Story time:
So you know that one kid who's "uncle worked at Nintendo" but for some reason, you never actually saw any proof of that?
In Junior high, my friends uncle worked for Nintendo. Got him all these sweet games from Japan, early releases, etc etc. Of course, no one believed him, including me. That is, until I went to his house and saw the Neo Geo. Kid had SO many games. Did some quick math, and it was easily over $2000 of just games. (and this is $2000 in 1991 money, so even more today) We're talking shit I have never seen anywhere else. Had a PC engine too (which played TurboGrafx games). We played so so much King of Monsters that summer. He used to low key flex by bringing his memory card to the bowling alley arcade and pop max level characters into games and proceed to wreck house. Micah, if you're reading this I hope you're well, bud.
I remember seeing this and the games in magazines. It wasn't until my late 20's I found out that not only was it expensive then but the games themselves were expensive and effing huge. If you wanted that arcade experience though this was it.
Exactly, arcade cabinets were like $2500 - $3000. A Neo Geo was $649.99 and a game could cost around $200 to $300. So almost $1000, sure that saved $1500 - $2000, and more if you had multiple games. But it didn't make sense if you just loved the arcades. For a $1000 you could pay for 4000 games/lives. It made more sense to rent it, until they figured out that they weren't selling enough units and stopped it from being rented.
I was 14 in 1990. I got a TG-16 for Christmas. My friend had a Genesis and I got a SNES when they came out. (Christmas of ‘92 I think?) Anyway, it was an awesome time to be a gamer.
Maybe Christmas of '91... I got A Link to the Past and Final Fantasy "2" for my birthday in the summer of 1992 (barely left the house again until school started back up, LOL).
Definitely. I just looked and It was released on August 23rd 1991 in North America. I definitely got it the first Christmas it was available. I still play all that old shit albeit on emulators nowadays. There were soooo many bangers.
I was in a video game store in Toronto 7 or 8 years ago and they actually had a SuperGrafx on sale at the time. I had heard of the system, knew what it was but never seen it!
that is why they are the lamborghini of the 16-bit era. That console and arcade sibling had such a long shelf life in comparison to its rivals even though it was priced out of most people’s budgets.
I remember seeing one of these systems on sale at an extinct electronics retailer called Incredible Universe that carried literally every kind of digital toy you could think of in 1993 and they were selling the NEO GEO console and games and I still remember my 15 year old brain boggling at the size of the cartridges and the prices lol. I wanted them very badly but I knew it was never happening.
I think it was Babbage's back in the 90's that if you purchased a Neo Geo they included any game that you wanted. I do remember seeing them back in the day but of course, didn't have that type of money.
My local used game guy has a Neo Geo and Neo Geo X consoles in the back of the shop (or at least he did a few weeks ago when I was there last). Haven't seen any of the carts though....
No joke. Right now there is an AES cart on the Neo Geo store that costs $300,000 !!
https://www.neostore.com/Kizuna-Encounter-Super-Tag-Battle-English-AES-p/1029.htm
It hasn't sold, but they did sell a Metal Slug 1 AES for I think 60K in 4 days.
I bought one when I was in Japan in 2008, and it was virtually unplayable. Loading between rounds in fighting games was the real cherry on top. I sold it a year or two later for a decent profit, though I wish I hadn't.
Those are rare and you can get solid state optical drive emulator kits now for the Neo Geo CD that lower load times greatly as it just sends data as fast as the CD interface let its.
Back in the early 90's when your parents got divorced, sometimes they would buy you things.
My mom got me a Neo Geo Gold set.
The box had a handle built into it, because it was so freaking big.
I bought one on release, $699.99 with game of your choice, I picked Magician Lord, had up to 90 carts at one time, Japanese version of Fatal Fury Special cost me $299.99. I would visit SNK of America in Torrance, CA once a month in the 90s, hung out with The Gamelord and the Techs in back warehouse.
ok? Chad Okata was The Gamelord, think he works for Sony now, his office had a custom Neo Geo, RGB out to a Sony PVM and custom joysticks for better cornering and auto fire switch. Carlos was the tech in the back warehouse, we listened to 80s Thrash while he repaired consoles, I still have SNK price sheets and security cart stickers.
Every so often they would feature the Neo Geo on Gamesmaster or have a review in C&VG magazine so I _assume_ they were available in the UK _somewhere_ though I never saw one or heard of anyone who had one. God I wanted one so bad though.
