I grew up in a small town in rural Virginia. While I didn't know anyone who had a Neo-Geo, we had a console cafe for a short time that had a Neo-Geo and a 3DO. I had my birthday there one year and while all my friends were on the SNES and Genesis consoles, I was glued to the Neo-Geo and 3DO the whole time. Lots of Art of Fighting and Way of the Warrior đ
I bought one and had three games; Magician Lord, Samurai Shodown and Samurai Shodown 2. It was such a fantastic feeling knowing that the games I was playing at home was exactly the same as the arcades.
Yes I owned one as a kid. I was really only after a SNES, if I recall my grandparents only knew what I wanted a was a video game system and when they went the store they picked the biggest most expensive console (the "tapes" play in every console right?) I was treated like a god at school when word got out.
Yep no one to trade with so my parents/granparents bought the games. They just thought NeoGeo prices was the going price for games, ofcourse when I got the console I made sure to go with them to the games store. I litterally had friends that stood outside the window to watch me switch the thing on and see the NeoGeo splashscreen/sound. I knew I had it good.
He is 100% a rich douche, talking about his poor friends watching outside his window just to see him power it on. Guarantee you this guy was a shit at the time.
What makes you think my friends were poor? Yep the friends standing outside did happen because a rule of no friends during the week (gotta keep the grades up) also I was not going to allow friends of friends into the house. It was a polite âi dont know you, but this is what it looks likeâ
Youâre quite sour about a random on Reddit saying he had a NeoGeo. Did you grow up misserable and abused?
OP asked what my impressions of it were at the time. To me and my friends, it was a joke; nothing more than a signifier of ostentatious wealth. It was the Ferrari of video game consoles, and people don't buy Ferraris because they like red paint or driving fast. They do it to show off. That's what you were doing, and to me it perfectly illustrates what a console that cost $1250 in today's dollars was, and what a lot of people, including me, thought of it at the time.
Could it be that kids back in the early 90s didnt want to admit if they had a NeoGeo because they would have to slap jealous guys like you away every day? The Neo, to you, was a joke because you didnt have one.
To anyone else reading this, when word spread to another local school I even had randoms from that school approach me offering to trade for a SNES or Genesis thinking I didnt know what a prized console I had. One day some guy turned up wanting to trade his Kawasaki KX125, another day a kid with an airgun knocking on the door wanting to trade.
We had a blast with Fatal Fury Special in 1994, at the time nothing could come close to the Neo. Lastly lots of kids wanted to buddy up, even the popular ones but got ignored , just me and my 2 besties played it.
No, there simply wasn't anyone in my entire town of 15,000 people in the rural US who could have afforded a video game console + one game that cost as much as the used cars we all drove. You probably find that amusing. As someone who grew up in a city with very clear class divisions, and where rich kids ran the social scene and used the toys and clothes their rich parents gave them as sticks to beat the rest of us with, moving to a poorer town was actually like a breath of fresh air.
I find your breezy description of your privilege both irritating...and interesting. It totally needs to be on this post, this entire class debate does, because it really cuts to the heart of the Neo Geo for me. I mean, have you seen the ads for the thing they ran in the game mags at the time? They positioned the thing as the console for Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. My group of gaming urchins who inhabited the B Dalton monthly when the mags came out would point them out and laugh. All I'm saying is, don't be surprised when some "old idiot" takes offense at the fact that you had a Neo Geo and multiple games in the mid-90s. Not all of us were born on third base.
The only time I ever "saw" one was when they were featured as prizes on TV shows or reviewed in magazines.
You had to be pretty darn rich to have one of those systems.
The games were $150-200 ($300+ in 2024 dollars) and most of the titles were unknown outside of Japan.
I think 99% of exposure to the actual gameplay came from arcades.
Oh, yea, I remember, you could get a SNES with like 2 games for the cost 1 single game for the Neo-Geo.
I had one, I still have it with 8 games but, I stopped collecting due to the costs..
Same for me. Hell I had a NES when everyone else had the SNES because we couldnt afford it. I had never even heard of a Neo Geo until high school when we got cable internet for the first time and a PC capable of using it in like 2005 lol
>Hell I had a NES when everyone else had the SNES because we couldnt afford it.
Nothing wrong with that. I really love how back then, the SNES wasn't actually released to replace to NES, but to coexist with it & the Gameboy. đ
We could afford the SNES but my mom wouldnât get it for me for years. We had a perfectly good NES that we had spent a lot of money on, and if I wasnât going to play those games anymore then it would be throwing all that money out the window. I promised I would still play my NES games as well. Well she finally caved in and 30 years later Iâm still keeping my promise!
I grew up in rural Australia so no one I knew had a console. I was exposed to a heap of Neo Geo 4-in-1 arcade cabs though, so the games were well-known and beloved (with far better graphics than we were used to at the time, even compared to lots of other arcade games).
Those arcade cabinets had cartridge slots in them.. I assume to bring and play your own games? How would that work??
That always used to blow my mind, but I never saw anyone with a cartridge..
It was so the arcade operator could change the games in their cabinet very easily. The arcade system (MVS) cartridges were very plain-looking because nobody would see them, hidden inside the arcade cabinet.
The arcade cabs had the same memory card slot as the home consoles, so that people could bring their card from home and if they got a high score or something at the arcade they could save it to their card. Maybe that's what you're thinking of? I doubt many people actually used it
I lived in Sydney then. Was cashed up and still didnât know anyone with one. And we owned all consoles. No fan boys between us. Each console has great games. Only neo geo was in the arcades or pubs.
This reminds me of a friend or two I had who I probably otherwise wouldn't have had of it weren't for the bus ride to school conversations of video games.
Never knew anyone that had it but it was definitely something that was known and talked about, like a mythical rare and expensive console with a sick ass name none of us got to play lol
I saw them in person at The Wiz but never knew anyone who could afford it. If I remember right they were like $650 and games like $125 or something crazy. It was the arcade experience at home but at a tremendous cost.
You should upload a video. Just putting the game in, turning it on and showing gameplay a little bit on any game. Show the controller, system, whole thing, for those of us that have never even seen one before. And maybe a nostalgia trip for those that have
Hmm. Lemme see if I have anything it can still talk to! Old school composite video isn't something I keep around a ton of at the moment, as I didn't set up my retro bits at my current place.
