Buying a Neo Geo Pocket Color — A Practical Guide
The two batteries inside. Which of the two models to buy, and what a Japanese game's language actually depends on. Questions worth asking before you commit.
There are two machines, and only one of them is worth buying
SNK released the monochrome Neo Geo Pocket in 1998 and the Neo Geo Pocket Color in 1999. In a small listing photograph they are easy to confuse.
The Color plays every game made for the monochrome machine — all nine of them — and it plays them in colour. It also runs roughly twice as long on the same two AA batteries. The monochrome model has no library of its own left to offer you, because the Color inherited it whole. Buy the monochrome machine only if you specifically want the monochrome machine.
One practical consequence: a seller who does not name the model in the title of the listing may not know which one they have. Ask before you bid.
The screen has no backlight — and that is not a fault
The Neo Geo Pocket Color has a reflective TFT screen with no backlight at all. It borrows the light in the room. Turn it on in a dim bedroom and the picture looks dead; carry it to a window and the colour arrives. First-time buyers regularly mistake this for a broken machine, and sellers occasionally list a perfectly healthy unit as faulty because of it.
This is what bought the battery life. Two AA cells run the machine for around forty hours. Sega's Game Gear lit its screen from behind and asked for six cells to manage three to five hours.
For you as a buyer, it means one thing: judge the screen in daylight. A photograph of the machine running, taken near a window, tells you about dead pixels and panel ageing. A photograph taken under a desk lamp tells you almost nothing.
The hardware is region-free. The language is not the hardware's decision.
There is no region lockout to work around here. A Japanese cartridge will start on a machine bought in North America or Europe, and a European cartridge will start on a Japanese machine. The console does not care where either of you came from.
What the console cannot do is translate. Some Japanese releases will display in English when the console's language setting is set that way; others are Japanese only, whatever the console says. That decision was made inside each game. So the question to answer before buying is never "will this console play Japanese games" — it always plays them — but "does this particular title have English text in it."
Check the individual game before you buy the game.
Two kinds of battery, and only one of them is yours to replace
The machine runs on two AA cells. It also carries a CR2032 coin cell, and that cell keeps the console's own clock and language setting alive. Your game saves are written to the cartridge itself. Assume that coin cell is dead — after this many years it almost certainly is, and replacing it is ordinary work.
The real question is what the batteries did while nobody was watching. AA cells left inside a drawer for years leak, and the contacts in the compartment corrode. A coin cell can leak into what surrounds it. Both kinds of damage are visible, which is the good news: one clear photograph of the opened battery compartment will show them.
Ask for that photograph before you commit. A seller who has the machine in front of them can take it in a moment; a seller who cannot has told you something too.
Questions buyers ask
Monochrome or Color — which should I buy?
The Color, without hesitation. It plays every one of the nine games ever made for the monochrome machine, it plays them in colour, and it runs for about forty hours on two AA batteries where the older one managed about twenty. There is no argument for the monochrome model except curiosity.
How does a colour handheld run for forty hours on two AA batteries?
By giving something up. The Neo Geo Pocket Color's screen is a reflective TFT — it has no backlight at all. It borrows the light in the room, the way a Game Boy does, and asks its batteries for almost nothing. Sega's Game Gear made the opposite choice, lit its screen from behind, and ran for three to five hours on six cells. Both machines were right. They simply answered a different question.
Can I play Japanese games on a machine bought elsewhere?
The hardware and the cartridges are region-free, so a Japanese game will start on any Neo Geo Pocket Color. Whether you can read it is a separate matter, and it is decided inside the game: some Japanese releases will display in English if the console is set that way, and others are Japanese only. Check the individual title before you buy it, not the machine.
What breaks on one of these?
The CR2032 cell that holds the console's clock and language setting has been in there for decades — expect it to be dead, and check that it has not leaked into anything. The AA battery compartment corrodes if cells were left inside. Beyond that, the ordinary ageing of a handheld: dead pixels, tired button contacts, a cartridge slot that needs reseating. Ask for photographs of the open battery compartment before you commit.
Is the clicky stick as good as people say?
People do say it. The microswitched stick clicks under the thumb — the same kind of click SNK first put in the Neo Geo CD pad in 1994 — and reviewers have loved it for years; 8BitDo now sells a modern controller built to reproduce that microswitch click, which is not a compliment many handhelds from 1999 have earned. It is the verdict of players and reviewers, not a design intention SNK ever put on record, and it is not unanimous — some players find diagonals harder to feel than they expected.
Pre-purchase checklist
Run through these before committing to a purchase.
What ages inside a Neo Geo Pocket Color
These are the 3 hardware issues that surface most often in tested units.
- The backup battery is dead — The clock resets and the language setting reverts; in the worst case, corrosion has spread from the cell. A CR2032 keeps the console's clock and settings alive, and it is now decades old. Left long enough, a leaking cell corrodes what is around it.
- Corroded battery contacts — It will not power on, or power cuts out when you move it. AA cells left inside for years leak, and the contacts in the compartment corrode.
- A tired screen or slot — Dead pixels on the LCD, buttons that do not answer, cartridges that need reseating. Ordinary ageing of an ordinary handheld — the LCD, the button contacts, and the cartridge slot.
The numbers worth remembering
- Released — 1998 (monochrome) · 1999 (Color)
- Display — Reflective TFT colour screen — with no backlight at all
- Power — Two AA batteries
- Battery life — About 40 hours in colour · about 20 on the monochrome model
- Library — The monochrome machine had only nine games. All of them run on the Color.
- Region — Region-free hardware and cartridges — but the language a game displays in is decided by the game
Want to know the going rate?
Prices for a Neo Geo Pocket Color turn on three things: whether it is the Color or the monochrome model, the state of the battery compartment, and whether the screen has been judged in daylight by someone who then wrote down what they saw. An untested lot is cheaper for a reason, and the reason is usually inside the compartment.
Already have one, or about to? Caring for a Neo Geo Pocket Color →
Want to understand the machine and why it was built this way? The Neo Geo Pocket Color corner →