Tat Tuesday.

A few months ago, while speaking about the Game Gear, I mentioned the Neo Geo Pocket. It was another failed usurper to Nintendo's handheld dominance. Like the aforementioned Game Gear it was an awesome little system that while technically superior could not overcome the Game Boy. To be fair to those dearly departed systems nothing has come close to pushing Nintendo out of the number 1 spot. Sony has had some success but Nintendo just continues to rule the handheld scene. Which is a shame because the Neo Geo Pocket was a fantastic system. I loved it. To me it was the unofficial successor to the Game Gear. The Nomad doesn't count.

I have to make one thing clear before we go on. I said "Neo Geo Pocket" earlier, but I was referring to the "Neo Geo Pocket Color". The systems were practically identical aside from a few technical details. For some reason the 'Color' part of the name fell away from my memory. The Original Neo Geo Pocket met with less than stellar sales and was immediately replaced with the Color version. With that out of the way let's get down to details.

The Neo Geo Pocket Color, from here own referred to as the NGPC, was released in Japan on March 16, 1999, in America on August 6, 1999, and in Europe on October 1, 1999. I don't remember how I found out about it probably from a commercial or an add in a Comic Book. Actually, I may have been buying Video Game Magazines at the time so that could be it. However I found out about it, I had to have one.

While the NGPC was more powerful than the then current Game Boy, it was a 16bit system, it could display 146 colors on screen at a time, had long battery life, among other advances, and could connect to the the Sega Dreamcast, that wasn't the main selling point for me. I was moved by something else. It looked cool. It had a layout similar to my beloved Game Gear and didn't have the same 'kiddy' styling of the Game Boy Color. That's not to say that the Game Boy Color wasn't an awesome system. It was. I still have mine. Actually I still have both. To this day the NGPC just looks more sophisticated.

The styling was a big selling point. The NGPC came in a number of different color/styles. I had the Silver one. Compared to my Purple Game Boy Color it felt like a serious piece of tech. I wasn't the only one who felt that way. I remember having an argument with a friend about which was cooler my NGPC or his Game Boy Color. We had to get a third party to settle the matter. I won.

No matter how good a Video Game System looks it eventually comes down to the games. The NGPC was no slouch in that department. SNK, the company that released the system, had a large library of IPs to work with. These included Metal Slug, Final Fight, Fatal Fury, and King of Fighters. Most of those were fighting games which absolutely shone on the system thanks to the analog thumbstick. This innovation made the system the go to Hand Held for fighting games. The system wasn't limited to those games however. At this time Sega was out of the Hand Held market and allowed SNK to use Sonic on the NGPC. With that license and a varied library of genres the NGPC was anything but a one trick pony.

With all of that going for it you may be wondering why the system failed. Well the Game Boy Color was doing incredibly well thanks to a little title called Pokemon. That series was just about to reach it's height of popularity and fighting a juggernaut like that is difficult. It is even more difficult when the next generation of the Game Boy the Game Boy Advance is looming large in the distance. Things become downright impossible when the company behind the system is having problems. Serious problems. In 2000 SNK was bought by Aruze, a Japanese company that was known for making Pachinko machines. A year later the company filed for bankruptcy and placed it IPs up for auction. Eventually SNK was bought by Playmore, a company that was started by Eikichi Kawasaki the original founder of SNK, but it was too late. The system was dead in the US. It would continue to sell in Asia and pop back up in the US but at that point it wasn't even an after thought.

The NGPC was the only real competition the Game Boy had since the death of the Game Gear. Had SNK been in a better position we could have seen something great. A new NGPC to compete with the Game Boy Advance, and then the DS. Who knows. It might still be around fighting the 3DS. Oh wait it is. Well kind of. You see SNK is releasing a semi-followup. The NeoGeo X is more of a portable version of the old Neo Geo system but it does take some visual ques from NGPC. It isn't actually competing with the 3DS but it's mere existence brings a smile to my face. It allows me to think about what could have been. As someone who always preferred Hand Held systems the NGPC is one of my all time favorite systems. In fact it stands second to only the Game Gear. I miss both of them but I fell the NGPC had a brighter future. Just imagine what if.

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