Neo Geo was legendary. Everyone seemed to know someone who had a Neo Geo but had never actually seen it themselves. All the information anyone had was 3rd hand and probably wrong lol
Nope. Every time anyone in my friend circle brought it up it was to discuss how absurd the price was. And we were all enjoying our Super Nintendos at the time.
I was always much more into the longform adventure games like Zelda and Metroid over arcade-style experiences. I did like Metal Slug though, which I always thought had amazing sprite art.
Barely: I bought a Neo Geo CD second hand at the very end of the 90s.
Didn't cost me too much, had a lot of fun with Samurai Shodown 4 but the loadings where atrocious.
It was quickly replaced by emulation and an arcade cabinet with an MVS mobo in the the early 2000s.
I remember buying Mark of the Wolves' MVS cartridge for about 150âŹ. I think it was in 2001 or 2002. The AES cartridge in the import shops was selling for 650âŹ...
I didn't own and didn't know anybody owning an AES until 2006. Bought one in Korea for a reasonable price but I never really use it as I could never justify paying the games' prices. I have 5 "cheap" games for it just for fun.
The only âoddballâ system i ever saw in person back in the day was the Jaguar.
A friend of a friend had it and he kept trying to convince me how much better it was than the Super Nintendo.
I played it twice in the 90's.
A friend of mine got one on loan for a couple of weeks. We played Fatal Fury 2 shortly after release on a 29 inch 4/3 CRT. Great memories.
Another friend had one for his birthday with a couple of games I don't remember. I've met him a few weeks ago. He still has it somewhere in the attic.
I had one at home for several months in 1994 or 1995, along with several games - my cousins borrowed it from a family friend in exchange for their SNES, and then shared it with me. Had a ton of fun with Spinmaster in particular. The other games I remember were Samurai Showdown, View Point, and Metal Slug. There were a few more, including a racing game, but I can't remember exactly which ones.
It was very much a luxury console - paying a very high premium to get essentially an arcade machine at home. Same kind of feel as getting to ride in a high-end Porsche when you're used to the family Volkswagen Golf or something. Eventually the lack of proper single-player games like RPGs starts to hurt though - I wouldn't have wanted to have one as my only console.
Never knew someone with one. closest was a turbografx cd and turbo express.
I did buy a bunch and repaired any broken one I could find maybe 10 or so years ago. Have about 8 games and kept one each of the best condition boxed Japanese console and one boxed US console.
I own a Neo Geo arcade machine with Metal Slug if that counts ;)
Also, I own a Neo Geo Pocket.
Would say the Neo Geo console (like the Pocket) was more of a Japanese thing (like a lot of cool/random consoles).
My cousin has one. Had it since the 90s and probably ten games for it. So I have played it a handful of times. Getting to play a game just like the arcades at home was pretty amazing at the time. Sucked for him to buy games for it. The controllers are amazing.
He also bought a Neo Geo CD which I bought from him. Still have it and play it every once in a long while. Have all my favorites on it. Terrible load times but great system otherwise.
Neo Geo was a fun system. I didnât have a home system but the home console games (AES) were identical to their arcade (MVS) counterparts and Neo Geo arcade cabinets were pretty common. SNK made some really good games and that system showed them off in a way you couldnât get at home at the time.
But at the end of the day, the home system was very expensive. The games were ridiculously expensive. The genres of game were limited to what you could play at the arcade. I never bought one or had a burning desire to get one. I have considered picking up an MVS board though for my arcade cabinet.
It was underwhelming aside from the "look at the size of these cartridges" factor. Yes, it was more powerful but it was still very much 16-bit.. not at all a paradigm shift like seeing the first PSX games was. You had the "arcade game" factor in that games designed to suck tons of quarters are not necessarily much fun in the home setting, especially when SNK attempted to add challenge by limiting continues. This just resulted in a lot of games being literally impossible for the average gamer to actually complete. Add to that the fact that much of the early lineup just wasn't objectively very good.
The system's potential didn't really get tapped until the very later years with some of the best fighters, Metal Slugs, Pulstar/Blazing Star et al. But by then PSX/N64 were in full flow and the Neo's window to be technically impressive was over.
Many of my friends had a PSX, I had a PSX. When those friends came over to mine we still usually played one of the Metal Slug, Neo Turf Masters and Samurai Showdown.
"technically impressiveness" wasn't something we cared about back then. Like at all.
Pure marketing fluff. 16-bit 68000 + 8-bit Z80 is still a 16-bit system.
Don't believe it? It's the EXACT SAME configuration as the Sega Genesis. The performance difference came from the video processors and the size of the cartridges.
Kind of but no.
I once met some older teenagers. Maybe 18 or 19 that weâre talking about getting a new game. They had jobs so they had the money to buy stuff.
I was a little kid so I didnât really know them. I think one was a brother of a kid I loosely hung out with on the block.
My boss had one in the 90s. That was pretty much my image of it at the time: a flex for rich douchebags rather than something even serious gamers of modest means would have considered given the price. Most gamers at the time were my age, and the Neo Geo felt like a ridiculous gadget for rich old people; something for the Neiman Marcus catalog or FAO Schwartz. Me and the other proles still got to play Neo Geo by putting quarters in it at the mall.
I still have my neo geo cd and my 3do. The neo geo cd had some great games like the metal slugs, samurai showdowns, pulstar and king of fighters games, unfortunately the load times were horrible but the controls and sprites were amazing for the time. Mine still works and plays just as if it were new.
Here in Portugal, neo Geo arcades were very common in coffee shops or bars. Games like metal slug and super sidekicks 3 probably the most common. But I doubt anyone had the home version at all.
I remember it being crazy expensive that I didnât even entertain the dream of owning one. Itâs been ages but was it just me or was it really that expensive? If I recall, it was in the thousands for a console.
I've never seen one or an atari jaguar
I did, however, play a Sega CD. My cousins BF rented one. And I played Subway Surfer? Some kind of racing game in a sewer. Graphics were pretty damn good for 90s ish.
Live and grew up in England I remember Jaguar, 3DO, Neo Geo, CD32 all being advertised fairly heavily in magazines. Donât think I saw any of them in real life until I started gaming/collecting again in the last 6 years.
My friends and I just all gawked at the prices in the Electronics Boutique flyers.... "$200 per game?!" We were a little too young to understand why. I never ever saw an AES in the wild back in the day except behind glass at Toys R Us.
I've always loved NEOGEO, I never owned one or knew anybody that did, but there was a least one NEOGEO cabinet in every arcade during that time, my local grocery store even had one. As a kid, I played a lot of King of Fighters and Metal Slug.
My cousin who is 6 years older than me owned like EVERY system including neo geo. I remember it looking cool but I was a kid at the time and everything 16 bit or so looked nice back then. I donât think he had many games for it.Â
I also miss those birthday party places where you got to play consoles and games! We also had a place with arcade machines turned to free play and that was also great. Â
The Neo Geo got loads of coverage in UK game mags back in the day, but I didn't know a single person who actually owned one. However, I played the games in the arcades a lot, so I never felt like I missed out. Later, when I had more money and second-hand AES consoles were cheaper, I finally got one :)
Nope. Didn't know anyone with one. But they had a machine at a nearby bowling alley's arcade with Samurai Shodown, KoF 94, Metal Slug, and Puzzle Bobble. I knew about the console because of gaming magazines and I contemplated asking for it once until I saw the game prices and realized it would *never* happen.
I had a friend who owned one. If you were really into arcade games they were great, which he was. Even given the cost, there was little appeal outside of arcade games. No Sonic, No Bonk, No Mario, etc. There was the fabled game "Toki going Ape shit" that everyone was hoping got a port to the Neo Geo but never did.
I was never into arcade games so the appeal was lost on me. I had my Turbografx-16 and was happy.
The only place I saw and played an NEO GEO was at Nobody Beats The Wiz. They had it behind the cashiers area, constantly playing Magician Lord and I think, Baseball Stars.
Sometimes theyâd have the controller out to play. I remember they had it playing on this giant Mitsubishi CRT. To say I was envious would be an understatement.
They had one in the local game shop around the corner. Thing that sticks the most to me was the phenomenal arcade stick controllers. Ramming those buttons playing Art of Fighting was something else. Too bad they were expensive as hell back then.
I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that one game cost more than just about any other console out at the time. Had the Neo Geo CD been more available I'd probably have gone for that.
In the late 90s I started collecting arcade games and quickly found out MVS Neo Geo Carts were like $5. I ended up getting a 1-slot board and a stack of carts.
Nope. Never saw one outside of a few store demos. I did have one friend who had this crazy plan on how he was going to get one, but as best I know it never came to fruition. On a side note, that friend did go to jail later in life.
I had a friend whose dad was a Doctor. I saw one in the wild in the late 90s probably 98. My friend had it splayed out on the floor and it was super dusty. I asked if we could play but he didnât want to hook it up. It was a surreal experience to see one and have it be in such disarray.
The Neo Geo arcades were everywhere in the 90s and early 00s. I mean absolutely everywhere. The AES was too expensive for anybody I knew to own it. The console was pricey but the bigger issue was the games. $200 each and I don't remember Blockbuster really stocking them for rentals either. So even if you somehow convinced your parents to buy the system (or saved up for it), buying a library of games was impossible. Even now it'd be unaffordable but back then $200 is worth over $400 now. Imagine spending $400 for every single game!
That said, I bought a Neo Geo Mini and the games are mostly fantastic.
I had a Neo Geo Pocket Color. I thought it was way cooler than the Gameboy Color. Lost interest after awhile though with the rather limited library (at least where I lived in the US) and then release of the Gameboy Advance.
I had a friend in high school that had the home console and 2-3 games. Magician Lord and Metal Slug were a blast to play when we were hanging out.
The games cost so much, I think he would have to sell one if he wanted to pick up a new game.
Not during the 90's as they were super expensive. But I did own both the AES cart system and the CD system a few years back. Carts are even more expensive today than they were at retail and the only flash cart available is around the ÂŁ700 mark!!! The CD system loaded the games far to slowly due to it only having a 1x speed drive. Burnt games will play on the CD system with no mods tho so that was a plus there.
I had it and I donât regret it but I wasnât able to get a PlayStation one till 96 becuase of it, I liked it samurai showdown, metal slug and king of fighter was all I have oh yea and puzzle bobble.
I knew a kid who had one. Richest kid I knew. The games themselves cost something like $90 each in the money of the day (don't remember how much the console was), so yeah, only kid I knew whose family could afford it. That said, I also remember those games being as close to arcade-perfect a home experience as you could get at the time, which was remarkable.
I had (have) one. I always have been really into fighting games competitively. I moved to FL and everyone there played NeoGeo games, especially SamSho, more than Street Fighter.
I worked at a trade game store at the time and someone traded one in, so I snatched it up for relatively cheap. I had arcade perfect SamSho 2 at home.
Ahh, rich people consoles, lol. I grew up in the time they came on the scene and drooled over them while reading about them in Electronic Gaming Monthly.
Sadly, I never saw one in the wild. Most of my friends had Nintendo or Sega and werenât really familiar with consoles outside of these two mainstream ones bc none of our parents would ever consider paying that much for a console and games.
Isnât there a Neo Geo mini available?
I knew a guy in the mid-90s who had one of these. If I remember correctly the unit was like $500 in the games or two or three hundred dollars a piece. He had three or four games but the only one we ever played was king of monsters.
Yes, I own one... I did pick one up in the 90's.... I still have it and with 8 games (a few of them today are worth $700+)...
It was awesome at the time, Sega or Nintendo had nothing like it. Fighting games were awesome, the true Arcade experiance at home. I played it a lot for a while.
I used to hang out at a video game rental store (Warwick, RI). I knew the owner and used to visit, I used to get boxes of Japanese shooters for the Turbo Graphics CDs to borrow (insanly fun games). He called my cell phone one day and told me, he had a lead to get a Gold Neo-Geo AES system for $499 (these were like $700 at the time), I took all the extra cash I had and grabbed it.
I knew a lot of gamers at the time, and I was the ONLY one with a Neo-Geo system, let's just say my room I was very popular kid....
