Neo Geo Pocket | Code Like It's 198x

SNK’s first handheld reached Japanese shops at the end of October 1998 with a black-and-white screen, a week after Nintendo had launched the Game Boy Color. Over that Christmas, Edge reported, the Game Boy Color outsold it by 18 to 1. Within five months SNK had replaced it with a colour model, the Neo Geo Pocket Color, and that is the machine people remember: a sharp screen, batteries that lasted 40 hours, and a small thumbstick that clicked under the thumb like an arcade joystick.

It was also short-lived. SNK was sold to the pachinko maker Aruze in January 2000, and by June the new owners had withdrawn the handheld from America and Europe. It had been on sale in Britain for eight months.

Fast facts

Maker: SNK.
Neo Geo Pocket: Japan, October 1998, ¥7,800. Monochrome, eight shades of grey.
Neo Geo Pocket Color: Japan, March 1999, ¥8,900; North America, August 1999; Europe, October 1999.
CPU: a 16-bit Toshiba processor at about 6 MHz, with a Z80 at about 3 MHz for sound.
Screen: 160×152 pixels; the colour model shows 146 colours from 4,096.
Power: two AA batteries; about 40 hours on the colour model.
Controls: a micro-switched thumbstick and two buttons.
Extras: a clock, calendar and horoscope, and a link cable to Sega’s Dreamcast.

The monochrome machine

Edge reviewed the portable market at Christmas 1998 and found the Neo Geo Pocket already on sale, “bearing little relation to the company’s one-time console heavyweight other than the Neo Geo name and a few game brands”. It put SNK’s machine beside Bandai’s forthcoming WonderSwan and found them almost the same: both had “16bit processors, eight-shade monochrome LCDs, weigh 130 and 110 grams respectively, measure within millimetres of each other and consume batteries in around 25 hours”. The difference was the price, ¥7,800 for SNK’s against ¥4,800 for Bandai’s.

The Pocket had features Nintendo’s machine lacked. Retro Gamer lists a clock, a calendar and a horoscope generator, a stereo headphone socket and an internal battery for saved games, and unlike the upright Game Boy the handheld was held horizontally. Edge noted the “stubby control stick” and a planned cable to Sega’s new Dreamcast. The first games included King of Fighters R-1 and Neo Geo Cup ’98.

Edge described the 160×152 screen as smaller than “the original Game Boy”. It was in fact larger: Nintendo’s own manual gives the Game Boy’s display as 160 × 144 dots, the same width and eight lines shorter.

Colour, five months later

The same Edge feature had quoted the managing director of THE Games, Nintendo’s British distributor, on the new rivals: “People are not going to go out and spend money on another monochrome system when they can buy one in colour.” In March 1999 Edge reported “underwhelming sales of the Neo Geo Pocket” and SNK’s answer, a colour model scheduled for Japan on 19 March. It had the same size of screen, showed 146 colours from a palette of 4,096, promised 40 hours of play (twice the Game Boy Color’s, Edge said) and cost ¥8,900, against ¥6,800 now asked for the monochrome model. SNK lined up games from Sega, Capcom, Taito and Atari, and planned fifteen colour games for the launch.

Edge’s later history of handhelds describes what was inside: “a 16bit Toshiba CPU running at a mite over 6MHz and a Z80 at little over 3MHz”, a colour TFT screen “notably brighter than any of Nintendo’s colour displays”, and battery life doubled “to some 40 hours off two AA batteries”. Later references identify the processor as a Toshiba TLCS-900H at 6.144 MHz, with the Z80 driving the sound.

The thumbstick

The control that owners remember came from SNK’s own hardware. Edge calls it “an adaptation of the Neo Geo CD controller’s microswitched thumbpad”: a short stick with small switches beneath it, so each movement clicks. Retro Gamer found that it “offered far greater precision than the traditional D-pad”. SNK’s fighting games needed it: circles and half-circles on the stick are how special moves are entered.

In the West

SNK brought the colour model to North America in August 1999 and to Europe that October. Retro Gamer reports a chaotic American launch, with stores short of machines and staff who knew little about them, and a more careful British one, with lifestyle advertising, games released regularly and every game in a clamshell plastic case. When Edge tested British machines in November 1999 it found the screen “clearer and more convincingly colourful” than the Game Boy Color’s; the problem was “a lack of killer titles”, and the most popular game in the office was the linked two-player golf game Neo Turf Masters.

The library grew to include King of Fighters R-2, Metal Slug: 1st Mission and 2nd Mission, Puzzle Bobble Mini, and Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure. The SNK vs. Capcom card-battle games turned the two companies’ fighting-game characters into collectable cards. Retro Gamer counts 39 games released in Britain, where it puts sales at 100,000, and reports that the machine had sold only 250,000 in Japan before its British launch.

In Japan the Game Boy Color kept winning. In April 2000 Edge printed one week’s Japanese hardware sales: 4,500 Neo Geo Pockets against 70,000 Game Boy Colors.

Aruze, and the end

SNK was already losing money. Retro Gamer reports that Aruze bought the company in January 2000, paid little attention to the games business, and closed SNK’s operations outside Japan in June 2000, ending sales of the Neo Geo Pocket Color in America and Europe. Some games that had been made for release were meant to be destroyed and reached shops anyway, which is why a few of them are expensive today. Edge reported in January 2001 that SNK’s “decision to pull NGP out of western markets” had prompted a fan to write an emulator for the Dreamcast.

In Japan the machine lasted until SNK itself went bankrupt in October 2001. SNK’s founder, Eikichi Kawasaki, set up a new company, Playmore, which acquired the old company’s games and characters and now trades as SNK. Neo Geo Pocket Color games have since been re-released for the Nintendo Switch.

Sources

Edge issue 66, Christmas 1998, pp. 61–63, portable hardware feature: the Neo Geo Pocket and WonderSwan compared; prices; the screen, battery, control stick and Dreamcast link; Dick Francis of THE Games on monochrome systems.
Edge issue 69, March 1999, news, “Neo Geo goes colour”: the Game Boy Color’s 18:1 Christmas lead, the colour model’s specification, date and price, and SNK’s new publishers.
Edge issue 78, November 1999: the official UK release and the magazine’s first impressions.
Edge issue 83, April 2000: Japanese weekly hardware sales.
Edge issue 93, January 2001: the Dreamcast emulator and SNK’s withdrawal from the West.
Edge issue 104, December 2001, p. 57, handheld history: the processors, screen, battery life and thumbpad; the games.
Retro Gamer issue 20, 2005, pp. 50–53, “Retroinspection: Neo Geo Pocket”: the monochrome launch, price and first games; the colour launch; the American and European launches; sales in Japan and Britain; the 39 British releases; Aruze and the closure of SNK’s Western operations.
Nintendo of America, Game Boy Programming Manual version 1.1 (1999): the Game Boy Color’s release on 21 October 1998 (p. 3); “Display Capacity 160 x 144 dots” (p. 16).
Wikipedia, “Neo Geo Pocket” (web, secondary): the TLCS-900H at 6.144 MHz and the Z80 at 3.072 MHz; the US launch in August 1999; the Nintendo Switch re-releases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_Geo_Pocket
Wikipedia, “SNK” (web, secondary): SNK’s bankruptcy in October 2001 and Playmore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNK