Neo Geo Battle Coliseum - XBLA - A quick play

Sooooo Neo Geo Battle Coliseum has finally landed on the Xbox Live Arcade, priced at 800MS points and weighing in at 830.79MB. (Check it out on Xbox.com.)

Managed to pick it up before work today and had a quick play through it, bare in mind when reading this i've had very little experience of the arcade version and ps2 port so i am unsure of alot of (if any changes).

Firstly as far as i know all secret characters are unlocked from the get go, as you can see from the above photo Goddess Athena and Mars People are there on the character select screen.
If you go to the far right (or far left) you can select Shishioh (King Lion), Mizuchi, and Neo Dio off screen. Goodman is selectable in an 'invisible' box in the centre.

On playing the actual game, i jumped straight into practice mode, and noticed the smudge filter straight away. Although not so much of a big deal once everything is moving, it does look fairly odd, i had a quick look in the options menu and couldn't seem to find the option to turn it off.
(Though i could be wrong.)

Though on the bright side, the 3D background look gorgeous. I'm personally not normally a fan of 3D backgrounds in SNKP games but i think they look pretty good in this one.

After a quick practice session i jumped into Story Mode, i'm not sure whether this was the case in the ps2 version or whether i'm playing a different mode from the ps2 1player mode but i remember in the arcade after defeating your opponent you get a choice of something like regain health/regain time and possibly something else.

Story mode doesn't seem to have this, it just plays through like a normal fighting game.

I then attempted to jump online after getting owned by Mizuchi in story mode, but couldn't find any matches. (I'm guessing most people were at work/school.)

One problem i have had so far is i have found it difficult to pull off Iori's super moves, i'm not too sure whether i'm inputting a way the game doesn't understand or my stick needs to be replaced or there is a problem with the game. (I'm assuming it's one of the first two at the moment.)

But on the whole, as a game i wasn't too excited about at first i'm glad i ended up getting it.
I'll try and put more time into it tonight, and since we are doing our SNK Wednesday night tonight, hopefully the netcode will get tested and wil be good too.

For 800ms points this game is a bargain.