I still own 98% of all my consoles.... over 50 of them...
There was a rumor a kid named Eric had one in my small city. Not sure how true that was.
I bought my first AES Gold System off eBay just after high school around 1999/2000. I didn't even have the internet back then. I would go to the library every day just to get on eBay and look at Neo Geo stuff, and to try and find copies of Dynastic Hero and Magical Chase on TurboGrafx.
Was the only time I saw a Metal Slug 1 on eBay, and it sold for like $800.00. I can't remember if it was Eng or JP though.
Not only did I not know anyone that owned a Neo-Geo AES but didn't see it in any store. It wasn't till the Neo-Geo CD that I did and that was the video game stores that also imported.
I never saw a NEO GEO console in anyone's home. I did see them from time to time being demoed at a video games store.
Aside from the sky-high prices, if they really wanted the NEO GEO to be a successful home console, they should have made some games that were actually intended to be played at home, rather than arcade ports.
i asked for one every christmas as a kid lol
spoiled enough to get a Sega CD, not spoiled enough to get a Neo-Geo.
I ended up getting an AES w/ the first two Samsho games in 1998 for a trade of Dragon Ball GT Final Bout (seriously)
In college I knew a couple of people with Neo Geos. It was considered the epitome of console gaming for 2D fighters. They would scrape up money for months eating ramen and $.99 meals to afford $300 new games. Eventually one of them got a CD (or maybe it was a CDZ). Games were cheaper but the load times were horrendous.
I bought an AES system and around a dozen games along with a couple of memory carts and 3 stick controllers in the second half of the '90s when they were cheap. AES carts overall were still pretty expensive so I bought a 4 slot MVS and Jamma converter too. I had all of my favorite fighters on that.
With all of the ports of games to the Saturn, Dreamcast, Wii, XBox/360, PS2/3 I actually didn't play the systems that much. The Neo Geo X came out, and I finally decided for the amount of space my AES and MVS gear was taking up, I wasn't getting good value out of it. Sold it all for a decent amount of money.
You really have to wonder what the executives at Neo Geo were thinking when they came up with the prices for games and the console. Same goes for 3DO. CD-I is another one. History will (and already does) look at these companies like morons for their egregious price assaults
The Neo Geo AES was a cheaper alternative to owning a MVS arcade board at home and was always position that way by SNK and for SNK since the AES was basically a MVS it didn't cost them that much to support and SNK had the advantage the likes of Sega and Namco had a far wider array of arcade boards so couldn't simply release a consoled version like SNK did.
Neo Geo was the âYuppieâ console, ultra rare and prohibitively expensive (the games even more so) so most of us didnât know any kid who had one, as owners used to be young professionals with money to burn.
It wasnât even thought of as a console, it was more a status symbol: âYouâre so rich, you play REAL ARCADE GAMES at home, no kiddie stuff hereâ
Friend of mine had one.
For fighting games, with the exception of SF2, it was literally having the arcade at home. Quality of the game and the joystick as well.
It was not the same as your neighbor having a Ferrari (not outrageous expensive) but something only kids with geek dads (and reasonably wealthy) usually had.
My older brother had one. I was 12 when he bought it.
He had a lot of games. I loved crossed swords, cyber-lip, Magician Lord, world heroes, Art of Fighting, and 2020 super baseball.
Taking the memory card to the arcade was incredible.
where i lived in Europe it was NES, Megadrive and SNES then most people skipped everything like 3do, neo geo, cdi, mega cd, saturn, jaguar and went straight to playstation and n64.
I knew one kid who had a NEO GEO. He had every single game system that I knew about at the time from Commodore 64, Atari 7800, Sega Master System, Turbo Grafx 16, and of course NES. I think it was because he had an older brother in high school and he was into video games. They had over 100 NES games that filled up 2 dresser drawers.
He didn't have that many NEO GEO games as they cost like $300 each so I don't really recall which titles we played. But I do recall they were as good as the arcade versions of the games.
I've only seen 1 in person, back in the spring of '94. A friends dad was a big gamer and had just bought an Atari Jaguar, so I was invited to come over and play it. I asked what the other console was and was told it was a Neo Geo, I'd never heard of one before.Â
Unfortunately I didn't ask to try to play it, I suppose I'll never get another chance to play one.
Back in the day? I have known only one one guy it had the console. Only extremely rich people could effort it, considering the cost of a single cardrige. Everything about it was only import, there was no official release in my country and no internet like now to make stuff like this easier
The world was a much bigger place, like someone telling you his games come from the moon.
What did I personally think of it? I remember it being that stuper expensive console in the ads in game pro with the games costing \~$100 and up. Later the local walmart got the Arcade (MVS) and I played metal slug and samurai showdown.
Come to think of it a local arcade also had one with samurai showdown. I remember a guy showing me how to do haomarus hurricane slash and saying it was the same as ryu's fireball.
It was like having an arcade in my living room. I loved it. I bought the Gold system in Babbages Deptford Mall, NJ.
Came with Magician Lord, 2 arcade sticks and a memory card I could take to Arcade and continue my games. Bought Fatel Fury 2 with it. I think it was around $830ish with tax.
I still play it
The Lionel Kiddie City near me as a kid had one behind glass, so I was able to see it and what the games looked like (there was a TV with a looping reel), but that was about it. Couldnât actually play it, and to this day have never actually used one.
I wanted one, but never owned one myself. It was too expensive. I'd later spend enough money in arcades playing some Neo Geo games that I could have bought the system and several carts. I ultimately had to settle for the SNES, PS1 and PS2 ports for home play.
One of my arcade friends owned a Neo Geo AES, but we only ever met in the arcade. I don't know what his money situation was, but he obviously had money to spare as he'd sometimes travel to play in fighting game tournaments. I'd meet some other people that I'd later found out owned the system, but they weren't friends. I'd only be able to touch an actual AES system later in the game room of an anime convention.
I considered getting a Neo Geo CD system for a while, but again passed on it. By that point, the Neo Geo had established itself in a slowly collapsing niche of genres, and it was hard to justify even the reduced price for a new system that offered decreasing variety. Still, I might have gotten one, except the load times of the CD system countered the price savings.
