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lttp: Neo Geo Pocket Color - System history, my thoughts on this pretty cool system
- Thread starter A Black Falcon
- Start date
RelentlessRolento
Member
Where's the best place to get game carts from for this.. Tempted to play it again
Ben Morales
Member
RelentlessRolento said:
I've been getting some pretty good deals on Ebay with the "Buy It Now" auctions. Some are as low as $8 after shipping. I've got Sonic, Puzzle Bobble, and Card Fighters shipping out to me for that price.
Ok, for a while I have been kinda curious about slots/pachinko games from Japan and I noticed there are some available on NGPC. Are any of them honorable mentions? Or should I just avoid them?
ganbareneopokekun said:
Yeah, I've been following that game since it was first released and it pretty much was the predecessor of WarioWare games. I still need to get it, just a shame that it seems to be so rare these days, like it was when it came out.
CecilMcW00t said:
Thanks, I was worried I would sound a bit long winded there. Not sure if I'm on people's ignore list or anything as I tend to kill threads sometimes for some reason. *shrugs*
But yeah, noticed the many many multiplayer games the system had? It definitely embraced that part of portable gaming. In some cases even more so than the GameBoy! It always tickled me because not to many people had the system, but it definitely added more value to they're already robust single player modes. As for the Worm Light, see my reply to ABF below.
A Black Falcon said:
I didn't mean to take anything away from your list as it was very well done! I mostly posted that link for the unreleased games and I was a bit tired and didn't feel like typing the whole thing.
A Black Falcon said:Yeah, it is really sad that the system died so quickly. It would be so great if we'd gotten some of those games...
I will say though, by mid to late '01 the system would have been in trouble. I know, that would have given it a full year to year and a half more than it got (before it was canned in the US in May '00 anyway; in Japan of course as my list shows Japan did get some more games through that year, though I'm sure Aruze did cancel many games at that point), but once the GBA was out, how long do you think the NGPC could still have competed for? I mean, the Wonderswan Color managed to go on for a few years after the GBA's release, but it was clearly fading, and it had Final Fantasy helped. SNK would have had the same problem but maybe worse, without a draw like FF (Dragon Quest, of course, was on GBC/GBA). Would SNK have had to release another system already? And how would they have afforded to do that?
Still though, certainly, I wish it had lasted longer. But even if it didn't last long, at least the system has some pretty good games on it...
True and when you put it that way, it really was the perfect portable parallel to the Dreamcast and it's nemesis the PS2. We appreciate the games that did come out because they remain as fun as they were back then and helped give these consoles their identity in a way no other console can quite copy!
A Black Falcon said:I had a GBC Worm Light back then. Worm Lights use LED lights in them, so I'd imagine that unless it was broken somehow, the thing probably still works... I did break my GBC wormlight, but that was because I used it on my GBA for a long time (instead of buying a GBA wormlight) and in order to use a GBC wormlight on the GBA you have to rotate it around. Eventually that broke the thing, go figure.
Yeah, the NGPC worm light was great when it was working. I remember Nyko saying they couldn't use the serial port because unlike the GBC's, it didn't have enough power for a light to hook up to it. So they had to create a battery pack with the light attached to that instead. It worked fine, but after a while, the thing just wouldn't hold a charge very good (same with the Shock N Rock I posted earlier). I just ended up using the system without addons in the end really.
A Black Falcon said:
Yeah, Making Mode especially lead to hours and hours of replayability, which in a fighting game is pretty substantial, as use have the many characters to master already, not to mention perfecting your game around your character(s) of choice. One of my favorite equipable items was a gun. Yes a gun in a KOF game. It didn't exactly shoot any bullets, but what it did was that at the end of a certain combo, your character would then hold a big gun and do the equivalent of a powerful fire move. It wasn't cumbersome and flowed in with your existing moves pretty naturally. Kyo was who I mostly used in that mode too! There were quite a few others, but that was the most memorable one to me.
A Black Falcon said:
Yeah, now I'm in the mood to get the games I missed out on as well! Look forward to your reviews!
CecilMcW00t said:
From what I remember, none of them are pretty memorable or remarkable. There was that Super Real Mahjong game though. It was notable for recreating the full strip scenes from the arcade games or at least as pretty close as a portable could accurately get for it's time.
thelatestmodel
Junior, please.
Still got my Stone Blue one and still love it. I owned it from launch and it was a really special time in my life.
