Neo Geo – Obsolete Gamer

King of the Monsters

The titanic battles take the form of wrestling matches which, to quote good old Mene Gene, are ‘scheduled for one fall’ and are contested by six monsters – Geon (a Godzilla-like dinosaur), Woo (a blue King Kong-like ape), Poison Ghost (a creature made of toxic waste like Hydorah), Rocky (who is… umm… a rocky creature), Beetle Mania (a large Megalon-like beetle), and Astro Guy (a courageous Ultraman-like superhero). Any of them can be selected and all are fought twice (including your own character) before the game is finished.

Mobile Games

Simon Reed

Metal Slug: 1st Mission

Enemies are still animated enough to be amusing, and the levels are a fairly varied bunch, with vehicle missions thrown in at regular intervals. In fact the game’s main problem is how it structures its levels. Various circumstances (usually involving dying at a certain point) can leave you in random levels over and over again, such as the jail stage.

Neo Geo

Simon Lethbridge

Neo Drift Out

As with the prequel, each course has to be completed within a pretty strict time limit in order to qualify for the next one and they are arguably more testing than before too with regard to the sheer frequency of harsh corners. It seems every other turn here is a hairpin, right-angle, or chicane, and there are numerous short-cuts and obstacles as well. For example, the snow stage features slippy ice patches and course-encroaching snow drifts! Fortunately your car is more than sufficient for power-sliding around most of them, but impact with any obstacles or trackside objects knocks it around costing you speed and therefore time.

Arcade Games

Simon Lethbridge

Drift Out ’94 – The Hard Order

Aside from the change in viewpoint there’s actually very little difference between the games though. There’s a similar roster of cars available here (although it seems Visco acquired an official license in the interim as the cars all have their proper names now), such as the usual Impreza, Evo, Celica, Lancia’s, etc. Sadly the Sierra doesn’t return but to make up for it they’ve included a Mini! Anyway, once you’ve chosen a car you’ll start your first race which must be completed within a set time limit.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

3 Count Bout

Our Classic video of the day is from the SNK game, 3 Count Bout. The game was original titled Fire Suplex in Japan and was a wrestling game for the Neo Geo system. As you can see in the video the game has over the top characters and fighting moves, but is a pretty fun game. It has your standard SNK fighting game flair and can be a challenge on higher levels. The game was released in 1993 and featured single, two player and even co-op.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

GunLord Relaunch

Coming soon for the Sega Dreamcast is the classic platform shooter GunLord. GunLord is a Eurostyle Platformer with emphasis on exploring huge worlds and blasting off enemies. This game features 8 stages of exciting 2D game play with over 45 unique enemy types. Blast yourself through giant landscapes, explore caverns and reveal all secrets!!

Blog

J.A. Laraque

SNK : NEO GEO Downloads

SNK Playmore USA has released three more classic games on the Playstation 3 network including:

Neo Geo

Simon Lethbridge

Robo Army

Aside from the awful title screen (see above!), the presentation and graphics are pretty decent here for an early Neo Geo game. There are some cut-scenes between levels (which I’m afraid I can’t follow as I have the Japanese version of the game!), the sprites are big and nicely drawn, and the backgrounds are packed with detail for the most part and feature nice use of colours. The only problem is the lack of variety. Despite being set in pretty diverse locations, most of the levels have a very similar feel to them. The only moment in the game where it seems like the designers are trying to mix it up a bit is the rope section where you must climb down the screen whilst attempting to see off the many foes at the same time.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

8 more classic SNK games now available

Fight against UFOs, meteors, comets, and dock with the mothership before your energy runs out in SNK’s first arcade game originally released in 1979. Ozma Wars stands out as the second released vertical shooting arcade game, but is also known as the first game with disparate levels!

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Neo Geo Station: Latest Release

NEOGEO Station” is a commemorative project that allows players to enjoy the many classic fighting, action, sports and other NEOGEO titles released after 1990, exclusively on the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) systems. The first set of 10 titles, which included “METAL SLUG,” “SAMURAI SHODOWN,” and “THE KING OF FIGHTERS ’94,” were released on December 22, 2010. This time, two new titles have been released for a total of 12 titles.

Hardware

J.A. Laraque

Arcade Works: The Omega Entertainment Machine

Retro gaming is incredibly important today. There’s a huge market of underserved retro gamers who are not looking for the next Call of Duty. Maybe they don’t want to deal with playing online, or they just want something less involved. Whatever the case is, they’ve basically been disenfranchised by the extreme focus on huge titles. This makes sense of course for the big studios, who need to target large audiences, but that still leaves a market unfulfilled.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

E3 2011: Classic Gaming Museum

They had what I called a 80’s living room complete with a couch, a radiation level 6 television and an Atari 2600 and best of all you could sit down and play. Now, while I was still just a baby when the 2600 launched I remember setups that looked exactly like this.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Games to Buy: December: Week 3

So, I have some good news and bad news. The good news is these classic games are awesome, the bad news is you will have to have a PSP to play them. Ah, the PSP, it’s like the ugly daughter of a billionaire. You don’t want to take her out, but if you do you get to drive the Mercedes.

Hardware

J.A. Laraque

Neo Geo CD

A bright spot for the NGC was the commercials which Americans did not get to see including this one which featured a couple fighting over who would play the game. Finally when both were able to play the woman “distracts” the man in order to beat him in the game, but honestly would you consider him a loser?