This Week In Retro: Neo Geo Battle Coliseum (Patreon)

July 2005: Mizuchi & Dio & Leo & Goodman

by Diamond Feit

"All good things must come to an end," as the saying goes, and if you're a video game fan you know the truth of this better than anyone. I grew up obsessed with arcades only to see them die a slow death at the end of the 20th century. I can remember when the Nintendo Entertainment System represented the cutting edge of gaming at home, only to learn as I grew older that a new pinnacle of the medium would surface every 4-6 years. Yet even that pattern may die off as new consoles now feel like smartphones, offering incremental upgrades but few lasting changes.

Experiencing this sense of loss again and again as the march of technology demanded I repeatedly replace my equipment, one finale left me feeling more disillusioned than the others. From the moment I laid eyes upon a NEO•GEO arcade cabinet in 1990, it struck me as the absolute coolest gaming machine. Even knowing nothing about the inner workings of other systems, I knew the NEO•GEO had giant cartridges inside like a console, as most cabinets I saw contained multiple games that players could swap between with the press of a button. When developer SNK debuted a NEO•GEO home console one year later, I lacked the means to afford one but that didn't stop me from obsessing over each new game released for the system.

Flash forward a decade and I had grown old enough to rent an apartment of my own and had the necessary disposable income to fill it with video games. Against all odds the NEO•GEO continued to exist long after its contemporaries left the market; I bought one on eBay in 1999 and I played it about as often as I did my PlayStation 2 or GameCube. Yet as financial troubles and the aforementioned death spiral of arcades took their toll on SNK, the company announced in 2004 that the NEO•GEO had run its course.

Even in putting their dedicated hardware out to pasture, SNK committed to continue making games for arcades. The Osaka company quickly adapted to Sammy's new Atomiswave platform, releasing The King of Fighters Neowave in July. One year later in July 2005, SNK debuted their first original game for the platform, its title paying homage to the recently-departed hardware with the moniker Neo Geo Battle Coliseum.

Neo Geo Battle Coliseum is a 2D fighting game which shouldn't surprise given SNK's reputation as a prolific maven of the genre. The company created so many fighting games that their aforementioned King of Fighters series served as a gestalt of their greatest hits, pitting characters from various SNK properties against one another. The fact that SNK produced annual installments for 10 straight years astonishes me to this day.

Neo Geo Battle Coliseum continues the KoF tradition but casts an even wider net to build its roster of 40 combatants. Beyond the usual lineup of martial artists, we see weapon-wielding warriors from Samurai Shodown and The Last Blade, gun-toting soldiers from Metal Slug, and even a cybernetic ape from King of the Monsters 2. A majority of these familiar faces appear as-is from their previous games—making economical use of past art assets—but a fair number get all-new sprites to better fit in with more recent creations. Pitting Hanzo Hattori from 1992's World Heroes against Rock Howard from 1999's Garou: Mark of the Wolves would look distractingly mismatched otherwise.

Also in keeping with past crossover games, Neo Geo Battle Coliseum has players pick a pair of characters for a two-on-two tag match, allowing for swapping between partners on the fly. Since the Atomiswave supports five buttons compared to four on the NEO•GEO, players now have a dedicated tag button in addition to two punches and two kicks. This welcome update rectifies a major issue with late-era KoF games where certain commands required two or even three buttons pressed simultaneously.

Unlike other tag-based games, Neo Geo Battle Coliseum matches are single-fall by default, meaning players only need to KO one opponent to win. This requires both participants to keep a careful eye on their life meters and proactively exchange partners to keep both fighters fresh. While tagged out, characters recover a portion of their health marked in red just like in the Marvel vs Capcom series. To offset this, Neo Geo Battle Coliseum has special Double Assault moves that directly impact red health, permanently reducing the victim's life bar for the remainder of the match.

