There have been plenty of screen mods for more famous consoles for a decade at this point. Big mod developers have industrialised Game Boy mods, and the Game Gear has a few options around. But the more niche consoles like SNK’s lone handheld, or the Bandai Wonderswan, haven’t gotten the same traction.
However, over the last year or two some some no-name screen mods started floating around on Chinese websites like Aliexpress. Much like Game Boy screen mods, the developers adapt various cheap Chinese phone screens and make adapter board/cables to support the old hardware.
It’s always a risk to spend a decent amount on something somewhat unverifiable and try these things out on limited vintage hardware, but some comments on the listing seemed promising, And some videos from the likes of Macho Nacho showed they do actually work well.
Finally one appeared specifically for my preferred Slim console and this one also needed no shell mods, which is important to me as I can use my favourite graphite console without butchering it.
And, well, the results are insane.
It’s not quite centred, the spacers the kit it comes with push it too far left, so I’ll fix that at some point. But it’s just fantastic.
Here it is with my FunnyPlaying Laminated IPS Game Boy Color with a custom shell. In many ways this NGPC one is better as it’s the original screen size, so doesn’t need a custom shell/lens and looks completely correct to the original, just playable indoors now.
There are various pixel modes. I prefer pixel grids if done well, but the pixel grid mode here takes away too much brightness. I’ve found the scanlines one to look best overall as no filter looks too modern, like an emulated look.
Horizontal scanlines
Vertical scanlines (like a Game Gear)
Pixel Grid (looks a bit washed out here due to phone auto adjusting exposure, in reality it’s darker than the above two)
And no filter.
I’d have to say I’ve been playing a lot more Neo Geo Pocket Color because of this!
If anyone is interested here’s the exact listing I used, hopefully it stays active
On another note, there are also new shells now selling with or without the kit. I grabbed one in case I needed it, and it looks fantastic, exactly like the original clear model and very high quality, so these too are recommended.
Unfortunately for Sega, Nintendo well and truly won round 1, and not having a great income stream from their consoles, Sega allowed their games to be released on competing systems like Nintendo’s Famicom and NEC’s PC Engine. The games were published by third parties, but nontheless there were several official Famicom/NES releases where the Sega logo could be seen on a title screen.
By the late 80’s everything had changed however. Sega’s third console the Mega Drive was doing very well, and was eventually a solid competitor to the Famicom/NES and later Super Famicom/SNES. As a result, the concept of Sega on Nintendo (or vice versa) faded from memory as a possibility.
Outside of dodgy Famicom pirates of course…
But by the late 90s, Sega was in a bad position again. All their Mega Drive add-ons had failed to gain decent marketshare, as had their Game Boy competitor the Game Gear. And their latest main console, the Saturn, had been a borderline disaster. While it managed to establish a decent niche in Japan (even outselling the Nintendo 64), their previously strong marketshare in the west had crashed. Their entire legacy rested on the hopes of the new Dreamcast console.
As a result, their publishing rules started to relax again, and they allowed other non-competing platforms to see their crown jewel property Sonic. In 1997 a terrible version of Sonic Jam was released on the Game.com, a terrible console by Tiger Electronics. More notably, Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure was released on SNK’s Neo Geo Pocket Color in late 1999.
On March 31st, 2001, the battle was no more. Sega discontinued the Dreamcast, and started developing games for the remaining platform holders, including Nintendo. The first release was a port of Chu Chu Rocket to Game Boy Advance. The end of the very same year the previously unthinkable had already happened – An official Sonic game on Nintendo.
Two Sonic games were released on December 20 2001. Sonic Advance on Game Boy Advance
And Sonic Adventure 2 on GameCube. In a strange twist of fate, Sonic actually beat Mario to a new Nintendo console, as it would be another six months until Super Mario Sunshine.
It went on from there, and the next Sonic game, while multiplatform, was designed primarily for the Nintendo GameCube.
But for long term fans of both companies, it really really hit home when in 2003 Sega developed a Nintendo game.
This splash screen blew my mind the first time I saw it.
The game? F-Zero GX. And it was one of the greatest games of the generation, and still a killer looking and playing title today.
Technically that was about it for Sega. In 2003 they were taken over my Pachinko company Sammy and have continued as an upper-mid-tier third party developer. And over a decade later, despite varied game quality, Sonic is a strong seller on Nintendo.
