Neo Geo Games #2

Magician Lord (1990)
By: Alpha Denshi / SNK Genre: Platform/Fighting Players: 1 Difficulty: Hard
Featured Version: SNK Neo Geo MVS First Day Score: 32,040 (one credit)
Also Available For: Neo Geo AES & CD (ports), PS2, PSP, Wii (on compilations)
Download For: Wii Virtual Console, PSN, Xbox Live

Although the Neo Geo is generally known these days for its one-on-one fighting games, shoot 'em ups, and perhaps also the skillish Metal Slug series, the first run of games for SNK's powerhouse was actually a bit more varied. One of the many standout titles was Magician Lord, a shooty-platformer which takes place in a probably-ancient land called Cadacis which has become consumed with chaos and evilness again after many years of peace. This is all down to a foul sorcerer known as Gal Agiese who has escaped from his magical prison and wrought havoc upon the land. The only hope for the fair people of Cadacis is some guy called Elta who is apparently the 'last descendant' of the much-fabled Magician Lord of old who previously vanquished the heathenous Gal Agiese and his demonic buddies. Quite why he's the last descendant, though, I don't know, maybe he's impotent.

Neo Geo Round-Up #1

I've never really been the biggest fan of one-on-one fighting games, I'm sorry to say. I did get drawn in by the Street Fighter II craze like most gamers around that time, but aside from that game and a few other Capcom examples, it's a genre I haven't spent too much time on. This may be because I'm not that good at them. Learning the often-complicated special move commands and performing elaborate combos can be very satisfying but I'm not one of those gamers that it comes naturally to.

Mainly for this reason, most of the examples found on the Neo Geo have been largely neglected here in RKS Land. In an effort to rectify that, however, I have decided to take a look at each fighting game series found on SNK's mighty console in the form of round-ups. I can't promise they will be the most comprehensive evaluations as the finer points of such games are often lost on me, but I shall do my best. These posts, much like all of my posts, are more for my benefit than yours anyway, assuming anyone is even reading this, as they motivate me to play games I've seldom or never played before, but I do of course hope you like them! First up was going to be the Fatal Fury series which was, I believe, the first SNK fighting game series, but there are about a million of them. So instead, I've started with one I'm at least a little familiar with - the Art of Fighting series. Before I get started, however, here's a bit of general info on the series.

Neo Geo A-Z

SNK probably weren't really renowned as the biggest arcade company around in the late 80's, so when then unveiled their own console it was a surprise to many. Their monstrous 2D powerhouse was way out of the price range of most gamers too, and that's even more the case now for collectors, but it has some cracking games that hold up well today. Here I will take a look at all of them. Up next is:

N is for...

Nam-1975 by SNK (1990)

One of the very first Neo Geo games was this mighty fine into-the-screen shooter which pits you (and an optional friend) as American soldiers against what I assume must be the entire Viet Cong army, including millions of soldiers as well as plenty of support vehicles. Good fun for one or two players, and addictive too.

The Quest To Like a Football Game #3

Super Sidekicks a.k.a. Tokuten Ou (1992)
By: SNK  Genre: Sport  Players: 1-2  Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: SNK Neo Geo MVS  First Day Score: Lost 1-0 :(
Also Available For: Neo Geo AES

With our current season of football about half over I thought this was an opportune time to take a look at another game based on the ultra-popular sport. The first two examples I tried were quite early attempts, however, so I've instead gone for a slightly more modern take on the subject this time, in the form of this game which is, perhaps surprisingly, one of several such games on SNK's powerhouse arcade-based system. As a result of this arcadey nature, there are far fewer options than even the technically-primitive games I played before; just the two in fact - SNK Cup (one player) or Vs. Play (two players). Each player can then choose from twelve national teams split into two groups, and then... that's it, you're straight into the game! Fortunately, it's not too complicated.

