Just fun
SNK brought together their neo geo cast to duke it out KOF style. There is a wide range of characters available, and some new twists on old favorites (Ryo is now Mr. Karate, for example). The sprites are very well drawn and don't look copy/pasted - in fact, most are brand new. The backgrounds are very nice, and the music is good, for the most part. All the characters are very well balanced, even though two in particular have some "Big" advantage. Tagging is instant, unlike in KOF XI. There also is a color edit, but you have to dig around in the options to find it.

Now, for the cons. A large portion of the cast are KOF staples, meaning you've probably seen them more times than you care to think about. The arcade mode is horrible and has no reason to be there, since tag match is a better version of it. Tag attacks do pathedic amounts of damage and don't look that impressive (even the "special" tag attacks that only about 6 characters have). You cannot turn off the timer. There is about 8 seconds of loading time before a match begins, but that really isn't too bad.

This is one of the best fighters I've played in a long time. Highly recommended. While KOF XI overshadows it among SNK fans, there is still a good community surrounding Neo Geo Battle Coliseum.

Overall, a solid fighter
NeoGeo Battle Coliseum is certainly a must-own title for any fan of SNK Playmore titles and characters, past and present.

The game hosts a reasonably high amount of characters for your standard 2-D fighter; 39 standard characters and 4 unlockable boss characters. All are fairly balanced despite hailing from more than 12 different games. However, there is a slight bias in the number of special moves and super combos available to certain characters.

NBC has a few modes of play, mainly survival challenge and arcade. Both modes offer unlockables for clearing certain hurdles. The unlockable extras include original character artwork and character endings.

The only major problem I came across was the horrible slow-down in versus mode. There was simply too much movement in the background of the stage and the game lagged horribly. This was only in stages including polygonal 3-D animation in the background.

Interesting fighter.
I believe when SNKPLAYMORE made this game, it was to be a counterpart of Capcom Fighting Jam/Evoultion. Everyone anticipated that Capcom somewhat had a winner in their hands (but of course, now that is history, and the game is almost zilch to death); we now know who is supreme out of the two. This game takes a lot of the SNK games from the past, mixed some KOF well recognized fighters, Last Blade, Samurai Spirits/Showdown, Garou:MOTW, and throws in unexpected cast like Marco from the Metal Slug series, and brings back old characters from Fatal Fury such as Tung and brings a fresh new feel to the fighting scene. Of course, they added two new original characters made just for this game and the boss as well (not tourney legit). This is a must buy. And yes, the loading is a little long, and you really can't play online, but past that, and next to KOFXI, this is a MUST BUY!

Great games, poor loading time
With nice background, fast motion, good sprites with soft focus (but not sharp enough), surely this game is still a good collection for a hardcore fighting gamers. Only a matter of time loading can make you fall asleep waiting for next match.
Tag match is OK, but I still prefer Marvel vs Capcom (PSOne) or Tekken Tag Tournament (PS2).

!!!
I thought this game was going to be a big joke. It isn't. There are alot of characters from Kof, fatal fury, art of fighting, metal slug and more! The action is really fast pace and you feel like you are actually playing more than one game at a time! The stages are some of the best yet too and the graphics are sweet! By far one of the greatest games SNK has made in along time.