For a game assembled largely from leftover materials, Neo Geo Battle Coliseum works hard to justify itself. Ai and Yuki, two original protagonists created specifically for this title, have moves named for and utilizing elements from old NEO•GEO games. This includes dropping blocks from Puzzled, a spinning uppercut from Burning Fight, and even a special dual-move where they fuse together into a superhero from King of the Monsters. They're not alone, either, as plenty of other characters have unique Double Assaults that feature special animations and sound effects when executed with the correct teammate.

Every stage, too, has its roots in SNK's past software, such as a showfloor displaying a lineup of vehicles from Top Hunter, Last Resort, and Alpha Mission II. Other SNK characters likewise litter the backgrounds, watching the action in the foreground or just hanging out—a small gesture that both makes the environments feel lively and celebrates the deep bench of NEO•GEO all-stars.

While you might not realize it playing the arcade version, Neo Geo Battle Coliseum even includes a narrative drawing upon SNK's legacy. According to the (now defunct) English-language website, the game takes place in 2017 where one man seeks the throne of NEO•GEO World. Representing the WAREZ Conglomerate, he hosts a fighting tournament in order to "topple NeoGeo's most powerful warriors" en route towards "world domination."

In a single-player runthrough of the tournament, your performance determines which of four powerhouses you face as a final challenge. Three of these bruisers are based on bosses from prior NEO•GEO titles, and should you defeat them they crumble to nothingness as a text crawl suggests they were imposters created by WAREZ. Only top players who obliterate the competition without continuing can meet would-be global conqueror Goodman, the game's true villain. 

Regardless of your story path, the bosses of Neo Geo Battle Coliseum represent the most lopsided foes in SNK history—no small statement given the company's already notorious habit of stacking the deck against players. Bosses here have no partners and cannot tag out, so they automatically regenerate red health almost instantly. They attack aggressively with moves that carry high priority and large hitboxes, and the CPU can easily counter your moves with nigh-invincible reversals.

If all this sounds like an insufferable level of fanservice, you're not wrong. However, the context surrounding Neo Geo Battle Coliseum's release does explain why fans like me embraced it. As explained above, SNK fell on hard times at the dawn of the millennium, filing for bankruptcy and essentially going out of business. For those of us who had grown up playing their games, we watched SNK go under and feared the characters and worlds that they had created might vanish.

Lest we forget, 2001 also saw longtime hardware and software publisher Sega announce their departure from the console-making business, casting doubt on the future of both the company and its many creations. Witnessing the termination of the Dreamcast and NEO•GEO in such close proximity—along with a general decline in 2D graphics across the medium—had me worried that a huge swath of gaming might cease to exist.

Additionally, consider that Neo Geo Battle Coliseum arrived less than one year after Capcom Fighting Evolution, another crossover game ostensibly celebrating its publisher's history by pitting an assortment of legacy characters against one another. Capcom's release drew jeers for its haphazard presentation that looked entirely composed of recycled data, offering nothing that a round of MUGEN couldn't provide.

Compared to that, Neo Geo Battle Coliseum comes off as a passion project that—while admittedly built using spare parts—looks and feels good to players and spectators alike. A PlayStation 2 port arrived in Japan by year's end when I just happened to be in Osaka as a student; my friends and I spent many hours sparring as well as struggling against the bosses to unlock all the extras.

Today, with SNK back in full-on development mode and many 2D fighting games finding new fans via online play, Neo Geo Battle Coliseum qualifies as a hidden gem. Its unique roster and tag mechanics haven't made their way to any other titles and that PS2 port remains the last version available at retail. Xbox owners can still access a 2010 digital-only release for Xbox LIVE Arcade, but that's it for legitimate copies on the market. Fans, to their credit, created a Dreamcast port in 2020, a fitting destination given how many NEO•GEO games appeared on Sega's console in the 2000s.

In hindsight none of my fears from 2005 came to pass, as both Sega and SNK operate today at a high level. Yet the volatile nature of the video game business continues to make headlines. Mass layoffs put developers out of work as prices for new consoles and software seem destined to rise. Given all that's happening at the moment, I hope you'll forgive me for reminiscing about a studio defying the odds and saying "We're still in business."

May we all be so lucky. 

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet.