Without boring you with the entire tale, when I was looking at R.B.I. Baseball on the NES a couple of months ago as I write, I had reason to go back and check out a couple of other baseball games I already owned but had never played before… Long story short, I was never interested in the sport until very recently but now I’m obsessed! Anyway, I only got one of those, Street Sports Baseball for the Commodore 64, when it was included in The C64 Collection 1 for Evercade in 2022. Had such a good time getting to know it too! Urban take on the game from Epyx in 1987 where you pick from a gang of local teens, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, then head to either the local park or a carpark for an otherwise proper nine-innings match. It’s simple but so much fun, especially fine-tuning your team selection then hoping your favourites aren’t going to be picked for the other side first, and I’ve now got to the point where I’m thinking it might deserve a place in my big list of favourite games ever!

The other baseball game I remembered I owned was from five years later, Baseball Stars 2, an SNK arcade game from 1992 that appeared on the SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 compilation for PlayStation Portable, or PSP, that we’re gathered here today to look at. And we’re going to look at that game and everything else on there in a sec so I won’t go into any more detail here now, except to say that as I just alluded to, I don’t think I’d ever even loaded up Baseball Stars 2 – after all, it was a baseball game, so why would I? The thing is, what I also realised as I navigated through the menu of games to find it is that I’ve barely played any of the sixteen SNK NeoGeo arcade games on here! That’s not to say I’m not very familiar with a fair few of them, such as King of the Monsters or Last Resort, as we’ll find out later, but apart from Neo Turf Masters and a bit of Metal Slug, I don’t this UMD has spent much time in my PSP at all since I bought it on release back in 2008. And I reckon it deserves better than that, so let’s dive in!

Before we start though, I’ll quickly mention that to avoid too many dodgy photos full of reflections and blurring because I’m trying to catch a bit of action from my phone in one hand while I’m trying to play with the other while the PSP is balanced on my knee, I’m going to grab some of the game screenshots from PSP emulation (look for the borders!) or maybe a couple of videos too. Apart from that, we’ll take a look at the compilation as a whole and how it presents these sixteen games, before a look at each and every one individually. Maybe a word on SNK first though, not least because the first page of the instruction manual gives a nice summary I can steal from! SNK Playmore, also known as SNK, was founded by Eikichi Kawasaki in Osaka, Japan back in 1978. Incidentally, SNK is short for Shin Nihon Kikaku, which translates to New Japan Project. As well as being a pioneer in the coin-op arcade industry, they also came up with the NeoGeo MVS and AES arcade systems, as well as over a hundred games that keep on coming to this day.

If you let the game load out by itself rather than impatiently pressing every button until the title screen appears, you’re treated to a really cool attract video featuring the games, their artwork and gameplay footage, but either way, you’ll end up on a dynamic vertical carousel with one game per screen (and a couple more bits of artwork to enjoy) where you can just start playing, adjust settings, from gameplay difficulty and controller mapping to audio and display options (pixel perfect or full screen), as well as look at art, music, move lists or videos you’ve unlocked, and finally you can also look at the goals for each game that you need to complete to unlock them. These include stuff like beating the game on different difficulty levels, having a perfect bout in a fighting game, trying different modes, hitting high scores, scoring a hat-trick, getting a birdie and so on. There’s about eight for each game, and I’d say maybe half of them are achievable for the mere mortal… No way I’m ever beating Metal Slug on Insane or seeing Fatal Fury’s extended ending though! I do appreciate that it tells you exactly how to actually achieve stuff like that with a press of X all the same though. Whatever you achieve, you’ll earn medals for doing so, and these in turn unlock all that bonus stuff, and there’s tons of it – must be at least seventy-five move lists for the different fighting games here alone! I guess the biggest reward is being able to unlock World Heroes though, which is a mere ten medals…

