Overview
SD Gundam Neo Battling is a vertically-scrolling shoot 'em up arcade game released by Banpresto exclusively in Japan in 1992. It was the first SD Gundam arcade game ever released.
Neo Battling could be played with one or two players. Players select one of twelve protagonist Gundams at the start, each with their own varying stats, and begin playing through the game's stages at a set pace. Movement was controlled with an eight-direction joystick and a single button fired the weapon. The weapon button could be held down to charge the base attack to perform a special attack unique to each Gundam. Enemies would spawn in from all directions, moving in scripted patterns and firing projectiles at the player. Each Gundam has finite health, and should they take too many hits they will lose a life. Losing all lives results in a Game Over, which they could Continue from by inserting additional credits (yen). Thus players must avoid damage by destroying the many enemies while they proceed to the end of each scrolling stage. Different alternate weapons, stat power-ups and score-increasing items often spawn randomly from crates that must be destroyed to obtain the contents, though some items -such as a bust of Gihren Zabi- lower the player's score, so players should have some discretion instead of trying to get every item. The game has eight stages, each split into six levels, with bosses frequently appearing at the end of levels that must be defeated to advance.