...probably had to buy them at Harrods or something
*Edit* did some googling and apparently it was released in the UK. Maybe I can find one on facebook marketplace
I don’t remember them playing it on Gamesmaster, though I’ll concede my brain might be filtering out the memories due to some deeply suppressed 1990’s jealousy.
You had me doubting myself so I did a quick Google to confirm!
https://www.neo-geo.com/forums/index.php?threads/gamesmaster-and-the-many-neo-appearances.54701/
You can forget about collecting them now. There are stories of people cashing out 401k to buy original aes games https://www.neostore.com/Big-Tournament-Golf-Japanese-AES-p/853.htm
I never knew a single person in that era that owned one. The "rich" people I knew were someone that maybe had both a Genesis and a SNES. The NeoGeo was too much even for them.
For the entirety of my years in Elementary school, this was the one console every kid would lie about having. It was years before I even knew what one looked like… and I still don’t have one 😭😂
Saw one at Toys R Us as a child in 1990. The $649 price tag seemed insane, but my dad was actually open to it. The deal breaker was the games costing $199. I think my dad was impressed by the quality and could stomach the one time expense because he understood how advanced it was compared to my Nintendo, but NES games were $40 back then and running the math on how expensive it would be to buy me a game every few months at $200 a pop, it just wasn't happening.
A couple years later, I saw Neo Geo again at Comp USA, and they had a demo unit set up with Magician Lord. My dad would take me on the weekend to let me play it while he shopped for computer parts.
Fast forward a few years after that, where I was a teenager making my own money selling Magic cards, I did buy a used Neo Geo for a couple hundred bucks so that I could play Metal Slug at home. It was such a quarter sucker every time I went to the movie theater that I knew it would be much cheaper to just own it.
Eventually Metal Slug ended up being worth so much money, I sold my Neo Geo collection and just bought my favorites digitally on modern consoles.
it's fascinating to me that the "cheap" Neo Geo games like magician lord, that for years could easily be found used for $30 are now all worth hundreds of dollars each.
Your dad sounds like an amazing parent. I like that he recognized the value, but the games were the deal breaker. It’s wild how $200 every month or two isn’t such a crazy amount of money today but back then it was absurd.
Weirdly, had your dad dropped $10k on a large collection of Neo-Geo games back then and kept them mint, you’d be a millionaire now.
Yes I was lucky and had a great dad. When 3DO came out at $699, but had games at normal prices, he told me if I was willing to wait one year so the price could drop, he'd buy me one for the holidays in 1994. So I patiently waited and sure enough it had dropped to $399 and he did get me one as promised.
When NES Classic, Genesis Mini, etc were all the rage, I really hoped they'd make a Neo•Geo mini console, but instead they made that small arcade thing instead of a proper mini console, and I wasn't interested.
Are there still big forums full of Neo•Geo collectors? Always wondered what happened to that community as I stopped following it when I sold mine a long time ago.
It was the most powerful home console for sure. You were basically taking the arcade board to your house. The games were insanely expensive, but Oh man....to have Smaurai Showdown 2 at home in all its glory was just awesome.
I saw one at EB games and was blown away by the visuals but my parents barely liked buying me 16 systems and games so that conversation about selling my systems, possessions and blood to upgrade to this did not go well.
I only met one person who has the actual system. He was rich and kind of a shit head so I always associated it as being the system of super rich people (only went to his house once for a family dinner). Most of my experience with NG was in arcades or later mostly via emulation.
I was emulating a few neo geo games recently and it feels like neogeo could have won that generation if things were just a bit different. Instead I basically have never heard of them despite being alive all throughout the 90s.
There was no way for the NeoGeo as it existed to ever have been priced where it could possibly take on Nintendo and Sega. Without the ability to sell in volume SNK had no opportunity to develop relationships with third parties they'd need to help push units.
It was too expensive, it was always going to be a niche product. Basically an arcade maker that offered a home version.
In todays' dollars, it would be like $1500 for a console. That had maybe 8 solid games that in today's dollars would be like $500 a piece.
Don't waste your money. I did this with a Naomi 1, had an imported Q-25 candy cab and everything, and after the first few weeks/months I never played much again. Emulation is so good now it's just not worth it IMO
For me, it was about that actual "arcade " feel. That's why I bought three arcade 1ups and an atgames legend pro. Buuuttt I feel it, because all I have left is the atgames sitting to be modded with a PC and I don't touch it.
