Features:
- Two cartridges sold seperately
- Training mode
- Battery back-up
- Link-cable support for two players
- Only for NeoGeo Pocket Color
At the beginning of your adventure, you'll decide on which boat you're going to take control of during your extremely lengthy adventure, as well as which computer personality that'll interact between you and the people you meet. Both Matt and Becky have their own set of ships and computer AI characters, so the items that are available to you are dependent on the cartridge you decide to purchase. Throughout the adventure, you can see and earn more submarines and have them recorded in your log ¿ figure this as the Pok¿dex for Dive Alert.
It's obvious the thing that kept this game from meeting its original 1999 US release is the localization. This game ¿ and this is an understatement ¿ has an unbelievable amount of text. There is literally more reading than doing in Dive Alert. A storyline is certainly needed in an RPG, but come on ¿ you're more pushing the A button to skip through the text than using it to actually fire a few torpedoes from your submarine. The beginning is just amazingly lengthy, almost too much for its own good.
Text aside, even the action is flat-out dull ¿ moving your character and attacking opponents takes place in a very lifeless RADAR-style perspective. Boats and items are nothing more than tiny dots and symbols, and you'll have to use your imagination to realize that, yep, those are ships and torpedoes out there. This graphics style is akin to Apple II games done in BASIC, and it's certainly not what's expected...even in the handheld field. At least the cutscenes are graphically beautiful -- but they're stationary, barely animated still-screens. Okay, it's not all dull -- there's a pretty cool, old-school target shooting game tucked away, disguised as a "training" mode. It's very similar to Air-Sea Battle on the 2600.
What's more, the designers made the game feel as much like a submarine as possible, so trying to outrun or outmaneuver incoming torpedoes just feels way too sluggish. I wouldn't be surprised if you snapped the stick inside the control pad instinctively pushing it as hard as you can to get your ship to move the speed you want it to.
One of the main selling points for Dive Alert in Japan was its compatibility with the Wireless Link. With the Wireless Link, dozens of NeoGeo Pocket gamers with a copy of the game could join in the free-for-all spree. This device was to make an appearance in the US, but for technical reasons these plans were scrapped. And what's left in Dive Alert is a boring two-player link mode where all you do is go up against the other person's ship. There's just not enough action in Dive Alert to make the link-cable mode a strategically fun option. You can also use the link cable to swap ships back and forth, though, which gives the game a very Pokémon feel -- but only a tiny bit of one.