1. Jungle Book (SNES)(Platformer)2. Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge (SNES)(Light Gun Shooter)3. Might and Magic VI (PC)(RPG)4. Revenant (PC)(RPG)5. Neo Turf Masters (NGPC)(Sports)
6. Fatal Fury: First Contact (NGPC)(Fighter)
7. Pac-Man (NGPC)(Action)
I often play on my NGPC in spare moments, such as rebooting my computer or installing updates. I just knocked out some games I was playing over the weekend, so I figured I would share my thoughts.
Neo Turf MastersNeo Turf Masters on the NGPC is a port of the arcade classic, but this time done with anime-esque visuals similar to what can be found in Pocket Tennis Color. You pick one of six characters, and if you are just itching the play a round of golf, one of three courses. You can also play through a tournament involving all three courses if you prefer the long game. I've never been big into golf games, but I found Neo Turf Masters easy to control, forthcoming with important information about the relative strength of clubs, and often easy to understand on a basic level.
Unfortunately, because NTM is easy to get into, SNK put in other factors to ramp up the challenge, and these cause the game to suffer in my opinion. Course design is blatantly wicked at times, such as one that requires you bank a shot off a stone pillar to reach the green. Also, while the game gives you an idea of how powerful each club is, wind is a factor. The game will tell you how strong the wind is, yet it never seems consistent; a 1m wind might well blow your shot off course while a 5m wind seems to have almost no effect. And then there are the trees, which I cannot make heads or tails of about when your ball will strike one. I've arched balls high into the air to then see them struck by trees, while low shots pass completely unfettered through them. At one point during my playthrough, I even managed to repeatedly bounce a ball off the same tree despite my attempts to slice around it and the game not giving me any indication I was actually hitting the tree. I figured it out when my shots started going at 90 degree angles from where I was directing them.
For these reasons, I ended up not liking Neo Turf Masters nearly as much as Pocket Tennis Color. I realize this isn't really a fair comparison since they're different sports, but as I mentioned earlier, I lack the experience with golf games to make a comparison there and am instead focusing on the NGPC's sports offerings.
Fatal Fury: First ContactThe NGPC has a surprisingly strong set of fighting games for a handheld, and Fatal Fury: First Contact keeps up with the rest of the pack. First, the visuals continue the general vibe of the various SNK fighters available, which keeps things appealing throughout. More importantly, FF:FC manages to boil Fatal Fury down to 2 buttons effectively, and the handheld's joystick is still a thrill to use. It controls like a dream, and to top it off, FF:FC is also hands down one of the easier SNK fighters to pick up and play. Higher difficulties require more prep, but coming from something like Street Fighter can still get you results on easier difficulties. But while SNK has a lot of accessibility here, there's still a touch of the old magic in a secret boss that can only be fought if you finish a specific number of opponents off with specific supers in the game. It doesn't change anything beyond unlocking said secret character, but it's a nice introductory touch to SNK's usual utterly ridiculous boss battles.
Do I have any complaints about the game? Well, not really, though there's not nearly as much content here as the likes of Match of the Millennium. Yet I also feel that's a bit disingenuous, because MotM is one of the best handheld fighting games I've ever played, and it stands out in a field of generally great fighters on the NGPC. Fatal Fury: First Contact is yet another great title in this field, so I don't really want to criticize it. It's worth looking into.
Pac-ManI realize it's strange to consider this "beaten," as it's one of those games that tries to go on infinitely. I did play through multiple rounds, earned a high score, and saw the various animations of Pac-Man and the ghosts which come between specific levels. The NGPC version is a faithful port, and if you're a big Pac-Man fan, this is not a bad game to grab. It offers two modes: one which zooms in to allow better detail but only a limited view, and one that shows the entire maze you are navigating. I prefer having the entire maze so I can keep an eye on the ghosts, but the zoomed-in view can be a nice touch for people who have mastered the game since it obscures the ghosts' location until they're pretty much on top of you.
One small complaint I have is that direction control can be a little wonky with the 8-way joystick, but that's only small and would have been alleviated if I had picked up the game on launch; the NGPC Pac-Man came with a small object to put on the joystick which limited it to 4 directions, thus fixing this issue. I think it was pretty smart to do this for the port, and if I had one, I doubt I would have even mentioned this being a complaint. There are also no options or anything of the like, but it's pretty much a straight port from the arcade, so I'm not surprised at all.
Now for the real question: which release is this a port of? I'm not sure. From looking around, the fruit used to designate levels is different in this release than it was in the arcade original, so it must be from one of the later revamps to adjust the arcade game's difficulty. Still, it's Pac-Man, and it's a far better experience than, say, the Atari 2600 release.
Also, I know I listed it as an action game, but in truth, I've never been quite sure what genre these maze games fall into.