Neo Geo Games #1

Top Hunter: Roddy & Cathy (1994)
By: SNK Genre: Platform/Fighting Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: SNK Neo Geo MVS First Day Score: Don't know, doesn't record scores :(
Also Available For: Neo Geo AES & CD
Download For: Wii Virtual Console

The names 'Roddy' and 'Cathy' may not conjure very heroic images in one's mind - they sound more like the hosts of a kiddies TV show to me - but they are the names of the two heroes found in this here leapy slap-fest which SNK graced us with mid-way through the Neo Geo's life. It's not an easy game to categorise either - it takes the form of a platformy run 'n' gunner, but with much fightyness instead of guns. Well, kind of. Anyway, our 'heroes' (chortle) are apparently bounty hunters who are sent "to put a stop to a colony of Galactic Pirates called the Klaptons who threaten and plunder the cosmos". These cretinous pirates have seized four elemental planets and it's your job as Roddy (player one), and possibly Cathy (player two) as well, to reach and defeat each planet's newly-installed leader, all of whom are of course working for the heinous main man, Captain Klapton.

Currently Playing...

Neo Turf Masters by Nazca Corporation (1996) - Neo Geo

I try to cover a decent range of games and systems here at Red Parsley but I really don't feature enough Neo Geo games - it is after all regarded by many as the ultimate hardcore gamers' machine - so, only a few nights past, I decided it was high time I looked at another of its fine titles. This was not, however, Neo Turf Masters which, as long-time readers may be aware, I've already reviewed!

When gamers visit the Neo Geo it's most often for one of its fine fighting games or shmups, but the game I've spent most time with is this one. I'm probably the only gamer in the world that can say that but I don't care, I have always been very keen on arcadey golf games and, aside from the mighty Everybody's Golf series, this one has long been my favourite.

That makes it easy to get distracted by it when I'm meant to be looking into some new titles to review! It features Match Play and Stroke Play options for one or two players, four decent, similar-looking courses based in USA, Japan, Australia, and Germany to explore, and six golfers to do it with - but this stuff is all par for the course with golf games really (pun definitely intended - chuckle!).

Run 'n' Gun Games #6

Cyber-Lip (1990)
By: SNK Genre: Run 'n' Gun Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: SNK Neo Geo MVS First Day Score: 26,600
Also Available For: Neo Geo AES & CD

If you asked a random bunch of retro gamers what their favourite run 'n' gun game is, some would probably name a Contra title, one or two may go for Gunstar Heroes, but most will probably start talking excitedly about a Metal Slug game. It's a series the Neo Geo is famous for but before it came Cyber Lip. It was one of the first Neo Geo games and it's not one that's often spoken about with much affection. Like the aforementioned examples it's a two-player game; the heroes in this case are named Rick and Brook (snigger) and they are apparently our last hope to save Earth! The year is 2020 and our colonies in space have suffered several attacks. To defend them we built a military supercomputer but unfortunately both it and the army it controls have started malfunctioning which has seen hordes of crazy androids and lords knows what else go on the rampage back home!

One-on-One Fighting Games #2

King of the Monsters (1991)
By: SNK Genre: Fighting Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: SNK Neo Geo MVS First Day Score: 47,640
Also Available For: Neo Geo AES, MegaDrive, SNES
Download For: Wii Virtual Console

The Neo Geo has gained a great deal of fame and adulation over the years for a variety of reasons but much of this has come from fans of its many one-on-one fighting games. The flagship series must surely be King of Fighters, but fighters are not the only thing it's possible to be king of! All these human-based games are all very well but even the most creative minds can only do so much with our soft, fleshy, watery bodies. What we need is for someone to open their mind to the possibilities that other beings could bring to the genre. No, I'm not talking about robots, I think we've had just about enough of those metallic buffoons clanging into each other (eeek!). Something with the unpredictability of nature is still required I think, but a good helping of muscles, fangs, and a bit of primeval ferocity wouldn't hurt either. Sounds like a job for the Japanese...

Single Screen Platform Games #10

Zupapa! (2001)
By: Face / SNK Genre: Platform Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: SNK Neo Geo MVS First Day Score: 138,300
Also Available For: Nothing

As great as the Neo Geo was (and still is), it was never anything other than a hardcore gamer's system, and one for rich hardcore gamers at that! With that in mind, it's pretty damn impressive that it lasted as long as it did - over a decade in fact. After the world failed to end at the turn of the millennium, however, releases started drying up as SNK suffered financial problems. There were still a few releases though. These were mostly the fighting games that had made the system so famous over the years but a few other games sneaked through. One of these was Zupapa!, released around the same time SNK were being reborn as Playmore, and an unusual game by Neo Geo standards. It wouldn't have been a particularly unusual release on other formats of the day but it stood out a bit more on SNK's machine...