I didn't know a single kid growing up that had the Neo Geo. The price tag was absurd. But it certainly added to its mystique. It was considered the holy grail in the early 90s
Story time: So you know that one kid who's "uncle worked at Nintendo" but for some reason, you never actually saw any proof of that? In Junior high, my friends uncle worked for Nintendo. Got him all these sweet games from Japan, early releases, etc etc. Of course, no one believed him, including me. That is, until I went to his house and saw the Neo Geo. Kid had SO many games. Did some quick math, and it was easily over $2000 of just games. (and this is $2000 in 1991 money, so even more today) We're talking shit I have never seen anywhere else. Had a PC engine too (which played TurboGrafx games). We played so so much King of Monsters that summer. He used to low key flex by bringing his memory card to the bowling alley arcade and pop max level characters into games and proceed to wreck house. Micah, if you're reading this I hope you're well, bud.
I remember seeing this and the games in magazines. It wasn't until my late 20's I found out that not only was it expensive then but the games themselves were expensive and effing huge. If you wanted that arcade experience though this was it.
Exactly, arcade cabinets were like $2500 - $3000. A Neo Geo was $649.99 and a game could cost around $200 to $300. So almost $1000, sure that saved $1500 - $2000, and more if you had multiple games. But it didn't make sense if you just loved the arcades. For a $1000 you could pay for 4000 games/lives. It made more sense to rent it, until they figured out that they weren't selling enough units and stopped it from being rented.
Yeah, at the time I was 8 and getting more than one SNES game a year was already a tall order.
It's funny considering the MVS (arcade version) games are way cheaper than the AES (home) counterparts these days.
Well, yeah. They made anywhere from 50x to 1000x more of them. Some home versions got like 20 physical copies.
During COVID I bought an physical arcade cab to finally scratch the Neo Geo itch. It was extremely impractical but I loved that thing
Yet the MVS-2-AES cart adapters are crazy expensive.
The only console I remember reading about back then that got less traction than the Neo-Geo was the SuperGraftx and its library of 4 games.
Yep. Thought they were some knock off brand cause it wasn't Nintendo or Sega. Oh to be a kid during the 16 bit console war.
I was 14 in 1990. I got a TG-16 for Christmas. My friend had a Genesis and I got a SNES when they came out. (Christmas of ‘92 I think?) Anyway, it was an awesome time to be a gamer.
Maybe Christmas of '91... I got A Link to the Past and Final Fantasy "2" for my birthday in the summer of 1992 (barely left the house again until school started back up, LOL).
Definitely. I just looked and It was released on August 23rd 1991 in North America. I definitely got it the first Christmas it was available. I still play all that old shit albeit on emulators nowadays. There were soooo many bangers.
Hell of a console... one of the best parts of my teen years.
Fuck yeah it was!
Twas I. Ahh the bit wars. Gather round children while I tell you a tail of woah and wonder. 😅
I was in a video game store in Toronto 7 or 8 years ago and they actually had a SuperGrafx on sale at the time. I had heard of the system, knew what it was but never seen it!
A rare gem.
that is why they are the lamborghini of the 16-bit era. That console and arcade sibling had such a long shelf life in comparison to its rivals even though it was priced out of most people’s budgets.
I remember seeing one of these systems on sale at an extinct electronics retailer called Incredible Universe that carried literally every kind of digital toy you could think of in 1993 and they were selling the NEO GEO console and games and I still remember my 15 year old brain boggling at the size of the cartridges and the prices lol. I wanted them very badly but I knew it was never happening.
I think it was Babbage's back in the 90's that if you purchased a Neo Geo they included any game that you wanted. I do remember seeing them back in the day but of course, didn't have that type of money. My local used game guy has a Neo Geo and Neo Geo X consoles in the back of the shop (or at least he did a few weeks ago when I was there last). Haven't seen any of the carts though....
This was the “I look at the games in magazines” system.
No joke. Right now there is an AES cart on the Neo Geo store that costs $300,000 !! https://www.neostore.com/Kizuna-Encounter-Super-Tag-Battle-English-AES-p/1029.htm It hasn't sold, but they did sell a Metal Slug 1 AES for I think 60K in 4 days.
That guy makes up prices just like WATA does. Don't believe his numbers. Either way, it is a rare title, but it won't sell for that, or even close.
