88. Dark Arms: Beast Buster 1999 (Noise Factory, Neo Geo Pocket Color, 1999)

This was the last Neo Geo Pocket Color game that was left in my unplayed stack, and what a game it is. This is technically a spinoff of an earlier SNK arcade game, though the first Beast Busters was a light gun game about shooting various demons and zombies, so there wasn't a ton to carry over.

Dark Arms is also pretty light on the story, but you are working with a grim reaper looking guy to stop a demon outbreak. The game play is a top down shooter with very nice 8-bit graphics and music, as is typical for the Neo Geo Pocket. You start with a gun that is very weak but instead of killing an enemy, it captures them. Once you acquire an actual gun, that's where the game really opens up.

All of the enemies that you have caught with your capture gun can now be "fed" to your real gun, leveling it up and giving it an elemental property depending on which enemy was the last type it "ate". Once you feed enough enemies to your gun, you can choose to evolve it. The first gun, a handgun, can evolve into a machinegun, a beam gun, or a 2-way shotgun. Another weapon I found was like a close range fist that killed basic enemies in one hit and felt great to use after having a weak pistol for a while. You can also level up guns by using them to attack enemies, so it's not just about capturing.

5/5, It's like Pokémon with guns, I love it!