Neo-Geo History & Review

Throughout the 1980's and the first arcade boom, arcade games ran on bespoke PCB boards that would be mounted inside of dedicated cabinets. A full, dedicated game cabinet cost arcade operators thousands of dollars to order, ship, and install in their establishment. Operators could alternatively order a conversion kit of a game that would come only with the game's PCB and associated artwork. While these conversion kits used game cabinets that the operator already owned, they also required a long install process if the control panel and/or monitor needed to be switched out to accommodate the new game. While this process was cheaper than buying a dedicated cabinet, it was still expensive and time consuming. 

By the end of the 1980's the arcade industry was already in decline. Not only were new games expensive for arcade operators, the dearth of innovative, new game genres didn't help matters either. By this time, consumers were now enamored with home console games on hardware like Nintendo's Famicom (NES), and NEC's PC Engine. Despite being technically inferior to what could be found in the arcade, these home game machines provided longer and more engaging experiences for the player. 

In order to help reinvigorate their own arcade sales and encourage arcade owners to buy more SNK product, SNK teamed up with software developer Alpha Denshi to create a modular, cartridge-based arcade hardware solution that mimicked the success of the home console. Proposed by the legendary developer Takashi Nishiyama (Fatal Fury, Street Fighter, Moon Patrol, etc.), this cartridge based approach would help SNK keep costs low for operators and profits high for the company. He believed that this modular cartridge design would also help to curtail the bootleg game industry that were rampant in some countries due to the lower cost of entry for new games. 

Nishiyama also proposed the idea for a home console version of the hardware to be developed in tandem with the arcade kit, which would use the same hardware. Thus, the Neo-Geo paltform took on two different markets segments: low priced commercial sales and high-dollar consumer sales. The arcade hardware was dubbed the Multi Video System, or MVS, while the home version was called the Advanced Entertainment System, latter dubbed the AES by the fan community (which was much later adopted by SNK themselves). 

This unique approach allowed arcade owners to purchase one arcade machine and change out games as easily as one would at home on their TV game console. What's more, the home version of the hardware used the exact same chipset and specifications as the arcade; so gamers could now play the exact arcade experience at home with no compromises. Despite the astronomical price for a consumer product for the time, the AES was a modest success internationally. That said, the MVS was wildly popular world wide, with key territories like Japan and South American keeping the Neo-Geo alive decades after its release. 

To learn more about the history of the Neo-Geo hardware, and pre 1990 SNK, I encourage you to check out Bitmap Books' Neo-Geo: A Visual History and the brilliant SNK 40th Anniversary Collection on Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch. The aforementioned book is one of the largest collected volumes of Neo-Geo history yet released, and the 40th Anniversary Collection houses a lovingly curated selection of early SNK arcade titles to play, as well as an interactive museum filled with detailed information on the first decade of SNK's foray into the arcade industry. 

To many 90's kids the Neo-Geo AES was the holy grail of console systems. Its big presence, huge cartridges, ludicrous prices, and sleek, up-scale design spoke to its rank atop the pantheon of video game consoles in the early 1990's. Far too sophisticated for the American consumer at the time, the AES saw greater success in Japan in the home market. The MVS, however, was a massive success world-wide. Arcade operators could swap out games for a few hundred dollars, or offer multiple games in one machine with multi-slot MVS units that could play up to six cartridges at once. This led to massive savings for the business owner, and more choice for the consumer. The runaway success of the hardware proved lucrative enough that SNK supported both the arcade and home cartridge platforms for 14 years. 

Here's some perspective on the longevity of the Neo-Geo platform, and by extension the AES home console. 

• May-June, 1990: The Neo-Geo MVS was released in arcades world-wide.

• December 31, 1990: The Neo-Geo AES launched in Japan one month after the launch of Nintendo's 16-bit Super Famicom and 2 years after Sega's 16-bit Mega Drive. 

• May-June 1991: The Neo-Geo AES was released in North American markets before the late 1991 launch of the Super Nintendo, but two years after the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive).

• Mid-1994: SNK released the Neo-Geo CD hardware line to help drive home market sales by providing vastly cheaper CD printed versions of their games. This first release sports a front-loading drive bay and CD tray. 

• Late-1994: Sega and Sony supercharged the 5th console generation with the release of the 32-bit Saturn and Playstation in Japan. 

• Mid-1995: SNK released the second Neo-Geo CD design, the top-loader, that moved the drive bay to the top to cut costs and removed unneeded mechanical parts. 

• Early-1996: SNK releases the CDZ - a slightly redesigned CD console with a faster CD drive in Japan, while the top loading unit was retooled slightly for an international release. US and Euro Neo-Geo CD consoles are region coded, while the CDZ is region free. 

• Late-1997: SNK officially discontinues production of both the AES and CD hardware lines. The Hyper Neo-Geo 64 64-bit arcade hardware was introduced. 

• Late-1998: Sega begins the 6th console generation with the release of the Dreamcast in Japan. SNK introduces the Neo Geo Pocket line of handheld consoles.

• 1999: Sony joins the 6th generation with the Playstation 2's launch in Japan. SNK discontinues Neo CD support entirely and launches the Neo-Geo Pocket Color.

• Late-2000: SNK files for bankruptcy and its brand was purchased by pachinko machine manufacturer Aruze. Aruze put all SNK IP up for auction to the highest bidder(s). 

• Mid-2001: SNK's former CEO forms the Playmore corporation and purchases back all of SNK's lost IP. The Neo Geo Pocket is discontinued and all associated assets are liquidated world-wide.

• Late-2001: Microsoft and Nintendo are late to join the 6th generation party with their XBox and Gamecube.

• April 22, 2004: SNK Playmore releases Samurai Shodown V Special as the last officially released Neo-Geo game on both MVS and AES. 

• Late-2005: Microsoft kicks off the era of HD gaming (7th console generation) with the Xbox 360.

The Neo-Geo outlived the entirety of both the 4th and 5th console generations, and was a year shy of outliving the 6th - that is the 16, 32, and 128-bit eras. 

The Neo-Geo’s specs were quite a few years ahead of the competition in the home space in 1990. Despite the custom chipset, the 68000/Z80 co-processor design is similar to Sega's Mega Drive in more than a few ways. In the arcade, the Neo-Geo hardware was not made to complete with the likes of Sega's Super Scaler line of arcade games, or even Namco's early 3D offerings. So while it pales in comparison to those expensive, dedicated kits, the low cost, modest power, steady flow of quality titles, and modular design made it a popular choice world wide among arcade owners and consumers alike.

People refer to the Neo-Geo as a sprite crunching monster, and that is mostly due to the fact that everything you see on the screen is a sprite. Unlike conventional game hardware of the day that had dedicated background layers and then layers of objects placed above them, the Neo-Geo draws the screen sprite by sprite. This effect is hard to convey through words as what appears on screen to the player looks like a standard set of background layers with foreground sprite tiles.

Editor Note: In October 2022, the YouTube personality Modern Vintage Gamer (MVG) released a short video with a great visual explanation on how the hardware draws its sprites on screen. I encourage you to watch this as the Neo-Geo is unique in this fully sprite-based approach. 

The Neo-Geo AES was originally planned to be a rental unit that consumers could take home for a limited time to try out the new SNK arcade games. The rental period was popular enough in Japan that SNK decided to release the console for sale shortly thereafter. Due to providing the true arcade experience at home, consumers had to pay a premium to get that experience. At the North American launch in mid-1991 the game cartridges cost a staggering $200 or more (around $450 in 2023 money), and a ludicrous $699 (around $1500 in 2023 money) for the Gold System set which comprised of the Neo-Geo console, two arcade sticks, and a pack-in game.

To compare: In 1991 the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) with one controller and Sonic the Hedgehog packed in retailed for $149 USD, and the SNES with two controllers and Super Mario World retailed for $199 USD. Due to the high cost of memory in those days, games for these consoles hovered between $40 to $80 depending on the rom chip size. These mainstream consoles were impressive in their own right, but paled in comparison to the mighty Neo-Geo in every aspect. 

Although many Neo-Geo ports were released on 16-bit hardware, the games could never quite capture the magic of the originals. By 1994 SNK had given up on licensing ports of their games to 16-bit consoles and shifted their focus to their own Neo-Geo CD and the 32-bit console generation.

In order to help bolster home console sales of Neo-Geo titles, SNK released the Neo-Geo CD in mid-1994. While the games were a quarter of the price of their AES counter parts, the Neo CD itself cost as much as the 32-bit consoles about to launch later that year. Unlike the 32-bit systems, the Neo-CD sported a single-speed CD drive rather than a double speed drive which greatly increased loading times. Additionally, the Neo-Geo hardware platform has no built in chip sets that support true 3D gaming, unlike the 32-bit monsters being released. While it was still a modest success in Japan, the Neo-Geo CD was a hard value proposition given the high-cost of the hardware for a small selection of arcade-centric titles. 

Despite housing a generous 56 mega-bits (7 mega bites) of RAM, many titles from the late 90's had to be scaled down to be able to fit on the limited amount of memory in the CD hardware. For example: games like the Last Blade 1 and 2 had numerous frames of animation removed. While the majority of games were mostly arcade perfect, despite the loading and arranged soundtracks, the Neo CD could not live up to the expectations it was designed to meet. One big selling point of the Neo CD units, though, was the addition of separate RCA audio/video outs, a dedicated S-Video out, and the standard SNK multi-AV out capable of RGB SCART. 

