Summary

• SNK’s Neo Geo Pocket Color was a powerful handheld with cutting-edge graphics, audio, and games, but faced stiff competition from Nintendo.
• Although the Neo Geo Pocket Color offered high-quality games and impressive battery life, its premature launch led to its unfortunate demise.
• SNK’s financial problems and bad timing compared to the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance sealed the fate of the Neo Geo Pocket Color.

Nintendo is one of the largest and most innovative companies in the gaming industry and has proven time and time again that it knows exactly how to keep up with trends. There is no better or clearer example of this than the meteoric rise and success of the Game Boy, Nintendo’s premier portable gaming system. When it was released in 1989, the Game Boy took the world by storm. High-quality video game entertainment was suddenly available on the go, anywhere, anytime. This unprecedented success led to fierce competition in the years that followed.

Atari, the granddaddy of the gaming industry, also released the Atari Lynx in 1989. In 1991, Sega released the Game Gear. Even Tiger Electronics jumped into the pool with Game.Com in 1997. At the very end of the decade, Bandai’s WonderSwan, a console exclusive to Japan, was released in 1999. Despite all the efforts and striving for innovation, none of these handhelds could dethrone the Game Boy. Its biggest competitor was undoubtedly the best handheld system of the decade, which few people had heard of and even fewer had ever played with: the Neo Geo Pocket Color.

With the Neo Geo Pocket Color from SNK, the company attempted to enter the North American handheld market

Things didn’t quite go according to plan

Developed by SNK and released in 1999, the Neo Geo Pocket Color was the direct successor to the Neo Geo Pocket, a monochrome handheld system that had been released in Japan just the previous year. SNK was no newcomer to the gaming market, having originally been founded in 1978 and renamed SNK in 1986.

SNK rose to fame in the 80s and 90s by developing an impressive number of highly successful games on both the arcade and home console markets. Series such as Ikari Warrior, Athena, The art of fighting, The King of FightersAnd Metal screw all contributed to SNK’s popularity and success.

SNK’s MVS (Multi Video System) arcade machines offered cutting-edge video game entertainment of all genres. Even their home console, the Neo Geo AES, was an impressive behemoth that brought arcade action directly into gamers’ homes (albeit for the very low price of the equivalent of $1,400).

The release of the Neo Geo Pocket Color was important for two main reasons: first, it put SNK in direct competition with Nintendo in the handheld market, and second, the success of the Neo Geo Pocket Color was a must for SNK given the company’s financial difficulties at the time.

Sadly, the small console was able to establish itself too well and too late in the handheld market, a blow that did not exactly benefit SNK. The failure of the Neo Geo Pocket Color did not directly lead to the collapse of SNKrather, it was one of many dominoes that fell with the closure of the company.

The Neo Geo Pocket Color was a powerhouse among handhelds

Beautiful graphics, clear sound and a simply amazing game library

By the time the Neo Geo Pocket Color came out, Nintendo’s Game Boy Color was already out and taking the world by storm. The idea of ​​a full-color handheld gaming system was by no means new in 1999; a major marketing boost for Atari and Sega for their respective handhelds was the fact that both supported full-color graphics.

The downside of this advanced graphics and audio performance was its huge battery drain, made worse by its poor battery life. While the Neo Geo Pocket Color also boasted crisp 16-bit full-color graphics and audio, unlike its earlier rivals, it offered players around 40 hours of playtime on just two AA batteries. For kids in the ’90s who were still scrounging and stealing batteries from the family TV remote, this was an unprecedented leap in quality.

As a console, the Neo Geo Pocket Color was a pleasure to hold. It was ergonomic and comfortable; its screen, while not backlit, was a good size and offered a horizontal display as opposed to the Game Boy’s vertical screen; rather than a traditional D-pad, it used a microswitched “clicky stick” analog stick that you have to use to believe; and it even had a built-in alarm clock and personalized horoscope. The game selection was absolutely outstanding too.

Metal screw, Sonic the Hedgehog, Pac Man, Ogre Battle, Samurai Showdown; the hits just didn’t stop, and one gem after another, both first-party and licensed games, supported the system. SNK brought its A-game to its handheld, integrating high-quality first-party and third-party titles to support its console.

The Neo Geo Pocket Color was impressive across the board: it was an impressive and affordable handheld system that offered a fantastic selection of games. Unfortunately, even one of the decade’s most ambitious launches couldn’t save SNK’s portable system.

The odds were too bad for the Neo Geo Pocket Color

SNK couldn’t do anything to save it

As the video game market shifted from arcades to home consoles, SNK struggled to keep up. A series of poorly received games and business ventures began to hurt the company terribly around the turn of the millennium. In 2000, SNK was purchased by Aruze, a company that manufactured pachinko machines.

Later, in June 2000, Aruze decided to cease all SNK operations outside of Japan. This move not only marked the end of the Neo Geo Pocket Color, but also the end of SNK. The remaining consoles and games were sold off at ridiculously low prices. Many games were sold in blister packs without their original packaging to clear stocks. What had been a truly standout moment for SNK for a brief and shining moment was quickly wiped out.

The heartbreaking thing about the Neo Geo Pocket Color’s failure is that nothing ever went wrong. It was a very well designed and well made system that offered high quality games with impressive battery life. Unlike Sega and Atari, SNK tapped the biggest names into its games library and included fantastic first and third party support.

Original games for the system, such as Biomotor Unitron And Dark Arms: Beast Buster 1999, proved that the system could deliver excellent gaming experiences that did not rely on brand recognition.

SNK and the Neo Geo brand enjoy modern recognition

Players appreciate them now, despite a bumpy start to the new millennium

The Neo Geo Pocket Color was never going to outdo the Game Boy. No matter how well it did, there was never any chance that SNK would emerge as the dominant handheld company in the gaming industry – and that’s perfectly fine. What mattered was that SNK would be able to produce fun games on a system that performed well.

Ultimately, that’s what every consumer wants: something for their money. SNK’s financial problems caught up with them and derailed any attempts to re-establish their presence in the console market, a fact that should have been obvious even before the Neo Geo Pocket Color was released. But to see the system work so well and offer so much, only to die out in this way, is really unfair.

Caught in the perfect combination of Game Boy Color, WonderSwan, Pokémon, the upcoming Game Boy Advance, and little sales support in the US, the Neo Geo Pocket Color simply didn’t stand a chance. Had it come out a little earlier, it might have sold better. But with the release of the Game Boy Advance in 2001, the Neo Geo Pocket Color’s technology and hardware would have been outdated, making the small system even harder to sell.

It had everything going for it except luck. Today, however, the Neo Geo Pocket Color has made a comeback with the release of the Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Volumes released for Switch and PC. It may not have lasted long, but SNK’s Neo Geo Pocket Color was one of the best handheld systems of all time, even if it flew completely under the radar.