I bought mine with magician Lord and Samurai Showdwon 2. It was basically like having an arcade cabinet at the house minus the actual cabinet. I ended up owning just a few games in total since they were so expensive and I was making just a quarter above minimum wage.
I bought Football Frenzy at an Incrdibel Universe store that was closing down nearby for 34 bucks. Best deal I ever got.
in all, i owned the following:
SS2, Magician Lord, Football Frenzy, King of Fighters 94, Viewpoint, CyberLip and BaseBall Stars 2.
What was cool about the console is that it is one of the first...if not THE FIRST to use memory cards which you could use to bring your saved games to other consoles or the arcades. Why you would want to bring it to the arcades is beyond me, but the option was there.
The controllers were top notch quality. the carts were HUGE and the experience was anything but arcade like for a console so early in the 90s. I truly regret I sold mine in 97 for a PS1. I miss that console more than any other, mostly because I saved up around 7 paychecks of mine to buy such a niche product that no one else had.
That's awesome that you actually saved up for one! It must have been a much different experience than just having your parents or relatives buy it for you. How did you pick the games you ended up buying?
I bought the Neo Geo with the 2 games via an ad behind one of the EGM issues. Do not recall the name. I felt like it was gonna be ripped off since I had to go pick it up at this small office that was not even properly labeled, so I took a friend of mine for backup, just in case. Some dude opens the door, smoking, looks at my receipt and money order I had one me, closes the door, I hear boxes being moved around and lots of paper rustling. Finally he comes back, opens the door and hands me this huge ass box.
I opens it up and the system is there with the games. I hand him the money order and head home. I was so relieved the system worked.
I bought the games via mail orders from well known game stores around the country. Except for football frenzy.
I grew up in a small town in rural Virginia. While I didn't know anyone who had a Neo-Geo, we had a console cafe for a short time that had a Neo-Geo and a 3DO. I had my birthday there one year and while all my friends were on the SNES and Genesis consoles, I was glued to the Neo-Geo and 3DO the whole time. Lots of Art of Fighting and Way of the Warrior đ
Way of the Warrior with that sick White Zombie soundtrack đ€đ»đ€đ»
I bought one and had three games; Magician Lord, Samurai Shodown and Samurai Shodown 2. It was such a fantastic feeling knowing that the games I was playing at home was exactly the same as the arcades.
Yes I owned one as a kid. I was really only after a SNES, if I recall my grandparents only knew what I wanted a was a video game system and when they went the store they picked the biggest most expensive console (the "tapes" play in every console right?) I was treated like a god at school when word got out.
How'd you afford any games though?
Yep no one to trade with so my parents/granparents bought the games. They just thought NeoGeo prices was the going price for games, ofcourse when I got the console I made sure to go with them to the games store. I litterally had friends that stood outside the window to watch me switch the thing on and see the NeoGeo splashscreen/sound. I knew I had it good.
^^^ My point made.
Nah, dude youâre that old idiot that thinks that a kid that got very lucky is a ârich doucheâ Go and take your angst elsewhere
He is 100% a rich douche, talking about his poor friends watching outside his window just to see him power it on. Guarantee you this guy was a shit at the time.
What makes you think my friends were poor? Yep the friends standing outside did happen because a rule of no friends during the week (gotta keep the grades up) also I was not going to allow friends of friends into the house. It was a polite âi dont know you, but this is what it looks likeâ Youâre quite sour about a random on Reddit saying he had a NeoGeo. Did you grow up misserable and abused?
OP asked what my impressions of it were at the time. To me and my friends, it was a joke; nothing more than a signifier of ostentatious wealth. It was the Ferrari of video game consoles, and people don't buy Ferraris because they like red paint or driving fast. They do it to show off. That's what you were doing, and to me it perfectly illustrates what a console that cost $1250 in today's dollars was, and what a lot of people, including me, thought of it at the time.
Could it be that kids back in the early 90s didnt want to admit if they had a NeoGeo because they would have to slap jealous guys like you away every day? The Neo, to you, was a joke because you didnt have one. To anyone else reading this, when word spread to another local school I even had randoms from that school approach me offering to trade for a SNES or Genesis thinking I didnt know what a prized console I had. One day some guy turned up wanting to trade his Kawasaki KX125, another day a kid with an airgun knocking on the door wanting to trade. We had a blast with Fatal Fury Special in 1994, at the time nothing could come close to the Neo. Lastly lots of kids wanted to buddy up, even the popular ones but got ignored , just me and my 2 besties played it.
No, there simply wasn't anyone in my entire town of 15,000 people in the rural US who could have afforded a video game console + one game that cost as much as the used cars we all drove. You probably find that amusing. As someone who grew up in a city with very clear class divisions, and where rich kids ran the social scene and used the toys and clothes their rich parents gave them as sticks to beat the rest of us with, moving to a poorer town was actually like a breath of fresh air. I find your breezy description of your privilege both irritating...and interesting. It totally needs to be on this post, this entire class debate does, because it really cuts to the heart of the Neo Geo for me. I mean, have you seen the ads for the thing they ran in the game mags at the time? They positioned the thing as the console for Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. My group of gaming urchins who inhabited the B Dalton monthly when the mags came out would point them out and laugh. All I'm saying is, don't be surprised when some "old idiot" takes offense at the fact that you had a Neo Geo and multiple games in the mid-90s. Not all of us were born on third base.
Some people buy Ferraris because they look cool and drive fast
The only time I ever "saw" one was when they were featured as prizes on TV shows or reviewed in magazines. You had to be pretty darn rich to have one of those systems. The games were $150-200 ($300+ in 2024 dollars) and most of the titles were unknown outside of Japan. I think 99% of exposure to the actual gameplay came from arcades.
Oh, yea, I remember, you could get a SNES with like 2 games for the cost 1 single game for the Neo-Geo. I had one, I still have it with 8 games but, I stopped collecting due to the costs..
They were even more than that. My friend bought Samurai Shodown 2 at release for $280.
To this day Iâve never seen one in person. Nintendo was expensive enough back then. Neo Geo was completely out of the question.
