It's not going to blow you away, but NGBC serves up some solid 2D fighting action.
The game is a bit stripped of extra features, but boasts your standard single player, arcade, VS and practice modes all with various difficulty levels for A.I controlled opponents. The versus mode is probably the most fun you'll have out of the title; as sitting down with a friend to whoop each others butt sure beats pummeling AI foes for no rewards except to say you beat them.
The fighting mechanics themselves are very adept and smooth, or at least as much as you'd expect to see from a last generation 2D fighter and seems to match in quality of other similar titles, such as SNKs own King of Fighters series or Capcom's Street Fighter. Face-buttons are mapped to your basic punch/kick, high/low combos and the control handed to the D-Pad, though... if you've played ANY 2D fighter, you're going to assume that is the case anyways. The system is responsive and it makes pulling off combos slick and easy.
One thing the team opted for is a 2v2 battle system where you can swap out to a team mate at any time with just a press of a button; not only that, but you can also use team combo's which can deal a nice bit of damage on an unsuspecting opponent. This swapping system is not unlike the one used in Marvel vs Capcom 2... however... I find it to be a bit more rewarding.
There are about 45 characters to choose from, which is a heft of choice in any fighter. They all come from SNK franchises, some of which being fighters, others not, but all are stylized to the game to keep consistency; each is fairly unique with each of his/her advantages and disadvantages and they're all pretty fun to play with.
However at the end of the day, a solid fighter struggles to find it's relevance in a world where online play is king. It's a blast sitting down with a friend and you may get a kick out of seeing old favorite characters (depending on your familiarity with SNK) but one can only wonder if the title would of been a bigger hit and a longer lasting experience if released as a downloadable title for current generation systems. Or at the very least, it could of shipped with online built in (like it did in the Japanese release). Sadly none of those purposed scenarios are reality, so while it's a decent title that you might enjoy a bit, you'll lose interest without goals from the game.