Why the Neo Geo Pocket Color is perfect for fighting-game beginners

The Neo Geo Pocket Color shipped in 1999 with two thumbsticks, four buttons, no analog, and a black and white display. It also shipped a small handful of fighting games that are still the most generous on-ramps the genre has ever produced.

If you want a friend who has never touched a fighting game to actually finish a match, hand them an NGPC.

Two buttons, real depth

The NGPC fighters are mostly two-button. You get a punch and a kick. The strength of each attack is decided by how long you hold the button. That sounds like a simplification, but it is the most elegant teaching tool SNK ever produced. New players think in terms of "I want a strong attack here" and the input matches the intent.

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The roster is built for learning

The crossovers of the era pulled fighters from across SNK and Capcom. Ryu and Terry alongside Iori and Akuma. Every archetype is represented and none of them have hidden install meters, charge timers within charge timers, or three super gauges to manage. Pick a character, learn three special moves, get something done in a real match.

Practice modes that actually teach

The era had the most generous training modes on a handheld. Walk through every special, attempt the input ten times, only the ones where you actually performed it count. By the end of the cartridge you have shadow-boxed every motion in the SF and KOF playbook.

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The hardware made it kind

The NGPC has a clicky microswitch stick. Forty years of arcade muscle memory translates instantly. Combine that with the two-button strength-by-hold scheme and you have the rare combination of easy enough to play standing on a train plus deep enough to reward real practice.

Worth tracking down

The library is small but every entry is recommended:

• Match of the Millennium
• King of Fighters R-2
• Samurai Shodown! 2
• SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash, for completeness — not a fighting game but it scratches the same itch

A used NGPC and Match of the Millennium runs less than a current-generation game and teaches more about the fundamentals than the first five hours of any 2024 fighter.

Once the NGPC clicks, jump back into the Capcom vs SNK 2 roster on the database and start tracking what you have learned in the tracker.