This NGPC stick is so awesome, it's such an incredible control mechanism... I want things like this for more systems too! It's so, so good!
Metal-Geo said:
Loved the fucking NGPC to pieces. I have 3 of those suckers. I love 'em that fucking much.
The joypad (or digital stick, as it's actually called) is incredible. It's beyond perfect.
In fact, I bought a NeoGeo CD controller, which uses the same machninism, hooked it up to my computer to play roms with. And from that moment, I've become kind of depressed by the fact no one made a similar controller for the NES, SNES and Megadrive.
I'm sorry, but I'd have sex with it if I could.
Heh... it is a pretty good stick, for sure.
thetrin said:
The NGPC is a fantastic little system, and still has one of the best analog nubs ever. The circle pad on the 3DS is great, but before it came about, the NGPC had the best analog solution around.
It's not analog, it's digital, like an arcade stick. That's the idea. But yeah it's great.
Going back to it now, I find it a bit of a pain to play because of the lack of back lighting, but I'm usually around a necessary light source. It's nowhere as bad as the original GBA.
It's not that bad, it just needs a little light... as you say, no comparison to the original GBA. I actually didn't mind the original GBA either, but it does have the darkest screen of any handheld I've used without a backlight, and definitely requires a lot of light. The original GB, GBC, NGPC, etc aren't as bad as that. And the NGPC screen is great quality, very clear and sharp picture.
Pietepiet said:
Battery life. The NGPC especially lasted a really long time on just two AA's.
Indeed, and it's a very good reason. Battery life is important in handhelds, and in that respect SNK did a fantastic job with the NGPC -- 30-40 hours on two AAs? That's really good battery life!
schick85 said:
We've got matching systems and the same exact games! They used to sell NGPs packaged with 6 games for $40 a few years back. I'm sure the seller sold his to you.
edit: Oh, you already knew.
Actually I got it in a store, but I'm sure the person who sold it to them had gotten a blisterpack release, yeah.
Alextended said:
It's not exactly a radical opinion. The GBC was just another GB iteration, not a brand new system. Look at the Game Gear for comparison, released 8 years earlier. Surely SNK could have had something with that many colors, a better battery and, I guess, a dimmer screen to help with that, 8 years later. Or the Nomad, a Mega Drive/Genesis in your pocket, 3 years earlier. It's true that the Neo Geo Pocket seemed underpowered, and SNK games weren't exactly worldwide mainstream material even at the time, so it's probably part of the reason it didn't do so well despite the fans raving about how good the beat em ups and the like that you could play on the system were/are.
No, the GBC was a new console. Don't be confused by the dual-mode games, the two have different hardware and there are many GBC games which aren't backwards compatible. In that it's very much like the NGP/NGPC -- there are some games which are B&W titles, some which are dual-mode and work in both systems, and some that are color only. See the NGPC list I posted above for the color-only NGPC games. For the GBC it's easier to tell them apart -- dual-mode titles are in black carts, while color only ones are in clear carts. The two are certainly different systems. The forwards compatibility does make things more complex, but still, they ARE different. The Game Boy Pocket (and Game Boy Light) is the redesigned GB; the GBC is a new system.
As for power, while you are right that handhelds saw almost no increase in power from 1989 until 2001, there are some good reasons for it. First and foremost, battery life. When the handheld systems of the late '90s were released, the NGP/NGPC, WS/WSC, and GBC, they learned the lesson from the Game Boy that the Game Gear and Lynx and TurboExpress and Nomad had all missed -- battery life MATTERS! When you have to pay for six AA batteries every six hours, people are going to be MUCH less likely to want to buy your console.
And so, all of those late '90s systems use non-backlit screens and have somewhat conservative designs that don't push power as much as they could, in order to maximize battery life. I think it was a good decision, the GG and Lynx may be powerful (Lynx especially, that thing is pretty impressively powerful in some ways; I mean, hardware scaling and rotation? You wouldn't see that again in a handheld until the GBA!), but they weren't exactly portable, both for size and battery life reasons.
Sega completely failed to learn that lesson, and never released a smaller or more battery efficient handheld and instead released the even bigger and even worse on batteries Nomad, but SNK and Bandai did, so they released systems that weren't quite as powerful in some ways, but were good enough and had small sizes and good battery lives.
And also, the NGPC was at least more powerful than the GBC. Being more powerful than your main competition is a good thing, I think.
Of course it is true that the GBC was an underwhelming system power-wise, looking back, but at the time we thought it was good enough, and it was an improvement on the original GB at least. It is true though that handhelds really did fail to improve much in terms of system power for over a decade. The Lynx, from 1989, was probably the most powerful handheld released all the way until the release of the GBA.
The only exception, and it is something I want to mention, is the Virtual Boy. It's not really handheld or portable, but it does run on batteries with its own screen, and it was much more powerful than the Game Boy, etc. Sure, it's monochrome, but the system has real power, with a decent CPU, hardware scaling and rotation, real 3d, etc. Color aside the GBC was a big step down from the VB. However, just like the GG, Lynx, etc, the VB got awful battery life.
Oh, and when comparing the WSC/NGPC to the Lynx/GG, I'd also like to mention the screens. Particularly, the vastly improved screen quality of the later systems. Those early '90s ones have such blurry screens... that is something later systems really improved on, and that's important. The sharp, clear graphics of the NGPC make games much more playable than on the older handhelds. This is also true for the GBP/GBC/GBA versus the original GB, of course.
That doesn't mean much when most of its library was Game Boy compatible games, and when the most prominent exception is a Game Boy game with an extra Color dungeon. I guess you can also consider the DSi a full successor to the DS due to its own hardware extras, but that doesn't mean most people would agree with that...
That's not true, LA DX is a dual mode title of course... but lots of GBC games weren't. Basically, GBC games released between launch (late 1998) and 1999 are often dual-mode. However, games from 2000-2002 are usually color only. It's similar on the NGPC -- 1999 titles were mostly dual-mode, but 2000-2001 titles are mostly color only.
meppi said:
Such a tragedy that the system's life was cut short.
Having a Dreamcast and a NeoGeo Pocket Color at the same time was arcade gaming bliss.
I'm sad I'll never witness such a brilliant combination ever again.
Yeah, it seems unlikely, doesn't it.