Neo Geo Shmups #1

Andro Dunos (1992)
By: Visco Corp / SNK Genre: Shooting Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: SNK Neo Geo MVS First Day Score: 52,650
Also Available For: Neo Geo AES

One of the many subjects recently under the microscope here at Red Parsley was that of shoot 'em ups for SNK's monstrous arcade and home console system. It hosts some damn good ones for sure but here I'll take a more detailed look at one of the ones that didn't make the cut and, like a surprising number of Neo Geo shmups, it was released early on in the system's life. It's a game that isn't looked upon with much affection by the Neo Geo fanboys either. In all fairness, I suppose when you have the likes of Pulstar and Blazing Star to get your teeth into it has a lot to live up to, but what little I've known about the game prior to playing it for this feature made it seem inoffensive enough, and thanks to a recent visit by my good retro gaming buddy, Luke, I had the chance to finally give it a good going over.

Top Five Neo Geo Shmups

I think it's fair to say that the Neo Geo is best known for the masses of fighting games available for it, as well as perhaps the splendid Metal Slug series, but it's also played host to some corking shooters. Like most games on the system, they're hardly the pinnacle of originality but it's tough to complain when the quality is so high! Here's the best five (in my opinion, of course!):

Games-Related Top Fives Disclaimer: I've traditionally stuck to the games I know and love so far, and these game-related top fives reflect that. One of the purposes of this blog is diversify my gaming experiences, to play games I haven't played before, so I will do new game-related top fives in a few years to see how different they are!

5. Viewpoint (1992)

I've actually got the PlayStation version of this splendid game which I'm told is far inferior to this Neo Geo original but, aside from slightly different graphics and a new soundtrack, I'm struggling to tell them apart. Both versions are isometrically-viewed blasters with the same enemies and stage layouts, and both are harder than ten angry Chuck Norris's, and it's this savage difficulty that prevents the otherwise original and addictive game from featuring higher on this list. Perhaps tellingly, the six stages aren't very long, but they're sure packed with some unique features and tough enemies, and should last a good while. The graphics are very polished and look lovely throughout while the soundtrack is fantastic. The Zaxxon-inspired viewpoint (no pun intended) takes a bit of getting used to, but play this for a few minutes and you'll soon find yourself hooked.

Exploring the Neo Geo - Part 2

As an avid fan of arcade games it's inevitable I'll have played some Neo Geo games at some point. I did, however, miss out on many of the system's earliest releases owing to my allegiance to Sega's magnificent MegaDrive which was of course ousted as the most powerful home console by SNK's powerhouse (as well as arguably the SNES but that's a topic for another time). Still, time heals all wounds as they say, and here is where I've been taking a look at some of the very earliest games that were released on the Neo Geo hardware to see if they really were better than those available on my beloved MD. Four of the first five I looked at in 'Part 1' were decent enough and now I'll take a look at another five, including:

Fatal Fury (1991)

One-on-one fighting games are arguably what the Neo Geo brand is best known for so it's a wonder it's taken me this long to finally play one! Well, I've played a few before but this is still a first for Red Parsley! I believe this is one of the cheapest AES carts around and that's presumably because it's sequels are so much better, but I still enjoyed this original. I was surprised to find that only three characters are selectable but it still plays well enough in the same sort of way as the original Street Fighter 2 does compared to later games. The graphics and music are quite nice with each fighter's stage fairly memorable. The room for improvement is clear to see but it's a good start for the series and least it actually is one-on-one, unlike those stupid tag battles that tarnish many of the later incarnations. The absence of Mai is hard to get used to though...

Exploring the Neo Geo - Part 1

Back at the very beginning of the 90's, I was a very proud MegaDrive owner. It was the newest and most powerful console ever at that point and I was happy to point this out to anyone who cared enough to listen, and indeed many who couldn't care less. I was in this privileged position for only a short while, however, when I started seeing reports of a new console by some company called SNK. Who the hell were they? Ohhh yeah, now I think about it, weren't they the company behind a few arcade hits like Vanguard and Ikari Warriors? Very impressive, but releasing a few arcade games is one thing, releasing an entire home console system is another thing entirely. I thought the days when any old upstart could (or rather, would) release a new format were long gone, and here was this medium-sized arcade company throwing their hat in the ring. They couldn't possibly pull it off, could they?

