Recently found a nice domestic auction for a handful of Neo Geo Pocket Color carts and I could not be more flooded with poisonous nostalgia right now.

I know the trend for retro portables is to replace the non-backlit reflective LCDs with backlight mods, but I truly think it takes away from the aesthetic SNK was able to achieve knowing the limitations of the technology at the time. Having played some of these games on the switch via the recent collections, I honestly think a lot is lost by having these games in perfect clarity.

For instance, the mono-colour sprites look kind of blah on a switch LCD, but when viewed with the right amount of light on on the screen they were designed for, there’s some dimensionality not present with modern conveniences; they pop!

The game you’re seeing is Samurai Shodown|Spirits! 2, which was originally released in 1999 and as far as portable chibi fighters go, this one is wonderful, with surprisingly deep-yet-fun gameplay and easy to pull off supers.

Photos taken with a A6000 Sony on a 35mm fixed lens. This is also my first SNK post!