Check out the Neo CD console review for more details on this interesting piece of hardware.

• Universal Cartridges: Rather than rely on lock-out techniques that prohibited arcade owners and consumers from using one region's games on another region's hardware, SNK decided to loosen the reigns on this industry practice and allowed the use of any cartridge from any territory on any Neo-Geo hardware. 

  • • Each game cartridge includes the text for multiple languages, as well as various levels of censorship for those included territories. 

    • The hardware's BIOS chip tells the game which text and censorship models it needed to display. 

    • Occasionally, difficulty settings would also be tied to the bios region. Sonic Wings 3, for example, is ludicrously difficult when playing on a European bios.

    • The only restriction SNK put in place is that AES games could not be used with MVS hardware, and vice-versa. AES games, while using the exact same chips as the MVS games, were on slightly smaller PCBs.

Community Innovations: 

Over time, hardcore Neo-Geo fans began to create various hardware mods that would allow the dedicated fan base to get more out of their favorite console.

• Unibios: In the early aughts (the 2000's), long-time community member Razoola released the UniBios. This chip replaces the original SNK BIOS chip on all versions of Neo-Geo cartridge based hardware. This custom BIOS chip allows the user to manually select the console's region, put the AES in MVS mode (and vice-versa), enable cheats via an included menu like a built in Action Replay, listen to the music stored on the cartridges, and more! This is an easy, cheap mod that no Neo-Geo owner should be without.

• System Modifications: Like most retro consoles that are still played in the 21st century, community members of the last two decades have created bespoke hardware modifications that allow these legacy consoles to be used with modern display technology and/or other mods that provide more functionality than originally intended. 

Even today, community modders are still exploring what the Neo-Geo has to offer, and there are even some boutique game developers that continue to produce new games for the hardware like NGDev and Bitmap Bros.

Any game console is defined not so much by its hardware, but more by the gaming experiences it brings to the consumer. Unlike any other console at the time, the Neo-Geo focused on providing the true arcade experience at home. But that tactic came at a cost - and I don't mean the price of the games themselves.

The Neo-Geo had little third-party developer support throughout its lifespan, with the majority of games being developed by SNK or their close development partners like ADK. Basically, you got the true arcade experience at home, but only games that were released on the MVS. To compound this issue for AES owners, there were no games released exclusively for the home market, which meant that the console offered a very narrow variety of genres. Even though the CD hardware has a few exclusives, the only true non-arcade experience released was the Samurai Shodown RPG. While the early Neo-Geo library had a decent variety of popular arcade genres like beat-em-ups, sports games, and shooters, the console's post 1993 library is comprised mostly of one-on-one fighting games. 

In 1991, a year after the release of the MVS, Capcom would single-handedly revitalize the dying arcade industry with their breakout hit Street Fighter 2. Already in development at the time of Street Fighter 2's release, SNK's Fatal Fury (developed by the original creator of the Street Fighter series - Takashi Nishiyama) released later that year and saw generous commercial and critical success as well. Throughout the 1990's SNK and Capcom would compete neck and neck to create the next big game in the 2D fighting game arena. This led to an unprecedented time of growth and innovation for both developers and the budding versus fighting game genre. Unlike Capcom, who had a strong home consumer division, SNK was solely focused on creating arcade experiences which didn't help their ailing home console or fortunes when the decade came to a close. 

Despite a general lack of genre variety, the Neo-Geo is home to some of the most revered arcade games in their respective genres:

• The King of Fighters series needs no introduction. And the masterpiece title The King of Fighters 98 is still considered one of the best designed fighting games ever released over 25 years later.

• Samurai Shodown was one of the first weapons based fighting games, and the original release was the top selling arcade game in Japan in 1993. The series is so popular that new games in the series (along with King of Fighters) are still being released today.

• Garou: Mark of the Wolves, the eighth game in the popular Fatal Fury series, is considered by many to be the only true competition to Capcom's masterpiece Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. Both games are considered by many players the fighting game community to be the pinnacle of traditional 2D fighting game design. In 2022, over 23 years after Garou's release, SNK announced a new game in the Fatal Fury series, and the fan community lost their damn minds.

• The Metal Slug series redefined the arcade run-n-gun action genre, and is easily the hardware's best known series outside of the fighting game franchises.

• Sports games like the Super Sidekicks series, the ever popular Windjammers, and the masterful Neo Turf Masters are also all-time classics still revered and played today. 

• The Neo-Geo is also home to many of the best SHUMPS of the day, like Pulstar, Blazing Star, and the Sonic Wings (Aero Fighters) series.

Basically, the Neo-Geo, even in today's market, is for fans of SNK. While the hardware is home to some of the very best 2D arcade games of the 1990's, the small library does not have the variety of other consoles systems of the era. 

