Arcade In Your Pocket: SNK's Premium Handheld

Video Games

Jul 18

Collage of Neo Geo, and pocket variants — Image Source: Culture Slate

In the late 90’s, SNK was in a decline. Previously they had been one of the dominant powers of the arcade world, with their Neo Geo MVS system being a huge success, spawning the AES home version that was a success for its niche market. However, arcade sales were dwindling, especially in the West, while an attempt to develop a 3D successor to the Neo Geo went nowhere.

Eikichi Kawasaki, SNK’s founder, was greenlighting projects to keep the company afloat, including Neo Geo World, an amusement park expansion of the Neo Geo Lands found in their native Osaka, and figured if they could bring the arcade experience home, they could bring it to players pockets as well.

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For context, the Game Boy had been one of Nintendo’s biggest successes, and all of its competitors were modest hits at best. By the mid 90’s, however, it was seemingly on its last legs. Nintendo hadn’t released a game for the system that year, and while third parties were still there, sales were declining. It was expected that Nintendo would release a successor soon, and people wanted a piece of that pie. But SNK wasn’t interested in competing with Nintendo; more on that later.

The Neo Geo Pocket would copy several features of the Game Boy, namely a low price, monochrome display and a high quality library. These had all been key to its success, with SNK taking that as a model. Meanwhile, their other goal was to bring the arcade to players' pockets, so it was never going to be simply SNK’s Game Boy knockoff. The Pocket would have higher quality graphics and sound, alongside a lineup of SNK’s greatest franchises like Fatal Fury, The King of Fighters, Metal Slug, etc. With this in mind, the Neo Geo Pocket would launch in 1998.

The Neo Geo Pocket was launched on October 28, 1998. It had twice the bits of the Game Boy, twice as many shades of grey and twice the battery life, 20 hours. It had a louder speaker and a thumbstick controller that worked really well. It was smaller, but a bit heavier due to its components, and had a PDA styled opening screen. It sold for $65 (7800), a bit more than Game Boy. By the time it launched, however, color handhelds were around the corner, so the Neo Geo Pocket Color launched in 1999 with colors, double battery life, a better screen, and was cheaper than the Game Boy Color at $70. Thanks to a deal with Sega, it could connect to Dreamcast.

The Neo Geo Pocket (Color) fulfilled its purpose as a portable arcade by having a collection of titles from SNK’s arcade franchises. These included exclusive titles like The King of Fighters R-1 and R-2, Metal Slug First and Second Mission, and ports of Neo Turf Masters and Baseball Stars. SNK finally teamed up with Capcom in SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash, with versions for each publisher. Sonic got an exclusive platformer in Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure, and there were even some RPGS like Faselei!

Neo Geo Pocket game carts — Image Source: eBay

Though never a big seller, SNK didn't plan on competing with the GameBoy or WonderSwan, and saw it as a huge success. There were plans to move forward into the new millennium. However, financial issues would bring that all crashing down, as SNK found itself sold to pachinko manufacturer Aruze. Aruze would gut SNK, use their characters on their machines, and ultimately dissolve it. Though SNK would reform itself and have the last laugh, this was essentially the end of the Neo Geo Pocket, and its Color variant.

Despite its short life, the Neo Geo Pocket remains well remembered among SNK fans. With a stellar launch lineup and great hardware for the time, the handheld was a premium experience more than worth its price. The new SNK would largely shy away from hardware in favor of developing for other platforms, so the Pocket Color could be seen as the swan song for the Neo Geo. Games released for the Pocket can be found online, while SNK would continue to work on their various games and franchises in the meantime. The Neo Geo Pocket and Pocket Color remain something that you had to be there to experience.