The Neo Geo X is a handheld system that – funnily enough – plays Neo Geo games. It comes with 20 pre-loaded from the SNK Signature series and also Ninja Master’s on an additional game card with the Neo Geo X Gold Limited Edition. The package includes a docking station that allows you to play games on your TV via HDMI and an Arcade stick. While it’s undeniably cool to hook up the system to your TV and recreate your favourite arcade moments in your living room, the HDMI output is pretty poor. The images are stretched, colours bleed and some god-awful screen tearing occurs frequently. The experience on the handheld, thankfully fares much better.
The system actually feels like it deserves the $289.00 AUD price tag when you hold it. It’s solid, but not chunky. It’s sleek, but not cheap and the OS, while nothing flashy, runs quickly and without any issues. The included games and Ninja Master’s operate smoothly and generally without problems. Though they tend to be stretched and a little blurry when running in full screen. This can be remedied by turning wide-screen off, but then you have two thick black borders along either side. If you can live with a slightly blurry image then widescreen is the way to go. These games are from the early 90’s so it’s not like they’re eye-bleedingly high in graphical fidelity anyhow.
The subject of the games is where the Neo Geo X really starts to fall down. Pre-loaded on the handheld are 3 Count Bout, Alpha Mission II, Art of Fighting, Baseball Stars 2, Cyber-Lip, Fatal Fury, Fatal Fury Special, King of Fighters ’95, King of the Monsters, Last Resort, League Bowling, Magician Lord, Metal Slug, Mutation Nation, NAM-1975, Puzzled [10], Real Bout Fatal Fury Special, Samurai Shodown II, Super Sidekicks and World Heroes Perfect
With the included Ninja Masters that’s 21 games to play. Sounds great, right? In reality though it’s a pretty bland selection. Some of the titles – Metal Slug, Samurai Shodown II—are well known, much loved games. Others are older titles that may have had a following and then there’s some obscure games that a lot of people would never have seen or even heard of. All but a handful of the games are fighters or side scrolling beat-em-ups and most of those are so similar they are nearly identical. Scrolling through title after title I was disappointed to see the same characters or exact same fighting game simply re-skinned. For fans of these “classics” this may be a good investment, for everyone else, it’s a head scratcher.
Speaking of fans. A quick search on both the App Store and Google Play reveals that 9 games are available on iOS and seven on Android, including Metal Slug 1, 2, 3 and X, Samurai Shodown II and The King of Fighters-i (iOS only) and The King of Fighters 2012 for both Android and iOS. The cost between $3 and $10 and although a smartphone may lack the control interface of the Neo Geo X, peripherals like the MOGA controller and others can alleviate control issues.
Aside from smarthphones, SNK games have cropped up on basically every other platform that is capable of playing games. Whatever console or handheld you have at home, is almost guaranteed to be able to play some SNK/Neo Geo games. Currently, the DS, PC, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 have a swathe of games available with both the PS3 and Xbox 360 displaying them in HD much better than the handheld is capable of through its docking station. Each of these platforms has the added bonus of the games being fairly cheap. You could probably spend $300 on the games if you were a big enough fan, but without the added cost of new system the existing ways to play are far more attractive. While it’s nice that the Neo Geo X is capable of being used at home and on the go, it’s cost and sub-standard play on TV make it less appealing than the options that already exist.
Disappointingly, purchasing new games for the handheld is available only via physcial game cards and not over Wifi or through connection to your PC, instantly putting the Neo Geo X behind its main competitors; 3DS, Android and iOS phones and the PS Vita.
The Neo Geo X will be a hard sell, even to fans of the games and platform. As the market becomes increasingly crowded with devices that are dedicated to or simply capable of playing games the potential user-base for this handheld shrinks exponentially. A dedicated gaming console for a mildly popular arcade platform may appeal to some, but the best the Neo Geo X can hope for is a passing interest from fighting game fans. It’s an interesting idea, albeit one that hasn’t been carried out as well as it could have been and in a time where our time and pockets are already full of gaming.
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