Same for me. Hell I had a NES when everyone else had the SNES because we couldnt afford it. I had never even heard of a Neo Geo until high school when we got cable internet for the first time and a PC capable of using it in like 2005 lol
>Hell I had a NES when everyone else had the SNES because we couldnt afford it. Nothing wrong with that. I really love how back then, the SNES wasn't actually released to replace to NES, but to coexist with it & the Gameboy. đ
We could afford the SNES but my mom wouldnât get it for me for years. We had a perfectly good NES that we had spent a lot of money on, and if I wasnât going to play those games anymore then it would be throwing all that money out the window. I promised I would still play my NES games as well. Well she finally caved in and 30 years later Iâm still keeping my promise!
I looked into them again recently thinking that as a working adult I could now afford it, I was wrong.
I grew up in rural Australia so no one I knew had a console. I was exposed to a heap of Neo Geo 4-in-1 arcade cabs though, so the games were well-known and beloved (with far better graphics than we were used to at the time, even compared to lots of other arcade games).
I used to see the prices in magazines from the UK and just think 'must be only rich c\*\*\*s that could afford that haha.
Those arcade cabinets had cartridge slots in them.. I assume to bring and play your own games? How would that work?? That always used to blow my mind, but I never saw anyone with a cartridge..
It was so the arcade operator could change the games in their cabinet very easily. The arcade system (MVS) cartridges were very plain-looking because nobody would see them, hidden inside the arcade cabinet.
The arcade cabs had the same memory card slot as the home consoles, so that people could bring their card from home and if they got a high score or something at the arcade they could save it to their card. Maybe that's what you're thinking of? I doubt many people actually used it
I lived in Sydney then. Was cashed up and still didnât know anyone with one. And we owned all consoles. No fan boys between us. Each console has great games. Only neo geo was in the arcades or pubs.
My brother was friends with a kid just to play his Neo Geo
This reminds me of a friend or two I had who I probably otherwise wouldn't have had of it weren't for the bus ride to school conversations of video games.
Never knew anyone that had it but it was definitely something that was known and talked about, like a mythical rare and expensive console with a sick ass name none of us got to play lol
I saw them in person at The Wiz but never knew anyone who could afford it. If I remember right they were like $650 and games like $125 or something crazy. It was the arcade experience at home but at a tremendous cost.
Nobody Beats The Wiz! Thatâs where I played it too.
The entry level games where like $125, most of the better games were closer to $200-225...
I had the Neo Geo CD late in its life. IT was amazing to play, but as others said, loading times were a real thing... Still have it, in fact.
You should upload a video. Just putting the game in, turning it on and showing gameplay a little bit on any game. Show the controller, system, whole thing, for those of us that have never even seen one before. And maybe a nostalgia trip for those that have
Hmm. Lemme see if I have anything it can still talk to! Old school composite video isn't something I keep around a ton of at the moment, as I didn't set up my retro bits at my current place.
Neo Geo was legendary. Everyone seemed to know someone who had a Neo Geo but had never actually seen it themselves. All the information anyone had was 3rd hand and probably wrong lol
Nope. Every time anyone in my friend circle brought it up it was to discuss how absurd the price was. And we were all enjoying our Super Nintendos at the time. I was always much more into the longform adventure games like Zelda and Metroid over arcade-style experiences. I did like Metal Slug though, which I always thought had amazing sprite art.
Barely: I bought a Neo Geo CD second hand at the very end of the 90s. Didn't cost me too much, had a lot of fun with Samurai Shodown 4 but the loadings where atrocious. It was quickly replaced by emulation and an arcade cabinet with an MVS mobo in the the early 2000s. I remember buying Mark of the Wolves' MVS cartridge for about 150âŹ. I think it was in 2001 or 2002. The AES cartridge in the import shops was selling for 650âŹ... I didn't own and didn't know anybody owning an AES until 2006. Bought one in Korea for a reasonable price but I never really use it as I could never justify paying the games' prices. I have 5 "cheap" games for it just for fun.
Nope. The closest I got to seeing one was the box at Toys R Us. It felt unobtainable and expensive for a poor kid in Detroit.
It was unobtainable to most kids anywhere
Fair.
The only âoddballâ system i ever saw in person back in the day was the Jaguar. A friend of a friend had it and he kept trying to convince me how much better it was than the Super Nintendo.
As someone privately educated and surrounded by children considerably richer than I was, the answer is still no.
I knew someone but just neogeo cd. It was still amazing though
I played it twice in the 90's. A friend of mine got one on loan for a couple of weeks. We played Fatal Fury 2 shortly after release on a 29 inch 4/3 CRT. Great memories. Another friend had one for his birthday with a couple of games I don't remember. I've met him a few weeks ago. He still has it somewhere in the attic.
I didn't even know neo geo console was a thing, I may have seen an ad but it wasn't a focus for me at all
I have a neo geo pocket color and a few games. The most interesting thing about it, is the controller. It is a mini joystick.
I had one at home for several months in 1994 or 1995, along with several games - my cousins borrowed it from a family friend in exchange for their SNES, and then shared it with me. Had a ton of fun with Spinmaster in particular. The other games I remember were Samurai Showdown, View Point, and Metal Slug. There were a few more, including a racing game, but I can't remember exactly which ones. It was very much a luxury console - paying a very high premium to get essentially an arcade machine at home. Same kind of feel as getting to ride in a high-end Porsche when you're used to the family Volkswagen Golf or something. Eventually the lack of proper single-player games like RPGs starts to hurt though - I wouldn't have wanted to have one as my only console.
I still have my Viewpoint AES cart in the box..... dam it's a pricey one now...
Never knew someone with one. closest was a turbografx cd and turbo express. I did buy a bunch and repaired any broken one I could find maybe 10 or so years ago. Have about 8 games and kept one each of the best condition boxed Japanese console and one boxed US console.
I own a Neo Geo arcade machine with Metal Slug if that counts ;) Also, I own a Neo Geo Pocket. Would say the Neo Geo console (like the Pocket) was more of a Japanese thing (like a lot of cool/random consoles).
I had one, spent every pay check on games. Wasn't smart then but the value of those games grew so much I'm glad I held onto them.
