From the Vault columnist. Grew up feeding quarters to the Ms. Pac-Man machine at his uncle's pizza place; still owns his childhood SNES and every Nintendo Power he ever begged his mother for. Writes the retrospectives and the hidden-gem hunts.
The weapons fighter comes to pocket size with its tension intact: single strikes that matter, a roster borrowed from the 64-bit games, and collectible cards to chase. A launch title with real edge.
KOF ’98, distilled into a cartridge the size of a matchbox. R-2 keeps the teams, the tactics and the attitude — and adds a making mode and Dreamcast link that were years ahead of their time.
The first Sonic game on rival hardware is no curiosity — it is a superb Dimps-built remix of the Mega Drive classics that plays like a love letter and runs like a dream.
Everything the first pocket mission did, expanded: more stages, more characters, more vehicles, more secrets. 2nd Mission is the NGPC’s best pure action game and a high watermark for handheld run-and-guns.
Nazca’s arcade juggernaut shrinks to pocket size with its humour, its vehicles and its one-more-go pull intact. 1st Mission is a small cartridge doing a very big game’s job.
SNK and Capcom’s finest meet on a 160×152 screen and somehow lose nothing in the shrink. The Match of the Millennium is not just the Neo Geo Pocket Color’s best fighter — it is one of the finest handheld fighting games ever made.
Rotating towers, car combat, street basketball and a twin-stick legend on a two-controller harness: ten 7800 games the warehouse years buried, dug up and played.
b*nQ, Bentley Bear, Rikki & Vikki and a rescued Lucasfilm prototype: how the homebrew scene finished the library the warehouse years interrupted.
A joypad in the box, Asteroids in the firmware and a price the NES couldn’t match: how the ProSystem lived a different, gentler life across the Atlantic.
They upgraded Missile Command until Atari sued them, made Ms. Pac-Man, then built Atari a whole console. The story of General Computer Corporation, the 7800’s second creator.