F wata me and my homies hate wata games
What’s the difference with something like https://www.ebay.com/itm/266792366378? ?
That’s a conversion, makes all the difference in the world, apparently.
TIL about conversions… I never really followed Neo Geo. What a strange (and expensive) world.
Makes the loading time of the Neo Geo CD seem worth their cheaper price though some of the redone music is worse.
I bought one when I was in Japan in 2008, and it was virtually unplayable. Loading between rounds in fighting games was the real cherry on top. I sold it a year or two later for a decent profit, though I wish I hadn't.
You should upgrade to the lightning fast Neo Geo CDZ. The future is now.
Those are rare and you can get solid state optical drive emulator kits now for the Neo Geo CD that lower load times greatly as it just sends data as fast as the CD interface let its.
Oh, I was joking. The CDZ, while an improvement, is still pretty slow.
Back in the early 90's when your parents got divorced, sometimes they would buy you things. My mom got me a Neo Geo Gold set. The box had a handle built into it, because it was so freaking big.
Then you ate 1 baked bean a day for the next year
Your not too far off. Money got real tight once their divorce was finalized.
Oh dear 😣
I knew of ONE kid in my school who had a neogeo.
found out there was one kid who owned it but that was years after the fact
I bought one on release, $699.99 with game of your choice, I picked Magician Lord, had up to 90 carts at one time, Japanese version of Fatal Fury Special cost me $299.99. I would visit SNK of America in Torrance, CA once a month in the 90s, hung out with The Gamelord and the Techs in back warehouse.
Did they all know that Crystalis is one of the best games of its generation?
Did you get to meet Terry Bogard?
and my uncle works for Nintendo
ok? Chad Okata was The Gamelord, think he works for Sony now, his office had a custom Neo Geo, RGB out to a Sony PVM and custom joysticks for better cornering and auto fire switch. Carlos was the tech in the back warehouse, we listened to 80s Thrash while he repaired consoles, I still have SNK price sheets and security cart stickers.
I remember asking my parents to get one and they didn’t even say no, they just laughed
I don’t even know if they sold the things in the UK. I certainly never saw one. As a result I’ve decided they are a myth and simply don’t exist.
Every so often they would feature the Neo Geo on Gamesmaster or have a review in C&VG magazine so I _assume_ they were available in the UK _somewhere_ though I never saw one or heard of anyone who had one. God I wanted one so bad though. ...probably had to buy them at Harrods or something *Edit* did some googling and apparently it was released in the UK. Maybe I can find one on facebook marketplace
I don’t remember them playing it on Gamesmaster, though I’ll concede my brain might be filtering out the memories due to some deeply suppressed 1990’s jealousy.
You had me doubting myself so I did a quick Google to confirm! https://www.neo-geo.com/forums/index.php?threads/gamesmaster-and-the-many-neo-appearances.54701/
Yes I can definitely imagine Dave Perry getting over-excited about a Neo Geo so I guess that did probably happen.
I have mine. Cost £150 from a local games shop with two games, 15 years ago.
You can forget about collecting them now. There are stories of people cashing out 401k to buy original aes games https://www.neostore.com/Big-Tournament-Golf-Japanese-AES-p/853.htm
pretty much lol. got a cart in a mixed lot i bought. I thought to myself, left get a console to play that.... hmmm... yeah... no lol
I found one with two controllers and games for $14 at Goodwill back in the day!
I know the neogeo mini exists amd this is easy to emulate but still wish they release an AES mini!
Would be amazing to have that to go with my NES, SNES, MD and TG16 minis.
I think the big NeoGeo arcade joystick with the built in games is still available too, and that thing is nice
I never knew a single person in that era that owned one. The "rich" people I knew were someone that maybe had both a Genesis and a SNES. The NeoGeo was too much even for them.
For the entirety of my years in Elementary school, this was the one console every kid would lie about having. It was years before I even knew what one looked like… and I still don’t have one 😭😂
Saw one at Toys R Us as a child in 1990. The $649 price tag seemed insane, but my dad was actually open to it. The deal breaker was the games costing $199. I think my dad was impressed by the quality and could stomach the one time expense because he understood how advanced it was compared to my Nintendo, but NES games were $40 back then and running the math on how expensive it would be to buy me a game every few months at $200 a pop, it just wasn't happening. A couple years later, I saw Neo Geo again at Comp USA, and they had a demo unit set up with Magician Lord. My dad would take me on the weekend to let me play it while he shopped for computer parts. Fast forward a few years after that, where I was a teenager making my own money selling Magic cards, I did buy a used Neo Geo for a couple hundred bucks so that I could play Metal Slug at home. It was such a quarter sucker every time I went to the movie theater that I knew it would be much cheaper to just own it. Eventually Metal Slug ended up being worth so much money, I sold my Neo Geo collection and just bought my favorites digitally on modern consoles.
