Who would’ve guessed such a niche device like the Neo Geo Pocket Color would have such a vibrant second life over 20 years later? SNK’s handheld came out in the late 90s and, like the Neo Geo itself, was mostly home to its own games. On the handheld, that meant a majority of the library would be RPGs and fighting games.
These games were rare when they were new and today they’re rarer still, commanding hundreds on auction sites. But now, in the 2020s, the Pocket Color’s library is being slowly made accessible again with releases like Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1, which reintroduced ten NeoGeo games like Samurai Shodown 2, Last Blade and two Metal Slugs at once on Switch.
SNK has now added to that with Biomotor Unitron, the Pocket Color’s first RPG. It shares a lot of elements with the roguelikes popular in the indie game scene today: randomly generated dungeons with equally random items that level up your robot. There are many like this, but Unitron was first! Gather materials...