NeoGeo Battle Coliseum PS2 Review

NeoGeo Battle Coliseum is a fighting festival: a celebration of the rich history of SNK and their NeoGeo format. It’s a game that is sure to go down well with fans of the famous games and console, but it also should delight the legion of fighting game enthusiasts yearning for another brawl.

NeoGeo Battle Coliseum brings together a large number of characters from various SNK titles, such as The King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, World Heroes, Metal Slug and Art of Fighting amongst others. This obviously results in a diverse bunch of characters for your thumbs to get reacquainted with or acquainted with for the very first time.

The game is 2-on-2 tag-based action, in which you can switch between your teaming duo at any point in the match, as long as both characters are still standing. The fighter on the sidelines slowly recovers his or her’s health, and there’s further strategy during matches courtesy of the damaging double assault moves.

There’s a decent amount of modes and some even boast a rather unusual spin on the norm. Unsurprisingly you get your usual arcade, practice and survival mode options, whilst tag play is a exclusive new mode for the home version. The arcade mode is unusual in the way that you get 300 seconds to defeat as many teams as possible before finally encountering the ultra cheap boss. The survival and practice modes are exactly how you would expect to find them, whilst the tag play mode allows you to fight until an entire team has been decimated opposed to most of the other modes, in which matches and rounds are ended as soon as one of the combatants hit’s the deck.

The people who are going to get the most from this are obviously the ordinary devoted folk who will put their heart and soul into practice, assuring that they will one day be absolutely unbeatable. For everyone else it may just appear to be another 2D fighting game, which is far from the truth (just ask any fan if you don‘t believe us!).

Graphically the game is looking a little dated, and those looking for high res sprites will be disappointed, still, fans of the distinct SNK graphical style are going to be over the moon regardless of how crisp Terry Bogard looks. The backgrounds are also worthy of a mention, as they frequently stand out well enough to attract the attention of the eyeballs.

NeoGeo Battle Coliseum is a commendable celebration of SNK’s past, and fans of both console and company will get a kick out of constructing various dream matches that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. For everyone else there’s a very good 2D fighting game to get to grips with here, and one that is deserving of both your time and attention.

8/10