The Neo Geo Pocket Color was a portable handheld that should have been more popular than it was. Capability wise, it probably fell somewhere between the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. There were some excellent games released for it but the library ultimately just wasn’t big and varied enough and like a graveyard of other portables, they just couldn’t compete with Nintendo. One of the games released for the Neo Geo Pocket Color was Samurai Showdown! II.
Those familiar with other games in the Samurai Showdown series will know that this was a popular fighting game series by SNK. However, this particular game is really one of the more obscure titles. It is not based on the well known Samurai Showdown II released on standard Neo Geo hardware but on Samurai Showdown 64: Warriors Rage which was released on the Hyper Neo Geo 64 arcade hardware. So really, it was based on the second game in the 3D Samurai Showdown series, not the more well known 2D series. However, the Hyper Neo Geo 64 hardware could not compete with Namco and Sega’s hardware at the time and SNK proved to be not as adept at creating 3-D games. Chances are, you never saw this one even if you were an avid arcade player at the time it was released as it was not released outside of Japan.
For the Neo Geo Pocket Color port released in 1999, the game was converted to a 2-D format. However, other than that change, it was quite faithful to the original and an excellent conversion. Plus, those that like 2-D fighting games more will like this iteration better. It follows the same story line (not terribly important for a fighting game), includes virtually all of the same characters, and even all of the moves were kept from the arcade version. Pretty impressive for a port to a portable system at the time. Samurai Showdown! 2 featured three game modes: One Player, Survival and Vs.
A unique feature of this game is that in Survival mode, you can earn up to eight cards for each fighter. These cards give bonuses to the fighters such as increased stats or new moves. These cards can also be traded with other players via the link cable.
If you are a Neo Geo Pocket Color owner than I would say that this game is a must have. The library wasn’t huge to begin with and this is one of the best games on the system. However, the good news is that you don’t necessarily have to own an ancient handheld to play this game. It was released on the Nintendo Switch in digital form and as a limited edition cartridge in 2019. SNK fans, Neo Geo fans and fighting game fans should definitely give this one a try.