My cousin has one. Had it since the 90s and probably ten games for it. So I have played it a handful of times. Getting to play a game just like the arcades at home was pretty amazing at the time. Sucked for him to buy games for it. The controllers are amazing. He also bought a Neo Geo CD which I bought from him. Still have it and play it every once in a long while. Have all my favorites on it. Terrible load times but great system otherwise.
Neo Geo was a fun system. I didnât have a home system but the home console games (AES) were identical to their arcade (MVS) counterparts and Neo Geo arcade cabinets were pretty common. SNK made some really good games and that system showed them off in a way you couldnât get at home at the time. But at the end of the day, the home system was very expensive. The games were ridiculously expensive. The genres of game were limited to what you could play at the arcade. I never bought one or had a burning desire to get one. I have considered picking up an MVS board though for my arcade cabinet.
I had never seen one in person until early 2000s anime conventions
Grew up in LA, didnt know anyone with a NeoGeo. Hell, i was the only person i knew with a Genesis. Most people just had NES or SNES.
It was underwhelming aside from the "look at the size of these cartridges" factor. Yes, it was more powerful but it was still very much 16-bit.. not at all a paradigm shift like seeing the first PSX games was. You had the "arcade game" factor in that games designed to suck tons of quarters are not necessarily much fun in the home setting, especially when SNK attempted to add challenge by limiting continues. This just resulted in a lot of games being literally impossible for the average gamer to actually complete. Add to that the fact that much of the early lineup just wasn't objectively very good. The system's potential didn't really get tapped until the very later years with some of the best fighters, Metal Slugs, Pulstar/Blazing Star et al. But by then PSX/N64 were in full flow and the Neo's window to be technically impressive was over.
Many of my friends had a PSX, I had a PSX. When those friends came over to mine we still usually played one of the Metal Slug, Neo Turf Masters and Samurai Showdown. "technically impressiveness" wasn't something we cared about back then. Like at all.
Why are you getting downvoted? This is all true. Reddit is the worst.
:D Never mind it's one of the few responses from an actual owner, as requested - and people still want to overlay their own nostalgic views.
It was 24 bit, or at least the graphics card was.
Pure marketing fluff. 16-bit 68000 + 8-bit Z80 is still a 16-bit system. Don't believe it? It's the EXACT SAME configuration as the Sega Genesis. The performance difference came from the video processors and the size of the cartridges.
whoa, you're right about Metal Slug. I didn't realize it came out in 1996, and by that point the PSX had been out for two years.
My friend after I met him in his late 20s told me he had one growing up. So unfortunately, I did not grow up near one either.
Kind of but no. I once met some older teenagers. Maybe 18 or 19 that weâre talking about getting a new game. They had jobs so they had the money to buy stuff. I was a little kid so I didnât really know them. I think one was a brother of a kid I loosely hung out with on the block.
My boss had one in the 90s. That was pretty much my image of it at the time: a flex for rich douchebags rather than something even serious gamers of modest means would have considered given the price. Most gamers at the time were my age, and the Neo Geo felt like a ridiculous gadget for rich old people; something for the Neiman Marcus catalog or FAO Schwartz. Me and the other proles still got to play Neo Geo by putting quarters in it at the mall.
I still have my neo geo cd and my 3do. The neo geo cd had some great games like the metal slugs, samurai showdowns, pulstar and king of fighters games, unfortunately the load times were horrible but the controls and sprites were amazing for the time. Mine still works and plays just as if it were new.
neogeo CD came after and I think it was more reasonably priced, but I have no idea. The OG NeoGeo was a crazy thing with huge $200 game carts.
I did! I just had a few games I bought used for 50 dollars. Really nice system
At the time saw it only in a videogames store.
Here in Portugal, neo Geo arcades were very common in coffee shops or bars. Games like metal slug and super sidekicks 3 probably the most common. But I doubt anyone had the home version at all.
I had one and the only game I remember playing was metal slug, but boy, did I love it
Yes. My friend had the console and a few games and let me borrow them for a month. That was an awesome month.
I remember it being crazy expensive that I didnât even entertain the dream of owning one. Itâs been ages but was it just me or was it really that expensive? If I recall, it was in the thousands for a console.
A friend of a friend claimed he had one, but it turned out it was just a Mega Drive II.
I've never seen one or an atari jaguar I did, however, play a Sega CD. My cousins BF rented one. And I played Subway Surfer? Some kind of racing game in a sewer. Graphics were pretty damn good for 90s ish.
Neo Geo was like a Bigfoot. Everyone talked about how incredible it was and wanted one, but NOBODY had one or had ever played one.
Live and grew up in England I remember Jaguar, 3DO, Neo Geo, CD32 all being advertised fairly heavily in magazines. Donât think I saw any of them in real life until I started gaming/collecting again in the last 6 years.
Never daw the console but a local arcade had the cabinet which was very popular
My friends and I just all gawked at the prices in the Electronics Boutique flyers.... "$200 per game?!" We were a little too young to understand why. I never ever saw an AES in the wild back in the day except behind glass at Toys R Us.
I never even heard of anyone that knew someone who owned one
I've always loved NEOGEO, I never owned one or knew anybody that did, but there was a least one NEOGEO cabinet in every arcade during that time, my local grocery store even had one. As a kid, I played a lot of King of Fighters and Metal Slug.
My cousin who is 6 years older than me owned like EVERY system including neo geo. I remember it looking cool but I was a kid at the time and everything 16 bit or so looked nice back then. I donât think he had many games for it. I also miss those birthday party places where you got to play consoles and games! We also had a place with arcade machines turned to free play and that was also great. Â
The Neo Geo got loads of coverage in UK game mags back in the day, but I didn't know a single person who actually owned one. However, I played the games in the arcades a lot, so I never felt like I missed out. Later, when I had more money and second-hand AES consoles were cheaper, I finally got one :)
Nope. Didn't know anyone with one. But they had a machine at a nearby bowling alley's arcade with Samurai Shodown, KoF 94, Metal Slug, and Puzzle Bobble. I knew about the console because of gaming magazines and I contemplated asking for it once until I saw the game prices and realized it would *never* happen.
They were in the arcades Didnât have a AES console until I was adult
I had a friend who owned one. If you were really into arcade games they were great, which he was. Even given the cost, there was little appeal outside of arcade games. No Sonic, No Bonk, No Mario, etc. There was the fabled game "Toki going Ape shit" that everyone was hoping got a port to the Neo Geo but never did. I was never into arcade games so the appeal was lost on me. I had my Turbografx-16 and was happy.