I guess it’s an indication of how little I’d played this thing before now when I say I didn’t have enough medals to unlock it when I started here, so we’d better get into the games and earn some, and we’ll do that in the alphabetical order they come in, starting with Art of Fighting. Something else I appreciate are the instructions giving me all the background I need to set the scene for each one, so I can easily tell you that this one-on-one 2D fighter was first released in 1992, and as the story is short here and it’s the first one, I’ll give you it in full… “Help Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia find Ryo’s sister, Yuri, who has been kidnapped by Mr. Big. Also learn the true identity of Mr. Karate.” Makes a change from a tournament to save the world, and it made a few other changes to differentiate it from the ubiquitous Street Fighter II with a proper story (that limits you to Ryo and Garcia, while two-player opens up eight more characters), what would become trademark SNK graphical scaling to give the action more punch, some unique special move handling, strategic taunting and bonus games to unlock some more of them. I’ve never played much of this one but I’m really quite taken by it! It’s not as smooth as SF2 but everything is bigger, it’s crazy colourful and fast-paced, and the scrolling is great. Only downside here is some necessary but weird controller mapping, where strong attacks are on the triangle button but what type of strong attack depends on whether you punched or kicked last; I got used to it but I don’t think it’s ideal for expert play. Plays fine otherwise though and a perfect start to the collection!

Now the game that brought us here, Baseball Stars 2. It’s a very arcade take on the sport, also from 1992, and is actually the sequel to a NES game from 1989. I’m not sure I’ve seen a more visually appealing baseball game than this – not that I’m exactly a connoisseur yet – but I can tell you it’s gorgeous, full of vibrant cartoon detail, madcap animation and comedic pop-outs for key plays, with music and sound effects (including a ton of over-excited speech) to match. It’s loads of fun to play too, with fast and frantic one- or two-player gameplay, with a choice of twelve teams across two leagues, Exciting (beginner) and Fighting (expert), with various team set-ups, power-ups, button mashing for speed, finesse plays and other very non-simulation stuff! This one might be new to me but I absolutely adore it already! As a quick aside, I’ve been playing a bit of its indirect predecessor Super Baseball 2020 from 1991 too, which offers similar gameplay, presentation and humour but in a sci-fi setting, and it really works! Just a shame it’s not here too but it’s easy enough to get legitimately elsewhere on modern platforms if you want a look.

I still regret not doing a book review for the big on size and big on quality Go Straight: The Ultimate Guide to Side-Scrolling Beat-‘Em-Ups from Bitmap Books, so as I’m struggling for photos of stuff in motion, I’ll give that a shoutout here instead! We’re staying in 1991 for our next game, Burning Fight, where you’ve got two New York cops and a martial arts guy called Ryu in Japan trying to take down a crime syndicate by beating everyone up. I couldn’t really agree more with the book here when they say it looks great but everything else feels very generic. These things always play better with two players but not much chance of that on my PSP, and unfortunately the polish of a surprisingly authentic Osaka soon wears off playing solo and you’re left with a lot of bland punching and kicking that you’ve seen before and seen done better. Alright but nothing more.

More fighting now, with Fatal Fury (or Fatal Fury: King of Fighters) from 1991, where Terry and his brother Andy are out for revenge against a crime lord called Geese for killing their father. From plain old Terry to a bloke called Geese in a single game… Thankfully, the annual King of Fighters tournament is about to begin and Geese’s right-hand man is the champion, so that’s what you’re going to be doing here! This is by the guy who came up with Street Fighter, and it’s pretty standard fighting fare, apart from introducing two battle lanes to proceedings on some of the stages. I’ve played a lot of Garou: Mark of the Wolves, which was about ten games down the series later, but never much of this one, and I think I’m still a little bit on the fence. I could say it’s a methodical fighter, and more about timing than ramming combos down your opponent’s throat, but I could equally say it’s a bit slow! Only the three characters I’m aware of and just a handful of locations too, although they are very dynamic with some lovely detail, and it all moves well in general. Some fantastic music too! Don’t think it sets the world on fire but there’s a good sense of progression the more you play and I like it.