I was 17. I had just discovered an independent games store in my town where I could go and hang out with like-minded people and explore my hobby in ways I had never been able to before. Imports, unusual titles, Neo-Geo, retro systems I had never played before, it was like an Aladdin's cave. On top of that, I was getting into MAME and other emulators as well. It was an explosion of gaming knowledge and discovery.
The Dreamcast was in full swing, and we constantly marvelled at the quality and quirkiness of each new release. And on top of all that, the NGPC came out, and I somehow managed to scrape together the cash to buy one.
I had never owned a handheld system before, and now I suddenly had a way to do proper gaming on the move. I picked up Pac-Man, Biomotor Unitron, Metal Slug, Puzzle Bobble, King Of Fighters R2, Card Fighters, Faselei, Evolution, Sonic, and Cotton over a period of about a year. I carried it everywhere with me and sunk hours into every title, they were all just so good. Card Fighters got the most play time by far - 85 hours or so, I got 299/300 cards thanks to playing link-up with my friend who owned the SNK version.
One summer in particular was just glorious - camping holiday in France, with family, great food, lounging by the pool, my NGPC, an MVS cabinet at the campsite, and lots of hot girls at le discotheque.
I think the console represents more to me than just a great handheld with an amazing library and an ingenious control stick. It represents one of the happiest times of my life. It will always be special.
I was 17. I had just discovered an independent games store in my town where I could go and hang out with like-minded people and explore my hobby in ways I had never been able to before. Imports, unusual titles, Neo-Geo, retro systems I had never played before, it was like an Aladdin's cave. On top of that, I was getting into MAME and other emulators as well. It was an explosion of gaming knowledge and discovery.
The Dreamcast was in full swing, and we constantly marvelled at the quality and quirkiness of each new release. And on top of all that, the NGPC came out, and I somehow managed to scrape together the cash to buy one.
I had never owned a handheld system before, and now I suddenly had a way to do proper gaming on the move. I picked up Pac-Man, Biomotor Unitron, Metal Slug, Puzzle Bobble, King Of Fighters R2, Card Fighters, Faselei, Evolution, Sonic, and Cotton over a period of about a year. I carried it everywhere with me and sunk hours into every title, they were all just so good. Card Fighters got the most play time by far - 85 hours or so, I got 299/300 cards thanks to playing link-up with my friend who owned the SNK version.
One summer in particular was just glorious - camping holiday in France, with family, great food, lounging by the pool, my NGPC, an MVS cabinet at the campsite, and lots of hot girls at le discotheque.
I think the console represents more to me than just a great handheld with an amazing library and an ingenious control stick. It represents one of the happiest times of my life. It will always be special.
RelentlessRolento
Member
Prob before your story of camping and the fact that Ive had alot of handhelds (I still prefer them over home consoles), I pretty much went through the same motions and was around that age.thelatestmodel said:
At the time I started to get into TCGs/CCGs so card fighters was a dream to me. I still regard it as the all time best digital TCGs to ever made. Always has been a dream of mine to see it get made for physical play.
A Black Falcon
Member
Puzzle Bobble Mini / Bust-A-Move Pocket - This essentially is a port of the first Bust-A-Move game, years after its sequels had released on other platforms. In that respect, I find this disappointing -- of the BAM games I own, the closest comparison for this one is the Game Gear version of BAM1. There are small differences, like that the NGPC version has on-cart saving while the GG version doesn't, but the basic features are quite similar. Like that version, the central mode is a puzzle mode where you play 99 puzzles, one after another. There is no grid where you choose a path, no variety, nothing, just 99 puzzles. It doesn't even require you to play them in order -- all 99 are unlocked from the beginning, and you can play them in any order. At least on the GG version you have to play them in order, and it uses passwords to save your progress! However, the NGPC version does save your top times for each stage, which is nice. Obviously, on the GG, or SNES, the game won't do that as those versions don't have oncart saving. My copy is broken however, so it won't even do that, it won't save times in puzzle mode. Bah, I might need another copy... though I'm not sure, this isn't one of my favorite versions of BAM, for sure.
Apart from the link-up versus mode, the other two modes are a Vs. CPU mode and an Endless mode. Endless mode was what I play the most in the GG game, and it's just as good here, except it saves your best scores, which is great (and this does actually save on my copy, so the save chip isn't completely shot, just partially corrupted or something). Vs. CPU mode is a bit different though -- here you choose which enemy you want to face next, so you can fight the eight enemies in any order, while on the GG you fight them in a preset order. Otherwise it's pretty much the same.
