Neo Geo Pocket Color System/accessory by SNK Reviewed by John Craig Released: 1998 Height: About 8 cm Width: About 13 cm Depth: About 3 cm Battery Life: 40 hours Colors on-screen: 156 Total Palette: 4096 RAM: 12k with 900H, 4k with Z80 ROM: 64kb ROM ROM Sizes: Maximum of 32 MBits. Use with: Neo Geo Pocket and Neo Geo Pocket Color games. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Opening Snide Remarks: Here we go again. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Impressions: Competition is good. It's what capitalism is based on. Competition forces companies to make better products, and constantly innovate. Without it, there's no reason to. Competition in the video game industry is simple. Make something better, faster, and prettier... or... at least tell players that you're working on something like that, and that you're going to release it... someday. That is.. unless it's delayed. The key is to get your next major product out at about the same time as your competition does. The problem with the portable industry is, no matter when you release your system, Nintendo's got a 10 year start on you, and about 500 games that you don't. The only way you'd stand a chance, these companies seem to think, is to claim that your product is much better than the GameBoy. Faster, prettier, and hope that you can get as many 'dedicated' users as possible. Convince them that they're right, slap a system on them, and send them out to the front line of the console wars. 5 years ago, any GameGear 'dedicated' user would be happy to explain to you that the GameGear is color and backlit, and your GameBoy wasn't. Never mind that their games were nowhere near as fun as your monochrome ones, and that they had to change their 6 AA batteries every other day. This isn't to say that I was one of the ones who praised Gameboy and downed the GameGear. I owned one, and I liked it. If, however, you were to ask me which I liked more, I would have told you the truth, the Gameboy. And so the systems come and go. GameGear had color. Lynx had better graphics, Game.com has internet connection.. so on and so forth. There's always something. What is SNK have? Good support. But what is it USING? The ability to make it's buyers have the sudden urge to go out and tell every Gameboy player in the world that they've somehow had their life change by this piece of plastic they've invested in, and that this makes them vastly superior to them. What they should do, is focus on the games and support, the things that really make the system in the end. And the NGPC could easily do this, and promote their excellent fighting games, their support from Namco, Capcom, and even Sega. But alas, they focus more on showing that this system is a little faster than the Gameboy, shows a little more colors than the Gameboy, and even the casing colors are prettier than the Gameboy's. SNK gets an 'A' for making a very nice system, and an 'F' for some of the most annoying marketing I've ever seen. Now, onto the machine itself. 40 hours on 2 AA batteries is very nice. You'll also need a lithium battery, because the system saves information like the date and time, and the default color pallet when playing old Neo Geo Pocket games. (Does anyone actually own these?) Turning the NGPC on without a game lets you play around with the "Pocket Menu", which contains various little features that are almost, but not entirely, completely useless. Things like a calendar... which you can't edit or add to at all, like the one in Mario DX,... all you can do it look at it, and other toys like horoscopes and a function that lets you see what time it is in other time-zones. The only thing that could be useful is the alarm... but the NGPC's speakers are far too weak for this to be of any practical use. They're nifty little things, but I never use them. Aright, lets say you have a game in instead. You turn the machine on by holding a power button on for a second, and you're greeted by a Neo Geo start up screen. Standard stuff. Sound is about the same as your GBC... with only one speaker. hmm... You'd think SNK would try to put more buttons on their competing system, but instead they put less. Only two main buttons, and a small 'option' button, which acts like a 'Start' button. That's all. Instead of an 8 way directional pad on the left, there's an 8 way 'stick'. Initially, the stick feels cool as you're moving through the pocket options for the first time. It moves in a full 360, and 'clicks' when you reach one of the 8 positions. It's different. However, you will soon learn that the stick... must die. You will learn to hate the stick. The stick... is pure evil. The concept behind it is obviously that you never have to take your thumb off it, and be constantly sliding it to the next position, as opposed to the 'tapping' that is often involved in using a 8-way pad. I soon learned that having a 360 stick that only has 8 positions is more trouble that it's worth. I can't help but notice that control is more difficult on platform games than it would be if I were using a D-pad, even after getting use to the stick. And on fighting games it's often more difficult to execute moves, and you jump a little more than you want. Someone who was developing Pac-Man obviously got sick of this, and included a ring that fits on the stick that makes it control more tightly. But... what if I don't want yet ANOTHER Pac-Man game... The guts of this thing are what make it nice. It's capable of some nice speed and detail. It's about one step up from the Gameboy... but many steps down from the 16-bit console systems that it was supposed to compare to. But, as it's been said before, it's the quality of games that make the system. And this is where it will be determined how long SNK can keep this system 'alive'. SNK makes good fighting games, and the fighting games are the only ones that really stand out. The other major games, like Sonic Pocket Adventure, and Metal Slug, are really really average when compared to their Gameboy counterparts like Wario Land 3 and Bionic Commando. The plus side is, you're guaranteed not to get the occasional flop that the Gameboy gets, like Vigilante 8. (That is, if SNK stays careful.) Now the ultimate question that you're asking, and the question I get at least a million times a day, is "Which is better, GBC or NGPC." Well, I can't answer that question. No one can. I've already told you which system I personally like better. But the truth is, I enjoy them both. But SNK can only rely on graphics for so long. If they start focusing on GAMES, and keep getting support, they may just get the longevity they need. Liked: Good graphical quality. Good support. Hated: The stick... damn the stick. Little improvement on sound. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Improve: More buttons! Something... besides that stick, anything. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Final Words: I'll be very interested to see what becomes of this system in 3 years. And what SNK's response will be to the many online and graphical features and support of the Gameboy Advance. If they can keep the quality 3rd parties, and make it easy to port GBC/GBA games to it, we may still be buying games for it. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Score: 75% ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Secrets: Look at the little doggy-thingy when the alarm goes off! Dance! Dance fool, dance!