How can a wrestling match between two colossal beasts across an entire destructible city not be fantastic? Okay, 1991’s King of the Monsters isn’t the most sophisticated fighting game you’ll ever play, but it’s great fun, with six classic kaiju- and tokusatsu-inspired monsters to choose from and six near-future Japanese cities waiting to wrecked while you battle it out for a three-count! They might not be officially licensed, but Geon is clearly Godzilla, Woo is King-Kong, Astro Guy is Ultraman and so on. Controls are dead simple, with context-based punches and kicks, grapples leading to suplexes and slams, rope throws and a special. It’s all very shallow as a result, but who cares when those ropes are power lines that will electrocute your opponent, or that slam is on top of some packed sports stadium! The more you destroy while you’re wearing them down the better, with bonus points awarded for destruction between rounds, of which there are twelve in total. The cities are full of intricate colour and dynamic character as they try to defend themselves, and even though the scale you’re fighting on means the monsters themselves are relatively small, it’s the same for them – all recognisable and enough movement about them to give the combat a bit of strategy and a bit of variety depending on who you choose. I’ve been playing the ACA NeoGeo release of this for years on Switch, and it’s a winner here too.

Now we’re talking! Last Resort is a horizontal shoot ‘em up from 1992 that has one of the most stunning parallax cityscapes you’ll ever see in a game, and in the very first level too! Both the graphics and soundtrack are something else throughout though, as you protect the last remaining human colony from a computer virus and its minions across five stages that I think you need to beat twice but it’s so tough I’ll never even do it once no matter how much I play – and I do regularly play this a lot! As well as the environments, the enemy designs are superb, and in particular the bosses that can be vast, multi-screen affairs, full of sci-fi detail and creative colour choices, while this dramatic orchestral synth-rock medley evolves in the background. There’s bullets and lasers and gunfire and environmental stuff everywhere too, with non-stop sirens and beefy sound effects giving its R-Type-inspired gameplay a whole new level of frantic. I guess a bit of its majesty is lost on both the small PSP screen and in its weedy speakers, but schmups generally play well on the system and this is no different.

I don’t often do videos, but when I first came across Magician Lord on MAME not that long ago, I was so taken by the soundtrack I had to save a quick clip for future use, so welcome to the future… One less dodgy photo to worry about too! And when I say I first came across it, obviously I’d totally forgotten it was on here, and judging by my medal tally, is probably another one I’d never even fired-up before! It’s a side-scrolling fantasy action platformer from 1990 with a generic magician try to stop some god of destruction being revived storyline set across eight stages. That’s fine when a game sounds like this though – I still can’t get enough of the in-game music, which has that Thunder Blade IV kind of energetic cosmic rock vibe about it! The graphics are fine if not quite as memorable but the gameplay certainly holds its own – think a slightly less charming and more vertical Ghouls ‘n Ghosts that’s also big on difficulty when you’re just starting out. Quite hard to put down once you do get going though, and I’m really glad this one is on here now I know what it is!

There are few SNK games more iconic than Metal Slug, and to me at least this original entry is the best of a very big bunch of them, even if I’ve long-since comes to terms with the fact I’ll never be any good at it! Doesn’t matter when a game is this outrageously good-looking and outrageously violent to boot though! You play as an elite one-man army trying to stop a new world order with an array of powered-up weapons and a load of “Metal Slug” tanks to hijack, and it’s insane! It’s a masterclass in pixel-art design too, which I reckon is the sole reason it survived as a 2D run and gun in the 1996 arcades, and even today the density of explosions, environmental animation, character design and just crazy attention to detail makes it a stunning prospect. So much humour too, and all that noise, and the ludicrous boss fights, and the facial expressions, and the little old ladies holding cats in shop doorways trying to avoid the bullet-hell going on in the middle of the street!!! Nothing is lost in its transition to PSP here either, even if I still can’t get beyond level two. What a game!

Also from 1996 and – like Metal Slug – by developer Nazca, just before they were acquired by SNK, Neo Turf Masters provides some respite from all that Rambo stuff with a nice round of match-play (if you’ve got two players) or stroke-play golf on a choice of four courses from around the world with one of six unique golfers. It controls with a familiar two-press gauge, albeit slightly simpler than usual with the first for power then the second for a high, middle or low shot, where hook and slice are on separate buttons beforehand. Any simplicity here is compensated for by some crazy course designs though – all the four courses in single-player stroke-play get fiendish quick! Presentation is top-notch, especially the music, and the “on the gween” speech sample never gets old! One to lose yourself for hours in, and I certainly have for many years!