Apart from features and modes, the other obvious question is, how well does it play? Controls are identical to the GG version -- the dpad moves, one button shoots bubbles, and the other button slows down movement so you can get pixel-perfect accuracy. However, one thing isn't similar -- screen size, and thus the size of the graphics. The NGPC, like the Game Boy, has a small, nearly square screen. The bubbles, while clear and well drawn, are tiny on the screen. It's hard to tell some of the colors apart, too; indeed, the pink bubbles are particularly tough to tell apart from some of the others. However, the Game Gear version has a larger screen, and larger graphics. It does have a fairly significant amount of slowdown, while the NGPC version has one, but still, the bigger, easier to see graphics make that version more fun to play, in my opinion.
Or, of course, you could play one of the GBA, DS, etc. versions of Bust-A-Move, many of which have much better visibility than the NGPC or Game Boy versions of the game (the GB and GBC versions have that same "tiny little bubbles" issue that the NGPC has), and have lots more features and content too, in many cases.
So yeah, Puzzle Bobble Mini is okay, but flawed. I know there's nothing they could do about the size of the screen, but it is too bad that they chose to base it off of the first Bust-A-Move. It's too bad that this wasn't a conversion of Bust-A-Move 3 for instance, that game has a crazy number of modes and options, and the N64 and PSX versions of BAM3 were released in the US in 1999, the same year as this one (the Saturn version had released a year or two earlier here). BAM4 was out by that point too. I guess SNK was using the original as the basis because the original was the version that had been released on the Neo-Geo, and not the sequels (the original BAM arcade game, and the BAM Again version, are Neo-Geo, but not BAM2, BAM3, etc.), but it results in a somewhat feature-lacking version of the game. And my copy is kind of broken, too.
The Last Blade - I'm not going to give this a full review now because I'm still in the Last Blade 1 portion of the game, but I will say that this game is truly exceptional, and is easily the best of the four NGPC fighting games I own. There are a bunch of modes -- Story, Survival, Time Attack, and Practice, for starters -- lots to buy in the shop (you get money when you win matches that you can use to buy things in the shop), good graphics, great gameplay, and more. I am a huge Last Blade series fan on the Neo-Geo, and this is a great portable conversion of the gameplay. Just awesome stuff.
Apart from the link-up versus mode, the other two modes are a Vs. CPU mode and an Endless mode. Endless mode was what I play the most in the GG game, and it's just as good here, except it saves your best scores, which is great (and this does actually save on my copy, so the save chip isn't completely shot, just partially corrupted or something). Vs. CPU mode is a bit different though -- here you choose which enemy you want to face next, so you can fight the eight enemies in any order, while on the GG you fight them in a preset order. Otherwise it's pretty much the same.
Apart from features and modes, the other obvious question is, how well does it play? Controls are identical to the GG version -- the dpad moves, one button shoots bubbles, and the other button slows down movement so you can get pixel-perfect accuracy. However, one thing isn't similar -- screen size, and thus the size of the graphics. The NGPC, like the Game Boy, has a small, nearly square screen. The bubbles, while clear and well drawn, are tiny on the screen. It's hard to tell some of the colors apart, too; indeed, the pink bubbles are particularly tough to tell apart from some of the others. However, the Game Gear version has a larger screen, and larger graphics. It does have a fairly significant amount of slowdown, while the NGPC version has one, but still, the bigger, easier to see graphics make that version more fun to play, in my opinion.
Or, of course, you could play one of the GBA, DS, etc. versions of Bust-A-Move, many of which have much better visibility than the NGPC or Game Boy versions of the game (the GB and GBC versions have that same "tiny little bubbles" issue that the NGPC has), and have lots more features and content too, in many cases.
So yeah, Puzzle Bobble Mini is okay, but flawed. I know there's nothing they could do about the size of the screen, but it is too bad that they chose to base it off of the first Bust-A-Move. It's too bad that this wasn't a conversion of Bust-A-Move 3 for instance, that game has a crazy number of modes and options, and the N64 and PSX versions of BAM3 were released in the US in 1999, the same year as this one (the Saturn version had released a year or two earlier here). BAM4 was out by that point too. I guess SNK was using the original as the basis because the original was the version that had been released on the Neo-Geo, and not the sequels (the original BAM arcade game, and the BAM Again version, are Neo-Geo, but not BAM2, BAM3, etc.), but it results in a somewhat feature-lacking version of the game. And my copy is kind of broken, too.
