November 10, 2004 - SNK rocked the house back in the day. We used to spend all our tuition money playing everything from The Super Spy to Magician Lord and, yes, even Fatal Fury and King of Fighters.

Before the fall of arcades and shift from sprite-based games to polygonal ones, SNK was on top of its game with the 24-bit Neo Geo arcade-console hybrid. We miss those days.

The last bit of life left in the Japanese company was the aging King of Fighters (KOF) series, which saw continued popularity in arcades. Sadly, the company that gave us Iron Tank and Ikari Warriors fell into financial troubles, eventually claiming bankruptcy, liquidating all its assets, KOF included. Somehow, SNK has managed to come back as SNK Playmore. And somehow, the maker of kick ass fighters has done up a faithful cell phone version of the long-running series.

If you've played one 2D fighter you've played them all, at least as far as basic gameplay goes. This portable version is more of the same, except on the small vertical LCD. Our preview version is a bit choppy at times, but never so bad that it's unplayable. If you're at all familiar with the GBA version, you'll be right at home here.

On the N-Gage, the developer didn't resort to cutting off screen resolution with letterbox black bars; so we get a full screen, like it or not. The game would probably run nominally better with some cropping, but it's impressive to see all this real estate put to good use. Even better, the game uses cool little effects like multi-layered scrolling and obligatory super finish screen bursts.

The whole game is here, with all the necessary characters like Terry Bogard, Mai Shiranui and Andy, too. The list of characters is large and you can mix and match during Team Battle mode. Multiple modes like the just mentioned Team Battle and single character modes are cool, but we really like the Bluetooth compatibility. Soon you'll be able to go mano-a-mano with a friend via wireless connection.

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