Back to 1993 and back to some fighting next with Samurai Shodown! This one finds us in 1788, where chaos is engulfing the world and a group of warriors are mysteriously drawn together to find its source… Obviously, by way of a fighting tournament! This actually began life as a scrolling beat ‘em up but was reeled-in to become a stopgap fighter release between Fatal Fury and 3 Count Bout instead. And it turned out alright too! The weapon-based combat makes it a slightly more methodical affair – like we saw with Fatal Fury – but that’s more than countered by more of SNK’s over the top violence on display! With just four buttons it’s easy to get your head around too, as you embark on a gauntlet of twelve opponents before a final boss, split up by mini-games, but of course there’s always more depth the more you put in, with some very cool specials and loads of variety across the characters. Loads of variety in the environments too, with detail and fluid movement everywhere, supported by some absolutely wonderful sound effects and a decent soundtrack. This is another favourite of mine that I’ve been playing a lot of recently on the Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection for Switch, and there’s no reason why it can’t be a favourite here too!

Sengoku is a very strange beat ‘em up from 1991, where an ancient Japanese warlord has been resurrected and you need to stop him and his evil legion before they destroy the world. Strange isn’t necessarily a bad thing though, and could even be considered inventive instead, with your character having a cool ability to transform into three different samurai warriors, as well as collect coloured orbs to upgrade what start out as pretty standard melee attacks into mad sword attacks and even magic fireballs! Lose the upgrades and you’ll probably be screwed though, and likewise be careful when you’re selecting your alter-egos because while you can do it whenever you like, the enemies aren’t going to be waiting for you to finish up messing around in a menu! It’s a great-looking game, with some really creative and well-realised sprites, as well as some very atmospheric backdrops as you switch between the regular world and the spooky underworld. Another fine soundtrack too! A lot more going on than you might think at first glance, so definitely worth a second one!

I just realised this was the first time I played with the PSP’s unique analog nub for directional control, rather than the d-pad, and that’s because Shock Troopers is an 8-way shooting run and gun game from 1997, which also makes it the latest game on the collection, eleven years after SNK released what must considered its possibly better-known spiritual predecessor, Ikari Warriors. The story is the Bloody Scorpions Group have kidnapped a scientist and his granddaughter, gaining control of the drug he invented, Alpha-301. The instructions don’t say what it does but can’t be any good as you’re choosing either one of eight characters in “Lonly Wolf” mode (sorry, spellchecker!) or three you can switch between in Team Battle to go out and save the world as a result! You’ve also got a choice of Jungle, Mountain and Valley routes that really add variety and ramp-up the challenge. Gameplay-wise it’s familiar territory though, but it’s brilliantly familiar! I’m not sure it would have been my first choice in an arcade in 1997, but you’d struggle to name a more polished and refined example of the genre today – it’s got everything you want, looks and sounds great, and that analog nub feels perfect!

I’ve always loved Super Sidekicks 3: The Next Glory! I loved the arcade machine after it first came out in 1995. I’ve played tons of the ACA NeoGeo release on Switch more recently. And I even spent a bit of time playing it on this very compilation on this very console back in 2008, would you believe! Actually, if I remember rightly, it was one of the main reasons I picked it up the day it released. It’s a football game, there’s sixty-four international teams, and you’re all competing in regional or world tournaments as you wish. Win and you progress, lose and you’re out, draw and it goes to extra time then penalties. It’s a little bit stiff, the ball physics are sometimes questionable, and scoring goals is a nightmare, but don’t let any of that out you off because it’s a really fun, really arcade take on the game that’s easy to pick up, fast-paced and always tense whatever the score! Insane with two players as well, but you can’t have everything on a single handheld, unfortunately. You’ve got a kind of faux-3D, above and to the side view of a realistic pitch, almost-familiar players, funny cartoon cutscenes, loads of sampled sounds and baseball-style musical interludes to keep you happy, all on top of a properly frantic game of football. A classic in my book, just like the goal I squeezed passed the keeper in another rare video clip, albeit from the Switch release!

