Today, Jeremy Parish posted a Retronauts article celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Neo Geo Pocket Color, a wonderful handheld I should have purchased when it was new, or when it was reissued in super-cheap six-game bundles, or when I worked at a used game shop and stared at one from behind the counter for like six months.

There’s a lot to love about the system: weird color schemes (including clear and blue camo), the great D-pad/stick thing, the Dreamcast connection. But what I love most about the NGPC (on a superficial level) is the aesthetic of those wonderful fighting games: all high-contrast, blocky sprites on pastel, outline-free backgrounds. Nothing else looks like that!

[Image via HG101]

tags / snk / neo geo pocket color / retronauts / jc

This April Fools Day, SNK announced a (fake) 8-bit shooter called Star Radish. Famitsu reveals that not only has SNK decided to actually make the “Mikadosoft” title, but it’s being included in Doki Majo Plus.

The game comes into play as a competition with Renge Oda, the retrogaming potential witch who held forth about Psycho Soldier on her blog. Star Radish is a “Nanicon” game like one of the Psycho Soldier ports — Famitsu reveals “Nanicon” to be a contraction for “Number One Ninki (Popular) Computer”.

I must now decide whether my love of new Famicom-style games can carry me through hours of text boxes and uncomfortable minigames. Retro gaming is as much a part of otaku culture as gross moe stuff — the cross-pollination of the two had to happen sometime.

[Via Canned Dogs]

tags / snk / doki majo plus / star radish / jc

A blog entry on the Doki Majo Plus site, written in the voice of one of the characters, offers a fake history of console ports of the real SNK arcade game Psycho Soldier.

The retrogaming-obsessed Renge Oda, a fan of Athena, posted this screenshot comparison of different (parody) console ports of Psycho Soldier. It’s sort of like the fake ports in Game Center CX 2, except that the source game is real — and, critically, it’s being discussed by a fictional junior-high student.

Here’s the original:

The “Nanicon” (Famicom) version:

The “Point III” (Mark III) version:

The “CP Motor” (PC Engine) version, which, of course, came on a CD-ROM with anime cutscenes:

And finally, the ZMX version (MSX):

I love it! Something about Doki Doki Majo Shinpan that doesn’t make me extremely uncomfortable!

Finally, because I can’t mention Psycho Soldier without it, this page contains MP3s of both the English and Japanese vocal themes from the arcade game.

tags / doki majo plus / snk / psycho soldier / jc