It turned out that they meant business! In the kind of move that would make or break the company, they first released their flashy new hardware in the arcades with the MVS (Multi Video System) which was an arcade machine built to a standard configuration and which could be fitted with up to six different games. Following swiftly on from this was the AES (Advanced Entertainment System), the immense home console version of the arcade hardware. The hardware was based on a Motorola 68000 CPU and a Zilog Z80 co-processor which was the same as that used by the MegaDrive. SNK's machine, however, was packed with lots of custom chips which gave it a lot more power than Sega's machine, or indeed some of the consoles that came after it. The games released for the system was direct ports of their arcade counterparts. If any proof was needed of their authenticity, it was possible to buy a memory card, use it at home, save your position in a game, take the memory card to your local arcade, and continue playing there. Impressive stuff!

Golf Games #2

Neo Turf Masters a.k.a. Big Tournament Golf (1996)
By: Nazca Corp  Genre: Sports  Players: 1-2  Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: SNK Neo Geo MVS
Also Available For: Neo Geo AES & CD
Download For: Wii Virtual Console

I've never really been a fan of the fiddly, drawn-out games that seemed to exclusively populate this genre for the first decade or so of its existence. I've always preferred the arcade style approach, so the first golf game that I got into, or even played for more than a few minutes, wasn't one of the famous Leaderboard games on the 8-bit micros. Nor was it one of the many, many technically-impressive Links games that swamped the PC in the early-to-mid-90's. I know what you might be thinking now but it wasn't even this game for the Neo Geo. No, the first golf game I played at any length was actually the mini version of this game that was released for the console's little brother, the Neo Geo Pocket, so I'm more than a little interested to see how this version compares.

Golf Games #1

Top Player's Golf (1990)
By: SNK  Genre: Sports  Players: 1-2  Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: SNK Neo Geo MVS
Also Available For: Neo Geo AES & CD

I can certainly see why they wouldn't appeal to everyone but I really enjoy a good golf game now and then. Not the kind that takes an hour to set up a shot of course, I'm not that serious about them, but arcadey ones or, even better, those Japanese anime-style ones are fantastic fun and a welcome break from fast-paced shmups or racing games. I already have a few favourites games of this type, including another for SNK's splendid console, but this series of features will hopefully uncover more for me to enjoy. This one, an early release for the Neo Geo arcade and home system, is certainly arcadey by its very nature, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's good.

Overhead Racers #6

Neo Drift Out (1996)
By: Visco Corp  Genre: Overhead Racing  Players: 1  Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: SNK Neo Geo MVS
Also Available For: Neo Geo AES & CD, Arcade (variation)

From around the early to mid-90's the stagnating genre of overhead racing games suddenly saw something of a revival when lots of rally-based variations started appearing. Many companies made offerings but credit for this sub-genre can largely be given to Visco Corp. Their 1991 game, Drift Out, though frustrating and tricky to play, was one of the first games of this type and swapped the traditional overhead racing game viewpoint for a zoomed-in perspective which allowed for much more detail and longer, more complex courses. It wasn't hugely successful but sufficiently so to give rise to two sequels. The first of these had the superb idea of shifting the viewpoint further still to an angled-overhead perspective and the game was much better as a result but it still had its problems. I'm hoping this sequel, using Neo Geo hardware, would attend to them.

Scrolling Fighting Games #3

Robo Army (1991)
By: SNK Genre: Fighting Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: SNK Neo Geo MVS First Day Score: 10,500
Also Available For: Neo Geo AES & CD

Ask most people what kind of game they associate with the mighty Neo Geo and most will undoubtedly say one-on-one fighting games. This is understandable since the machine is positively flooded by games of this type, and mostly good ones too, but what of scrolling fighting games? Well, unknown by me until recently, there is one that goes back just about as far as the Neo Geo itself does! The moment of revelation for me came at the recent R3Play Gaming Expo in Blackpool where my friend Rich and I discovered the only AES at the show was running a game of the type in question. So, I'd discovered its existence, but the fighting game pedigree of the host console gave it a lot to live up to. Is the system as adept at the scrolling variety of fighting games?