Three games to go and another classic now, The King of Fighters ‘94! As you might expect, it’s from from 1994, when the greatest fighters from around the world have been invited to yet another tournament to see who really is the King of Fighters, or, more accurately, the kings and queens… We’ve got a load of returning characters from Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury from earlier, and some from the aforementioned Ikari Warriors too, as well as SNK’s Psycho Soldier, and a bunch of new ones too. And you’re going to have to pay attention to all of them because the basic fighting gameplay might be getting familiar by now (although we do have light and heavy attacks here), but the format is now three-on-three team-based rather than rounds, with the winner from each team staying on until one side wins out. You choose your national team of three, of which there’s eight, and away you go with what must have been a really impressive cast at the time, and a unique concept too – not sure any other fighter had done this team elimination thing before then. Combat is fast-paced, there’s huge depth to the move-sets and a lot to get your head around with three characters at a time to get to grips with, but you’ll have a blast doing so, and while I’m not so down on the soundtrack, the regional environments look incredible. If you’re picking one fighter to play on here, I reckon it’s this one.

While I guess Shock Troopers is also in with a shout, I think Top Hunter: Roddenberry & Cathy from 1994 might be the outstanding unsung hero on this compilation! It’s kind of Metal Slug meets Rod Land meets Gunstar Heroes meets Double Dragon, as you and your titular bounty hunting partner (when a player two is available) platform and beat ‘em up your way through four planets – Forest, Ice, Wind and Fire – taking down a gang of space pirates up to no good across the galaxy. Then there’s a boss rush. And I hate boss rushes! However, as much fun as this game genuinely is, it’s a good place to rack up a few of those medals we’re going to need to unlock our final game in a second because it’s on the quick and easy side. Even on hard! Okay, maybe if you’re paying an extortionate price for a NeoGeo cartridge you might want a bit more out of a game, but it’s an absolute hidden gem in this collection! The graphics are sumptuous, there’s a wonderful orchestral soundtrack, some madcap enemies, more depth to the controls than it first lets on, and a cool two planes of play mechanic, all of which make it at least worth a play-through.

I know I’ve been avoiding too many terrible photos but I kind of have to finish with one for World Heroes, just so you know I did unlock it in the end; I actually did it before I even started on Top Hunter too! It’s a fighting game from 1992, where, having perfected a time travel machine, Dr Brown organises – you guessed it – a tournament with the best fighters from the entirety of history to find out who’s the all-time best. Proper tournament too, none of that new-fangled three-on-three malarkey! You’ve got eight characters to choose from, with some unique abilities for each one, and a choice of Normal Game, where you fight through the other characters then a boss as normal, or Death Match, which is similar but in a single arena with electric fences, spikes and other such lethal hazards to watch out for or use to your advantage. I’m not sure it quite has the looks or the fluidity of Street Fighter II, but add all of that and a nice bit of music to a very solid fighting system while looking through a pair of 1992 eyes and I reckon it’s a decent competitor all the same, and a great way to round out our little journey here!

Whenever I’m asked about my favourite console ever, my go-to answer is the Game Boy Advance SP. However, over the last couple of years, the PlayStation Portable has been gradually sowing seeds of doubt about that into my mind, and getting to grips with this compilation I still can’t believe I’ve just sat on since 2008 has sown even more! I absolutely played my PSP to death during its entire lifetime and way beyond, amassing a huge collection of UMDs, including a few films and a bunch of wrestling documentaries that still get wheeled out on there because I still don’t have them anywhere else. It’s a wonderful machine even if it isn’t quite the PlayStation in your hand originally promised (but it’s close!), and SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 is a wonderful set of games to play on it! The sixteen titles are very well curated, each suited to portable play but they’ve also gone to the effort of adapting them to ensure the best possible experience, whether remapping controls or adding checkpoints you can restart from again later, for example, after a hole is completed in Neo Turf Masters. That kind of thing, as well as some of the display options and unlockables, makes it an interesting time capsule too, in that we’re seeing the transition of compilations from weirdly presented dumps of games, like the PS2 Midway one (I think) set in an Egyptian tomb, or the Intellivision one in a pizza restaurant, to what we know today, with save states and rewinds and all the display options and huge media galleries and histories and the like. Most of all though, while there’s inevitably stuff I’m not likely to spend a huge amount of time on regardless of the impressively consistent quality here, now I’ve rediscovered this lot there’s definitely a new place I’m going to be playing a lot more of a lot of them, and just to finish where this began, there’s even new favourites like Baseball Stars 2 among them too!