The Last Blade - I'm not going to give this a full review now because I'm still in the Last Blade 1 portion of the game, but I will say that this game is truly exceptional, and is easily the best of the four NGPC fighting games I own. There are a bunch of modes -- Story, Survival, Time Attack, and Practice, for starters -- lots to buy in the shop (you get money when you win matches that you can use to buy things in the shop), good graphics, great gameplay, and more. I am a huge Last Blade series fan on the Neo-Geo, and this is a great portable conversion of the gameplay. Just awesome stuff.
I don't know about more so than the Game Boy, the GB has a fair number of link cable titles too... SNK just made a lot of fighting games, so naturally they had link play. GB fighting games have link support too.Ramune said:
You didn't mention my list though, just the other one, so I wasn't sure.I didn't mean to take anything away from your list as it was very well done! I mostly posted that link for the unreleased games and I was a bit tired and didn't feel like typing the whole thing.
Yeah, the DC and NGP/C definitely have similarities for sure. Both were released around the same time, had short lifespans and small game libraries, and saw their creators' companies eventually get bought out. The financial difficulties of SNK and Sega were the central reasons behind their short lifespans, too. And, of course, both had (and have) substantial amounts of love from hardcore gamers, and have libraries that have high quality if not high quantity. This is particularly true for the tiny library of the NGPC, I'd say. (The DC has more games, so it has more weaker ones)
That does sound worse than the nice, simple worm lights for the GBC and GBA. It really was great to just have this little thing that plugged into the link port, that's so much more convenient than something with separate batteries... still, a nice thing to have when you're playing in the dark, or camping, or what have you I'm sure.Yeah, the NGPC worm light was great when it was working. I remember Nyko saying they couldn't use the serial port because unlike the GBC's, it didn't have enough power for a light to hook up to it. So they had to create a battery pack with the light attached to that instead. It worked fine, but after a while, the thing just wouldn't hold a charge very good (same with the Shock N Rock I posted earlier). I just ended up using the system without addons in the end really.
The one thing I've noticed about Making mode is that it's HARD! You have to beat 5-6 enemies in each stage in Making mode, and they don't give you many health refills. It's not a mode for newbies to KOF, that's for sure. Still though, it's pretty cool to have in the game, and does add replayability for sure. The Last Blade, though, has more...Yeah, Making Mode especially lead to hours and hours of replayability, which in a fighting game is pretty substantial, as use have the many characters to master already, not to mention perfecting your game around your character(s) of choice. One of my favorite equipable items was a gun. Yes a gun in a KOF game. It didn't exactly shoot any bullets, but what it did was that at the end of a certain combo, your character would then hold a big gun and do the equivalent of a powerful fire move. It wasn't cumbersome and flowed in with your existing moves pretty naturally. Kyo was who I mostly used in that mode too! There were quite a few others, but that was the most memorable one to me.
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
It's not good or bad IIRC.
A Black Falcon
Member
I paid $40 for mine, loose system with six games in the plastic protective cases. Looking on ebay systems with six games (and no box) are probably worth something in that area. Maybe a bit more or less, but around that, depending on games of course. If it's just the six games that always got included in those packages it'd probably be a bit less than if it included any of the rarer titles.
As for Dark Arms, it's a topdown action-RPG, with more action than RPG. It's just about the only thing in the genre on the platform, though, apart from Dive Alert, which is a completely different kind of thing, so it's likely worth getting anyway. It's a spinoff of an arcade lightgun game series of SNK's, but the handheld title's in a different genre. Yeah, it's an okay game, but not incredible. The system's best games are probably stuff like the Metal Slug, KOF, SNK vs. Capcom, Last Blade, etc. games, to name a few. It's a cool system to have though, worth getting despite the tiny library I think.
... What? The NGPC wasn't pirated within a week as far as I know, apart from emulation I don't know of any piracy for it at all...Postman said:
SiegfriedFM
Member
I just checked, I still have Cardfighters 2, Sonic and Rockman. I also think I have the Dreamcast cable somewhere, even though I never used it.
