you're a witch on a broomstick with your fairy friend all in all it's a pretty good part of the original game though the sound of throwing a bomb is absolutely aggravating but the control is good enough to get things done despite the screen being extremely cropped compared to the original basically you collect jewels to power up your weapon and also obtain special one-time use weapons these can defeat the bosses fairly quick you can get this game for the turbo graphic CD and also the Japanese PlayStation but it's pretty cool to see cotton on here and of course it never came to the US on this system all right there's the Neo Geo pocket color for you Dave what'd you think of the system overall overall I thought it was great and I wish it never died I like the size of it I thought it was very comfortable I like the microswitch choice pads ding ding key my bobber I like the games I just miss it already yeah what about you I like it a lot too I mean the sound probably could have been a little bit better yeah I'm kind of Sega Master System II but maybe a little bit better but that's a certain charm but you know I agree and then the stupid sub battery which often dies you know if you don't have it or it's dead if you need the power lights blinking yeah and that's very annoying but other than those things I think it was a really cool portable system is a lot more fun than you might think it was and anyway what do you guys think of the Neo Geo pocket color do you have any favorite games on it did we miss some let us know and in the meantime thank you for watching games sake match of millennium is awesome to play I love this game dude I can't see ya give me some cable then I can't say just throw a fireball I can't see anything stop it you're good you just ripped the cable out yeah this isn't gonna work out you know we got it we gotta think of something milk this works I can see can you yeah you can see but you really smell I won I won yeah you won all right

Channel: Game Sack

Views: 388,684

Keywords: sega, nintendo, turbografx, pc, engine, gameplay, video, games, retro, genesis, snes, nes, master, system, snk, neo-geo, pocket, color, fatal fury, king of fighters, r-1, r-2, samurai shodown, pac man, neo turf masters, match of the millennium, snk vs capcom, capcom vs snk, cardfighters, fasellei, biomotor unitron, beast buster, dark arms, sonic pocket adventure, Neo Geo Pocket (Video Game Platform)

Id: Q1aL67idCl4

Length: 30min 53sec (1853 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 26 2015