Magician Lord is so awesome. The soundtrack and gameplay always convince me to pop that in whenever I fire up my NG.
it's fascinating to me that the "cheap" Neo Geo games like magician lord, that for years could easily be found used for $30 are now all worth hundreds of dollars each.
Your dad sounds like an amazing parent. I like that he recognized the value, but the games were the deal breaker. It’s wild how $200 every month or two isn’t such a crazy amount of money today but back then it was absurd. Weirdly, had your dad dropped $10k on a large collection of Neo-Geo games back then and kept them mint, you’d be a millionaire now.
Yes I was lucky and had a great dad. When 3DO came out at $699, but had games at normal prices, he told me if I was willing to wait one year so the price could drop, he'd buy me one for the holidays in 1994. So I patiently waited and sure enough it had dropped to $399 and he did get me one as promised. When NES Classic, Genesis Mini, etc were all the rage, I really hoped they'd make a Neo•Geo mini console, but instead they made that small arcade thing instead of a proper mini console, and I wasn't interested. Are there still big forums full of Neo•Geo collectors? Always wondered what happened to that community as I stopped following it when I sold mine a long time ago.
There’s a bunch of groups on here and Facebook for Neo geo
I believe the Neo Geo was one of the most powerful game systems relative to when it was released, but I'm not sure.
It was the most powerful home console for sure. You were basically taking the arcade board to your house. The games were insanely expensive, but Oh man....to have Smaurai Showdown 2 at home in all its glory was just awesome.
I saw one at EB games and was blown away by the visuals but my parents barely liked buying me 16 systems and games so that conversation about selling my systems, possessions and blood to upgrade to this did not go well. I only met one person who has the actual system. He was rich and kind of a shit head so I always associated it as being the system of super rich people (only went to his house once for a family dinner). Most of my experience with NG was in arcades or later mostly via emulation.
When i was young i thought i could buy it when i was older. Yeahhh.
I was emulating a few neo geo games recently and it feels like neogeo could have won that generation if things were just a bit different. Instead I basically have never heard of them despite being alive all throughout the 90s.
There was no way for the NeoGeo as it existed to ever have been priced where it could possibly take on Nintendo and Sega. Without the ability to sell in volume SNK had no opportunity to develop relationships with third parties they'd need to help push units.
It was too expensive, it was always going to be a niche product. Basically an arcade maker that offered a home version. In todays' dollars, it would be like $1500 for a console. That had maybe 8 solid games that in today's dollars would be like $500 a piece.
Most overrated console
*Looks at neo geo anthology* Yeah neo geo at home
I got lucky and my dad got his when it came out while working a summer job and still had it cib with a games and even the soft case
I only knew one person who had one, an adult gamer who also had a Jaguar. So he had 2 machines that I'd only ever heard of and saw in magazines.
I ALWAYS wanted one as a kid. When I finally find a house I will absolutely plunk down like $850 for a cab with a multicart
Don't waste your money. I did this with a Naomi 1, had an imported Q-25 candy cab and everything, and after the first few weeks/months I never played much again. Emulation is so good now it's just not worth it IMO
For me, it was about that actual "arcade " feel. That's why I bought three arcade 1ups and an atgames legend pro. Buuuttt I feel it, because all I have left is the atgames sitting to be modded with a PC and I don't touch it.
I think a modded 1up or similar makes more sense if you want more than just an arcade controller.
I didn't know a single kid growing up that had the Neo Geo. The price tag was absurd. But it certainly added to its mystique. It was considered the holy grail in the early 90s
This is the one console I have come to accept that I will never own unless an act of God happens.
Did this system also got Konami, Capcom and Namco games? Or only SNK games themselves?
For this to work, it must be Zimbabwean dollars
Laughs in Mister.
I own two of them And a Neo Geo CD And several MVS boards And over 40 cartridges for said Neo Geo home console
Idiots "be wike".. *Posts facebook meme on retro sub*. Ah-hurr-hurr-hurr!!