McBradders
NeoGAF: my new HOME
Such a great system. I was so excited for it I ran a terrible website for it and the UK distributor gave me some carts for review. Good times. Hopefully the 3DS VC will hook us up so more people will know the awesome.
Freezie KO
Banned
I hope it's not port begging to say so, but I too would love the SNK games to land on the VC.
Speaking of which, here another release list:
KoF RPG by SEGA !?
Could have been easily better than Virtua (Fighter RPG) Quest lol.
Reluctant-Hero
Member
How is the re-sake value on these today? I've been thinking if selling mine so I can afford a Vita. I've got:
- clear NGPC unit
- Sonic the Hedgehog
- Capcom vs SNK: MotM
- Capcom vs SNK: SNK vet (cart only)
- Metal Slug 1 (cart only)
- Metal Slug 2 (Euro clamshell case in English)
- Last Blade (Euro clamshell case in English)
- unreleased official carrying case
- link cable
Anyone have an estimate as to how much that's all worth as a package?
- clear NGPC unit
- Sonic the Hedgehog
- Capcom vs SNK: MotM
- Capcom vs SNK: SNK vet (cart only)
- Metal Slug 1 (cart only)
- Metal Slug 2 (Euro clamshell case in English)
- Last Blade (Euro clamshell case in English)
- unreleased official carrying case
- link cable
Anyone have an estimate as to how much that's all worth as a package?
As far as I know. Sonic Pocket Adventure is EXTREMELY cheap. I'm talking like 2 dollars or something. No idea why it's that cheap in the first place since it's actually a good game.
A Black Falcon
Member
That's because it's pretty common, a lot of people bought it.
Look stuff up on ebay if you really want to know, but SvC: MotM is probably the most valuable of those games, and as many people call it the system's best game, it's desirable as well. Last Blade Euro import surely has some value as well though. Sonic and Metal Slug 1 are quite cheap because of how common they are, yeah. Metal Slug 2's not as common as the first one, but it's not too expensive, loose at least. Complete would obviously be worth a bit more.
... Oh, and yeah, they're SvC, not CvS. Remember, the order shows who developed it.
Naked Prime
Member
I've seen Last Blade go for $70-$80. I picked one up off a friend for $30 (only after I helped him get a LE of Disgea 4)
wow. i envy you handheld gamers and your adventurous youth.
sonikokaruto
Banned
nope! it's still as awesome as when i cut myself open with the stupid as fuck repackaging blister
twisteddeeds
Member
i remember when my best mate at the time had one of these...
my, my... he loved it.. and I was soooo jelly...
my, my... he loved it.. and I was soooo jelly...
Parallax Scroll
Banned
best stick
So I dipped and spent in total 100 euro to get a PAL system boxed in good condition and 7 games (only plastic case):
Samurai!2, Metal Slug 1st, Puzzle Bubble, Neo Turf Master, Dark Arms, Sonic Pocket Adventure and SvC:Millennium.
Just got it.
Must say the screen is really nice if can get a good lighting source, no blurriness when playing Sonic.
The only downside is that almost every sprite is a 3 colors affair (usually black,white and another color, Sonic is the exception).
Animations, though, are top notch in most cases.
Samurai!2, Metal Slug 1st, Puzzle Bubble, Neo Turf Master, Dark Arms, Sonic Pocket Adventure and SvC:Millennium.
Just got it.
Must say the screen is really nice if can get a good lighting source, no blurriness when playing Sonic.
The only downside is that almost every sprite is a 3 colors affair (usually black,white and another color, Sonic is the exception).
Animations, though, are top notch in most cases.
ShadyMilkman
Banned
I think I got this around 1999 in the states. I had Metal Slug, Cardfighters Clash, and some sort of mech turn based strategy game (I honestly only remember that it had mechs).
Unfortunately, I have no friggin' clue where the damn thing is. I still have the boxes and manuals for everything, but having since moved to college etc, I have to assume everything is long gone.
Unfortunately, I have no friggin' clue where the damn thing is. I still have the boxes and manuals for everything, but having since moved to college etc, I have to assume everything is long gone.
FrontalMonk
Banned
MotM and CFC for the win. I remember being so excited when they announced CFC for the DS and how disappointed I was in the new system...The classic CFC is forever ingrained into my memory.
ttate90303
Neo Member
Wow, talk about memories. I still have my little collection. I even remember when the rage was to get a little game called Faselei!
NEOGEO Pocket Collection
NEOGEO Pocket Collection