Fighting Female July : Gal Fighters is quite good for a portable fighter at 2:29 PM

Fighting games are games of precision and skill, which is why the mostly stayed away from anything under 16 bits. It's not so much that it's impossible to make  a fighting game for the original gameboy and nes. But to make it any good at all takes so much skill, it's practically not worth it.

So when I approached Gal Fighter, an original female only SNK fighting game based on it's King of Fighter series for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, I wasn't expecting much. However, the game managed to deliver above my expectations.

The overarching plot is that there's a  wish granting talisman, a tournament to get it, and various characters who want it. Not exactly Homer's The Illiad there, but it'll do. You've got a handful of characters you may recognize from King of FIghters such as Mai, Athena and  Leona.  I recognized them more from having been depantsed for Mugen years ago, but whatever.
 
The fighting is surprisingly fluid. Pulling off specials and hypers is easy, and I ran into the odd combo now and then. To influence the fight, you can collect items which affect you and your opponent. Or at least I think it is, the descriptions are mired in bad translations that, while hilarious, kind of obscure the purpose of the object.

The difficulty is seemingly easy. I had no trouble beating all the opponents, and only got beat by the final boss, Miss X(Iori Yagami in drag), once, which I resolved by taking one of those famous items.