NeoGeo Battle Coliseum

The PlayStation 2 had an entire era of good 2D fighting games; some might even consider it the king of those games. SNK Playmore’s contribution to this catalogue of fighting games has been more than massive, creating masterpiece after masterpiece that live on in the memory of people that have been avid fans of their franchises for decades.

As the PlayStation 2 era of video games was almost coming to an end, with new consoles right around the corner, the PlayStation 3 waiting to pounce as soon as it comes out. SNK Playmore throws a final farewell to its collaborations with the PlayStation 2, creating a game, withholding absolutely none of their assets. NeoGeo Battle Coliseum, a game, while not as fun or well-made as King of Fighters XI, it is a game that has a lot going for it, with fluid and responsive hits just like King of Fighters and other SNK games, and exciting new mechanics to boot!

Everyone Get Together and Throw a Punch

NeoGeo Battle Coliseum, unlike other SNK Playmore franchises, combines all of its franchises into one widely enjoyable experience, adding characters and levels from some of our favourite games and making these characters brawl it out. Adding characters from beloved franchises such as; King of Fighters, Samurai Showdown, The Last Blade, Metal Slug, Fatal Fury, The Art of Fighting, Savage Reign and World Heroes.

NeoGeo Battle Coliseum has a lot of characters, from a lot of different games, so it was already bound to have a lot of balancing issues, which the developers tackled pretty well I would say, by making every single playable character over-powered. Every single character is broken in this game, which makes for a fun and engaging experience, because if everyone is broken, no one is broken.

Exciting New Mechanics

NeoGeo Battle Coliseum for the most part features fun and fluid gameplay like almost every other 2D fighting game by SNK Playmore, with responsive hits and fun to do combos and special moves that require way more than just button mashing. A new feature however is the addition of a team special attacks that are called “Special Double Assault” in the game’s lingo.

These are basically very over the top special moves that are a result of combining specific characters together, such as Iori and Kyo from King of Fighters, resulting in an often super stylized and VFX heavy sequence that totally destroys your opponents, just like everything else in this game, these moves are peculiarly overpowered as well!

End of an Era

NeoGeo Battle Coliseum came at a very peculiar time in the gaming industry, where the original PlayStation was being switched over to the PlayStation 3; this game came at the end of a console generation, as a massive farewell to the console’s lifetime. While not adding much new content to the game, SNK Playmore’s NeoGeo Battle Coliseum features a lot of memorable characters and stages from a variety of its franchises mashed together, which creates for a fun and engaging game that will stick with you for a while.

SNK Playmore’s biggest moment of fan service, creating one of the most fun to play crossover games in SNK history, with each character resonating the franchise they come from and mixing together very well with their peers from other franchises, making for some exciting to learn and master fighting situations.

Pros

• Nostalgia fuelled gameplay
• New exciting mechanics with unique characters from beloved franchises
• Well-done art design in stages and character skins

Cons

• Doesn’t bring much new stuff to the table
• Characters seem to be unbalanced