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Being a Sega fan, you probably would’ve expected me to’ve got a Game Gear or even the rare-ish Nomad instead of this, but there’s something about this console that caught my attention, and I figured it would be pretty cool to get. And heck, SNK seems to have had a pretty good relationship with Sega anyway - they’ve provided numerous quality titles on both the Saturn, making use of the extra RAM cartridges, and still providing the Dreamcast with games in the not so productive years, and Sega’s provided games for the NGP also. There’s even that link cable that connects the NeoGeo Pocket to the Dreamcast. Anyhow…
Even though the console was 1st released in 1998 as a black & white system, a colour version came out the next year, and came in a nice variety of smart looking colours itself also. The version I bought (which was actually for my birthday) is a brand new Japanese model, but seeing as there’s no region dealie, and that you can set the language to English anyway, it doesn’t really matter. The console came in a nice neat square shaped box with folded instruction paper, and the batteries as well.
The NeoGeo Pocket is really comfortable to hold, and the d-pad is simply amazing to use. Talk about moveability! There’s 3 main buttons — A, B and Option. The option button varies in its function from game to game, mostly pausing, but sometimes doing other functions instead. Battery life is excellent, with 2 AA types lasting for 40 hours of use, which wizzes all over the shockingly power hungry Game Gear. (No offence, but it does.) The CR2032 backup memory battery should last for a year or so, seeing as it’s in constant use. There is also a socket for an optional 3V DC power supply too if you want to run the console from something else apart from the standard batteries, and the NGPC saves the juice with its optional auto off dealie. When changing the batteries - especially the CR2032 one, you simply need to make sure that the 2 AA ones remain in the console as you do so, and you won’t lose your saves.
Without a game inserted, the NeoGeo Pocket offers a clock, alarm, horoscope, calendar and world time comparer in the Pocket Menu. Although the world time dealie is a bit useless for me, because it doesn’t have the Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne time line in it, and there doesn’t seem to be any other compatible countries listed. Oh well. The calendar function is useful though and the alarm probably is also, although I haven’t used that yet. The Pocket Menu area also has a catchy tune playing in the background and performs neat transition effects between screen changes.
Plugging in your headphones is the way to go if you want stereo sound, and it requires much less juice on the volume control to actually hear stuff compared to the internal speaker. Plus you won’t annoy people on the train / plane / bus etc.
The screen ratio is almost square coming in at 20:19 in terms of the resolution, with pixels at 0.3mm in size. The image is very clear, especially when you view it from a low angle rather than top down and you even get a nice little animated intro to the console when you turn it on, just like the thing you’d see on a full size home console.
(By the way SNK stands for Shin Nihon Kikaku for those of you who don’t know, and were wondering what the abbreviation was.)

John’s Recommended Games:

SNK vs Capcom — The Match Of The Millenium	King Of Fighters R-2	Gals Fighters
Puyo Pop	Sonic The Hedgehog Pocket Adventure	Neo Turf Masters

New reviews coming when the moon turns to cheese: Sonic The Hedgehog Pocket Adventure, Gals Fighters and Neo Turf Masters.

Specifications On The NeoGeo Pocket, Game Gear and Game Boy Colo(u)r:
(As usual with all my specs, capital “B” is for bytes and lowercase “b” is for bits. If you think I have something wrong, please tell me. It’s probably someone elses fault from where I looked the specs up anyway. ;-P)

	NeoGeo Pocket	Game Gear	Game Boy Color
CPU:	16-bit Toshiba TLCS900H — 6.144 MHz	8-bit Z80 — 3.58 MHz	8-bit Z80 — 4.194304 MHz
RAM:	12 KB	8 KB	8 KB
Video RAM:	?	16 KB	8 KB
Sound:	(12-bit DAC) 3.072 MHz Z80. 6 tone stereo PSG	SN76496 - 4.194304 MHz. 4 channel stereo	4 channel stereo
Audio RAM:	4 KB	?	?
Screen Type:	“High Reflective” Thin Film Transistor LCD	Backlit LCD	LCD
Resolution:	160 × 152 pixels	160 × 146 pixels	256 × 244 pixels
Colours:	4096 (146 at once)	4096 (32 at once)	32768 (32 and 56 at once colour modes, plus high colour mode.)
Sprite Capability:	64 per frame. 4 colours per sprite including transparency.	64 (8 × 8 pixels, 8 × 16 pixels, 16 × 16 pixels [double mode])	40 (8 × 8 pixels, 8 × 16 pixels)
Software Format:	Cartridge	Cartridge	Cartridge
Power Supply (not including transformers and other big fat battery packs):	2 AA size batteries and 1 CR2032	6 AA size batteries	2 AA size batteries
External Connection:	(5-pin serial port) SIO 1 channel. 19200 bps transfer rate	?	(Serial port) 512 Kbps

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