| paleface [sys=NGPC; cat=Fighting; reg=JPN] |
| | | I won't bother going in to what makes this incredibly packed game so great, since that's all covered in plenty elsewhere. Suffice it to say that it is by far the most impressive fighting game on the system; indeed, it isn't even stretching things to say that it is one of the most brilliant and complete fighting games ever made.
So enough of that, let's talk about the little things that bug me about it--after all, if it's really one of the bestest games of all time, why don't I play it more? Basically, there are a couple thigns that nag at me.
First is that the difficulty curve isn't there. It's more like a difficulty right-angle: I cruise my way right through to the end without breaking a sweat, I mean I'm dizzying the opponents and they aren't even fighting back, and then WHAM! You run smack in to not just one of the cheapest bosses of all time, but two of them, tag-team against you. And then once you beat them, you've got to take down an incredibly juiced-up "evil" version of one of the regular characters. I guess it isn't much different that normal SNK boss syndrome but it seems extra insulting because not only do you have three bosses with the disease, you've also got a rather boring and ultimately misleading cakewalk up to that point.
Another thing: the control is a little stiff. Or to put it more precisely: the console is very precise. You've got to be pretty spot-on with your commands to get special moves out, which is just fine, but that becomes much, much harder to do during any kind of slowdown, and brother is there some slowdown here at times, especially during those darn boss battles. Maybe it's the animating backgrounds, or the lovely music and rich sound effects all going off together, or all the supers and so forth, but you can really get your thumb bent out of shape trying to stay in control when the game is throwing everything it has at you and the framerate is taking a nose-dive.
Aside from those to things, it's a brilliant game. It would be super-awesome if it could somehow be hooked in to an arcade cabinet for some large-screen Vs. play. I suppose thanks to the wonder of emulators it could be, sorta, but that's not quite to my taste. So I'll just keep dreamin' there, and maybe playing it by myself now and then on the ol' NGPC when I think I can bear to try those bosses again. |
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| | | Download added: cover_back.jpg (67673 bytes)
"Cover photo (Japanese)."
The cart is multi-language, of course, so it doesn't really matter which cart you buy as long as you have your NGPC switched to English mode. |
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| | | | As with a fair number of NGPC games, the Japanese cartridge will display full English text if your NGPC is set to English language preference. |
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| | | | Ah well I deleted that video ^ as part of my YouTube purge of possibly seizure-inducing full-screen flashing effects in SNK fighting games (esp in KOFs 94-97; later KOFs have them too but you can turn them off with the "FLASH" option). |
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| | | | MotM IS pretty flashy, even on the small screen; a super like Ryo's circle back, circle forward + P causes a rapid series of white screen flashes, ech. (It didn't flash at all in R-1!) |
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| | | Download added: 00_motm_cart.jpg (106505 bytes)
"The JP cart"
Video of me dumping the Neo Geo Pocket Color cartridge SNK vs. Capcom: The Match of the Millennium (JP) using an open source Sanni Cart Reader V5 ( https://github.com/sanni/cartreader ) and custom NGP adapter board, both made by the builder fullcircleembedded ( https://www.ebay.com/usr/fullcircleembedded )--who does great work--and running the freshly dumped MotM ROM in the emulator Mednafen ( https://mednafen.github.io/ ) in Windows!
The board goes in the reader's SNES cartridge slot, on the 3V setting (since the NGPC takes two AA batteries, and they're 1.5V each!).
I had to flash the Sanni's firmware first with a setting to enable the NGP adapter board, and I updated the game image descriptions as well; the directions for doing that stuff is on the Wiki:
https://github.com/sanni/cartreader/wiki/How-to-flash-the-Arduino
https://github.com/sanni/cartreader/wiki/Preparing-the-SD-Card
Looked scary but wasn't actually very tough at all!
There aren't very many of these NGP adapter boards out there because nobody makes a part compatible with NGP/NGPC cartridges--so pretty much the cartridge slot has to be taken out of an actual NGP or NGPC! I ordered a beat-up NGPC off eBay to sacrifice. |
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| | | | Manual: https://archive.org/details/SNK_Vs._Capcom_Match_Of_The_Millennium_1999_E_color |
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Showing the 12 cartoon character screens you can see by putting the Neo Geo Pocket Color game SNK vs. Capcom: The Match of the Millennium in a black and white Neo Geo Pocket! Or emulating it in the emulator NeoPop, anyway. ^ _^
The NeoPop emulator lets you force the emulated game to play as if it was either in the color or the black and white system; it can also emulate having the system language set to either English or Japanese in the system BIOS.
The game here is a dump from my JP version of the cartridge--I don't know that software-wise it's actually any different from the NA version, though! Anyhow, with NeoPop set to English, it just gives a sorta generic two-screen message about how you should use a Color system--but when set to Japanese, there's loads of dialog lines for the Capcom and SNK characters in the illustration! The lettering in the illustrations stays in English, though.
When you power on in black and white, the game shows you one of the cartoon images; the next time you power on, it shows you the next one, and cycles through them like that, in a fixed order, as you do more power resets.
I've been forgetting Shermie's name lately, phooey! And here she's dressed up like Morrigan! And Morrigan's dressed up like--! |
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| | | Came out in '99, before Capcom's CvS games of '00 and '01, and SNK's post-bankruptcy (2001) SVC Chaos (2003).
Same year as the first SvC: Card Fighter's Clash; SVC: Card Fighters 2 Expand Edition was 2001. |
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[WARNING: Lots of screen flash FX in this game. O_o I forgot just how flashy it is, dang. And certain characters--like Haohmaru, from super-flashy Samurai Shodown games--seem to have even more flashes built in, or something.]
Playing through the Japanese version of "SNK vs. Capcom: The Match of the Millennium" for Neo Geo Pocket Color (NGPC), as Geese Howard, at NORMAL difficulty, in the emulator Mednafen! I also rummage through the game's other modes & settings.
They might've overdone the arcade ("Tourney") mode slightly: on NORMAL difficulty, my run consisted of four random matches, a match against M.Bison, another random(?) match, a match against 3 "clones," a match against both Geese and M.Bison ;_;, and a match against a final super boss--all on a handheld with limited battery capacity and no mid-game save!
Also I suck even way more than usual with Geese, I probably shouldn't have let random select choose him for me. ; D (The [?] random select will re-randomize your character each stage--so after it picked Geese for me for the first match, I reset and then picked him manually; the NEOGEO KOF games did this as well, until KOF 2003.)
That electronic billboard of a guy running in the first stage is the famous "Glico Man" in Dotonbori, Osaka, Japan https://www.japan.travel/en/spot/2207/ : "The billboard was first erected in 1935 as an advertisement for Glico, the Japanese food company that produces Pocky and Pretz." Both SNK and Capcom are headquartered in Osaka. The sign also apparently appears in Data East's NEOGEO fighting game Fighter's History Dynamite / Karnov's Revenge https://orochinagi.com/gamer-guide-japan/gamer-landmarks/glico-man .
Forgot how much I'm not into the game's Olympic "events." ; D |
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