The SNK Universe:

Much like the Marvel Cinematic Universe today, the SNK universe was a somewhat cohesive affair. The stories of various fighting game series happen at different times on this universe's timeline, but there is an overall general connectivity between most SNK produced games. The fighting game universe timeline includes the following series and or standalone games:

• The Last Blade (1860s)

• Art of Fighting (1970s - 1980s)

• Fatal Fury (1990s - 2000s)

• Savage Reign (post 2010)

The Samurai Shodown series is said to happen in the same universe, but the events that take place in those games do not cross over into the multi-series timeline. Outside of the universe timeline, the use of cameo appearances by popular characters throughout SNK's history is also a common trope - especially in the King of Fighters series.

While most SNK games were happening in the same universe, the King of Fighters presented a problem for this format by basically mashing all the timelines together. So, for the King of Fighters, SNK created an alternative universe cannon where the storylines and events in series like Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting still happen, but they are folded into the larger events of the KOF universe overall. For example, this universe allows Terry Bogard and Ryo Sakazaki to be around the same age in the KOF series, rather than Ryo being about a decade older than Terry like in the main universe cannon.

SNK Cool:

The characters in the SNK universe have a subjective air of "cool" about them due to the amount of personality and detail SNK injected into the designs, voices, and interactions with other characters. SNK fighting games typically had more voice samples per-character than most other competitors' games, as well as numerous animation sets that would give the player more insight into their favorite fighter's personality. Additionally, the storylines were darker and deeper than other fighting games at the time. 

Early on, SNK began highlighting the interplay between characters by adding in special pre-fight animation sequences when specific characters are matched against each other. Post-fight win-poses or quotes were also used to further provide insight to the goings on of the characters outside of the confines of a match. 

The overall lack of game variety is a turnoff to many gamers of yesterday and today, but for fans of SNK, arcade shooters, and fighting games in general, the Neo-Geo is chock full of amazing experiences that can't be had anywhere else. Well, you can play these games on most modern consoles or PC thanks to multiple re-releases over the years, but the true Neo-Geo fan knows the best way to play these games is on real SNK hardware. There really is nothing else like it. 

In the modern market, the Neo-Geo AES and its library have two things that help keep its place as the Ferrari of video games: quality and scarcity. Prices for a working console will run no less than $400 on the very low end, while a complete set will run upwards of $800 depending on condition, region, and/or mods installed. Most games tend to run between $60 on the very low end to $2000 on the high end for uncommon and rare titles. Titles considered rare+ easily command over $2000, and the rarest of the rare (games where only a handful were manufactured) reaches into the range of $20,000 - $100,000 - and these are ungraded copies! 

As a general rule of thumb, Japanese AES game variants are typically far, far cheaper than their US or European counterparts. For example, a complete Japanese copy of Real Bout Fatal Fury Special is around $380 in 2023. The US version is over $10,000. Western and Japanese releases are the exact same games save for the case insert, manual language, and cartridge sticker. The actual PCBs and Mask ROMs with game data are identical across regions, with the language displayed and censorship options being dictated by the hardware bios on the AES console directly. 

There is also a market for reproductions and conversions if you're so inclined to go the bootleg route. I recommend reading the How to Buy Games and How to Buy Hardware articles in the Resources section of this website to provide more insight into deciding whether or not Neo-Geo collecting is the right avenue for you. This is the most expensive piece of hardware to collect for despite the small library, and all three hardware types will come with their own positives and drawbacks I go into much more detail about in the other sections.  

The Neo-Geo is also a sure-fire way to invest your money. The Great Recession of 2008, and even the 2020 Covid19 Pandemic and economic recession caused by the pandemic has not affected market values for the AES or MVS second-hand markets. Despite seeing a slight resurgence in interest 2020, the Neo CD is not as fool-proof of an investment. If you're looking into the Neo-Geo as an investment purchase, the AES is the most expensive route by far, and the US game variants even more so. That said, it will net you the best, most recession-proof returns due to the quality of the titles and the general scarcity of most of the hardware's best games.

Any rating I could give the Neo-Geo would be biased because this console was designed for the exact type of gamer I am. Sure, I enjoy all manner of video games, but the genres you'd typically find in the dark, smokey arcades of the 1980s and 90s are those I hold most dear. Like I said, the Neo-Geo AES is not for everyone, and even for those that love arcade style games, your mileage will only go as far as your love for SNK. The Neo-Geo does one thing, but it does that one thing super well; it provides the savvy arcade gamer a deep library of quality SNK arcade titles with consistently good gameplay across multiple genres, cool characters, fantastic soundtracks, and wondrous new worlds to explore. 

Check out the dozens of game reviews and numerous resources right here at Bokujin's Room to see if the Neo-Geo platform is a modern/classic choice for your arcade and collecting needs. The Neo-Geo is not to everyone's taste, but I guarantee you will find something to love.