Puzzle Bobble Mini / Bust-A-Move Pocket - This essentially is a port of the first Bust-A-Move game, years after its sequels had released on other platforms. In that respect, I find this disappointing -- of the BAM games I own, the closest comparison for this one is the Game Gear version of BAM1. There are small differences, like that the NGPC version has on-cart saving while the GG version doesn't, but the basic features are quite similar. Like that version, the central mode is a puzzle mode where you play 99 puzzles, one after another. There is no grid where you choose a path, no variety, nothing, just 99 puzzles. It doesn't even require you to play them in order -- all 99 are unlocked from the beginning, and you can play them in any order. At least on the GG version you have to play them in order, and it uses passwords to save your progress! However, the NGPC version does save your top times for each stage, which is nice. Obviously, on the GG, or SNES, the game won't do that as those versions don't have oncart saving. My copy is broken however, so it won't even do that, it won't save times in puzzle mode. Bah, I might need another copy... though I'm not sure, this isn't one of my favorite versions of BAM, for sure.
Apart from the link-up versus mode, the other two modes are a Vs. CPU mode and an Endless mode. Endless mode was what I play the most in the GG game, and it's just as good here, except it saves your best scores, which is great (and this does actually save on my copy, so the save chip isn't completely shot, just partially corrupted or something). Vs. CPU mode is a bit different though -- here you choose which enemy you want to face next, so you can fight the eight enemies in any order, while on the GG you fight them in a preset order. Otherwise it's pretty much the same.
Apart from features and modes, the other obvious question is, how well does it play? Controls are identical to the GG version -- the dpad moves, one button shoots bubbles, and the other button slows down movement so you can get pixel-perfect accuracy. However, one thing isn't similar -- screen size, and thus the size of the graphics. The NGPC, like the Game Boy, has a small, nearly square screen. The bubbles, while clear and well drawn, are tiny on the screen. It's hard to tell some of the colors apart, too; indeed, the pink bubbles are particularly tough to tell apart from some of the others. However, the Game Gear version has a larger screen, and larger graphics. It does have a fairly significant amount of slowdown, while the NGPC version has one, but still, the bigger, easier to see graphics make that version more fun to play, in my opinion.
Or, of course, you could play one of the GBA, DS, etc. versions of Bust-A-Move, many of which have much better visibility than the NGPC or Game Boy versions of the game (the GB and GBC versions have that same "tiny little bubbles" issue that the NGPC has), and have lots more features and content too, in many cases.
So yeah, Puzzle Bobble Mini is okay, but flawed. I know there's nothing they could do about the size of the screen, but it is too bad that they chose to base it off of the first Bust-A-Move. It's too bad that this wasn't a conversion of Bust-A-Move 3 for instance, that game has a crazy number of modes and options, and the N64 and PSX versions of BAM3 were released in the US in 1999, the same year as this one (the Saturn version had released a year or two earlier here). BAM4 was out by that point too. I guess SNK was using the original as the basis because the original was the version that had been released on the Neo-Geo, and not the sequels (the original BAM arcade game, and the BAM Again version, are Neo-Geo, but not BAM2, BAM3, etc.), but it results in a somewhat feature-lacking version of the game. And my copy is kind of broken, too.
The Last Blade - I'm not going to give this a full review now because I'm still in the Last Blade 1 portion of the game, but I will say that this game is truly exceptional, and is easily the best of the four NGPC fighting games I own. There are a bunch of modes -- Story, Survival, Time Attack, and Practice, for starters -- lots to buy in the shop (you get money when you win matches that you can use to buy things in the shop), good graphics, great gameplay, and more. I am a huge Last Blade series fan on the Neo-Geo, and this is a great portable conversion of the gameplay. Just awesome stuff.
Ramune said:
But yeah, noticed the many many multiplayer games the system had? It definitely embraced that part of portable gaming. In some cases even more so than the GameBoy! It always tickled me because not to many people had the system, but it definitely added more value to they're already robust single player modes. As for the Worm Light, see my reply to ABF below.
I don't know about more so than the Game Boy, the GB has a fair number of link cable titles too... SNK just made a lot of fighting games, so naturally they had link play. GB fighting games have link support too.
I didn't mean to take anything away from your list as it was very well done! I mostly posted that link for the unreleased games and I was a bit tired and didn't feel like typing the whole thing.
You didn't mention my list though, just the other one, so I wasn't sure.
True and when you put it that way, it really was the perfect portable parallel to the Dreamcast and it's nemesis the PS2. We appreciate the games that did come out because they remain as fun as they were back then and helped give these consoles their identity in a way no other console can quite copy!
Yeah, the DC and NGP/C definitely have similarities for sure. Both were released around the same time, had short lifespans and small game libraries, and saw their creators' companies eventually get bought out. The financial difficulties of SNK and Sega were the central reasons behind their short lifespans, too. And, of course, both had (and have) substantial amounts of love from hardcore gamers, and have libraries that have high quality if not high quantity. This is particularly true for the tiny library of the NGPC, I'd say. (The DC has more games, so it has more weaker ones)
Yeah, the NGPC worm light was great when it was working. I remember Nyko saying they couldn't use the serial port because unlike the GBC's, it didn't have enough power for a light to hook up to it. So they had to create a battery pack with the light attached to that instead. It worked fine, but after a while, the thing just wouldn't hold a charge very good (same with the Shock N Rock I posted earlier). I just ended up using the system without addons in the end really.
That does sound worse than the nice, simple worm lights for the GBC and GBA. It really was great to just have this little thing that plugged into the link port, that's so much more convenient than something with separate batteries... still, a nice thing to have when you're playing in the dark, or camping, or what have you I'm sure.
Yeah, Making Mode especially lead to hours and hours of replayability, which in a fighting game is pretty substantial, as use have the many characters to master already, not to mention perfecting your game around your character(s) of choice. One of my favorite equipable items was a gun. Yes a gun in a KOF game. It didn't exactly shoot any bullets, but what it did was that at the end of a certain combo, your character would then hold a big gun and do the equivalent of a powerful fire move. It wasn't cumbersome and flowed in with your existing moves pretty naturally. Kyo was who I mostly used in that mode too! There were quite a few others, but that was the most memorable one to me.
The one thing I've noticed about Making mode is that it's HARD! You have to beat 5-6 enemies in each stage in Making mode, and they don't give you many health refills. It's not a mode for newbies to KOF, that's for sure. Still though, it's pretty cool to have in the game, and does add replayability for sure. The Last Blade, though, has more...