By the mid 90s, pretty much everyone had given up attempting to compete with Nintendo in handheld video games. Nintendo had seen off every competitor quite easily in the early years, and in the mid to late 90s the release of the first Pokemon games started a new handheld boom period for them.
So in 1998, with the original Pokemon explosion just rolling out worldwide, a struggling SNK thought they’d give it a go, and released a handheld partner to their Neo Geo home consoles – the Neo Geo Pocket. The platform ran through three models in its short life between 1998 and 2001, and while now a footnote on gaming history, it managed to be a worthwhile Game Boy alternative and is now quite a nice little platform to collect.
The three Neo Geo Pocket models
In terms of capability, the system is somewhat comparable to the Game Boy Color, but what sets it apart from your average handheld is its focus on the fighting game genre, which until then was always quite weak on handhelds.
To facilitate the easier control of fighting games, SNK developed a mini joystick to use as the directional controller instead of a dpad. Feeling somewhere between a genuine joystick and the rather excellent floating dpad of the Sega Saturn controller, the ‘clicky stick’ takes up more profile than a dpad would, but it’s simply a fantastic little controller, much better than dpads for fighting games, and makes playing the handheld a unique experience.
The original model used a black and white LCD like the original Game Boy, but was quite shortlived, as unfortunately for SNK Nintendo had just released the Game Boy Color to great fanfare. It was followed quite rapidly with the backward compatible Neo Geo Pocket Color, which used a similar non-backlit reflective colour LCD display to Nintendo’s machine. SNK attempted to respect early adopters, and most games continued to be compatible with the original black and white model, which probably held certain games back somewhat. While the original was only released in Japan and Asia, the colour model was also released in Europe and the US.
The initial colour model is slightly larger in every dimension than the original. But there is also a final Japan-only revision, the Neo Geo Pocket Color ‘slim’ model.
Each model came in a variety of colours.
The slim is comparable to the original black and white machine’s size, and has a slightly sharper, higher contrast screen. It’s definitely the best model.
The system has an odd two battery design. In a similar fashion to Sega’s Saturn and Dreamcast it uses a button battery to save console settings, and like those systems it has a bios with some basic built in software like a calendar.
Of course also like those systems, it has a nag screen about a dead battery, and asks you to set the date when the sub battery has died.
At least it doesn’t beep like a VMU…
Black and white games can be ‘colourised’ on colour models in a similar manner to original Game Boy games on a GBC, except that the choice is made and saved on the bios screen, instead of selecting via a button combination at boot.
A rather nice official pouch was also available for the slim model.
The games came in extremely cool little cases fashioned after the Neo Geo AES ‘Shockboxes’.
At least they did in Japan and Europe. The USA got basic cardboard boxes, and unfortunately late in the life of the system the Japanese games moved to cardboard as well.
Frustratingly the cardboard boxes are thinner and slightly taller then the mini shockboxes, so the two types of game packaging don’t like up nicely next to each other on a shelf.
While the system is mostly famous for the handheld versions of many SNK classics such as Samurai Spirits, King of Fighters and Metal Slug, it actually received some support from third parties as well, such as Puzzle Bobble Mini from Taito and a pretty nice version of Pac Man from Namco.
Quite famously, Sega released a Sonic game on the platform, Sonic Pocket Adventure. A semi-remix of Sonic The Hedgehog 2, it’s probably still the greatest original handheld Sonic game. Sega and SNK entered into something of a partnership, as there was a Neo Geo Pocket Color to Dreamcast cable released that allow transfer of data between certain games, such as the Dreamcast ports of King of Fighters 98 and 99 and the Capcom vs SNK games.
The system is unique for the many excellent fighting games. While all the fighting games look pretty similar, in a super-deformed style, they evolved and got significantly better as time passed. Earlier games like King of Fighters R1 and R2 and Fatal Fury First Contract are decent, but the latter ones are much smoother. Match of the Millenium: SNK vs Capcom is simply the best handheld fighting game ever released, and the super-kawaii Gals Fighters, with its female only cast, isfull of crazy-cute animations reminiscent of Capcom’s Pocket Fighter.
It’s a pretty nice system to collect. There are decent to great games of most genres (action, RPG, puzzle), and many people love the quite addictive SNK vs Capcom card game. But it’s really about the fighters, as they’re what sets the system apart.
Nintendo Sega Japan! 