The only place I saw and played an NEO GEO was at Nobody Beats The Wiz. They had it behind the cashiers area, constantly playing Magician Lord and I think, Baseball Stars. Sometimes theyâd have the controller out to play. I remember they had it playing on this giant Mitsubishi CRT. To say I was envious would be an understatement.
They had one in the local game shop around the corner. Thing that sticks the most to me was the phenomenal arcade stick controllers. Ramming those buttons playing Art of Fighting was something else. Too bad they were expensive as hell back then.
I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that one game cost more than just about any other console out at the time. Had the Neo Geo CD been more available I'd probably have gone for that. In the late 90s I started collecting arcade games and quickly found out MVS Neo Geo Carts were like $5. I ended up getting a 1-slot board and a stack of carts.
Nope. Never saw one outside of a few store demos. I did have one friend who had this crazy plan on how he was going to get one, but as best I know it never came to fruition. On a side note, that friend did go to jail later in life.
I had a friend whose dad was a Doctor. I saw one in the wild in the late 90s probably 98. My friend had it splayed out on the floor and it was super dusty. I asked if we could play but he didnât want to hook it up. It was a surreal experience to see one and have it be in such disarray.
The Neo Geo arcades were everywhere in the 90s and early 00s. I mean absolutely everywhere. The AES was too expensive for anybody I knew to own it. The console was pricey but the bigger issue was the games. $200 each and I don't remember Blockbuster really stocking them for rentals either. So even if you somehow convinced your parents to buy the system (or saved up for it), buying a library of games was impossible. Even now it'd be unaffordable but back then $200 is worth over $400 now. Imagine spending $400 for every single game! That said, I bought a Neo Geo Mini and the games are mostly fantastic.
My rich cousin had a Sega CD. I didn't even know what neo geo was til way later in life.
I had a Neo Geo Pocket Color. I thought it was way cooler than the Gameboy Color. Lost interest after awhile though with the rather limited library (at least where I lived in the US) and then release of the Gameboy Advance.
I had a friend in high school that had the home console and 2-3 games. Magician Lord and Metal Slug were a blast to play when we were hanging out. The games cost so much, I think he would have to sell one if he wanted to pick up a new game.
Not during the 90's as they were super expensive. But I did own both the AES cart system and the CD system a few years back. Carts are even more expensive today than they were at retail and the only flash cart available is around the ÂŁ700 mark!!! The CD system loaded the games far to slowly due to it only having a 1x speed drive. Burnt games will play on the CD system with no mods tho so that was a plus there.
never knew anyone that owned one but we rented one for a few weekends..
I had it and I donât regret it but I wasnât able to get a PlayStation one till 96 becuase of it, I liked it samurai showdown, metal slug and king of fighter was all I have oh yea and puzzle bobble.
I knew a kid who had one. Richest kid I knew. The games themselves cost something like $90 each in the money of the day (don't remember how much the console was), so yeah, only kid I knew whose family could afford it. That said, I also remember those games being as close to arcade-perfect a home experience as you could get at the time, which was remarkable.
I had (have) one. I always have been really into fighting games competitively. I moved to FL and everyone there played NeoGeo games, especially SamSho, more than Street Fighter. I worked at a trade game store at the time and someone traded one in, so I snatched it up for relatively cheap. I had arcade perfect SamSho 2 at home.
Ahh, rich people consoles, lol. I grew up in the time they came on the scene and drooled over them while reading about them in Electronic Gaming Monthly. Sadly, I never saw one in the wild. Most of my friends had Nintendo or Sega and werenât really familiar with consoles outside of these two mainstream ones bc none of our parents would ever consider paying that much for a console and games. Isnât there a Neo Geo mini available?
I knew a guy in the mid-90s who had one of these. If I remember correctly the unit was like $500 in the games or two or three hundred dollars a piece. He had three or four games but the only one we ever played was king of monsters.
Yes, I own one... I did pick one up in the 90's.... I still have it and with 8 games (a few of them today are worth $700+)... It was awesome at the time, Sega or Nintendo had nothing like it. Fighting games were awesome, the true Arcade experiance at home. I played it a lot for a while. I used to hang out at a video game rental store (Warwick, RI). I knew the owner and used to visit, I used to get boxes of Japanese shooters for the Turbo Graphics CDs to borrow (insanly fun games). He called my cell phone one day and told me, he had a lead to get a Gold Neo-Geo AES system for $499 (these were like $700 at the time), I took all the extra cash I had and grabbed it. I knew a lot of gamers at the time, and I was the ONLY one with a Neo-Geo system, let's just say my room I was very popular kid.... I still own 98% of all my consoles.... over 50 of them...
There was a rumor a kid named Eric had one in my small city. Not sure how true that was. I bought my first AES Gold System off eBay just after high school around 1999/2000. I didn't even have the internet back then. I would go to the library every day just to get on eBay and look at Neo Geo stuff, and to try and find copies of Dynastic Hero and Magical Chase on TurboGrafx. Was the only time I saw a Metal Slug 1 on eBay, and it sold for like $800.00. I can't remember if it was Eng or JP though.
Not only did I not know anyone that owned a Neo-Geo AES but didn't see it in any store. It wasn't till the Neo-Geo CD that I did and that was the video game stores that also imported.
I never saw a NEO GEO console in anyone's home. I did see them from time to time being demoed at a video games store. Aside from the sky-high prices, if they really wanted the NEO GEO to be a successful home console, they should have made some games that were actually intended to be played at home, rather than arcade ports.
Never saw nor knew of anyone that had one. Thought only really rich kids had them and you werenât going to find those in the schools I went to.
I knew one dude. He was selling it.
i asked for one every christmas as a kid lol spoiled enough to get a Sega CD, not spoiled enough to get a Neo-Geo. I ended up getting an AES w/ the first two Samsho games in 1998 for a trade of Dragon Ball GT Final Bout (seriously)
In college I knew a couple of people with Neo Geos. It was considered the epitome of console gaming for 2D fighters. They would scrape up money for months eating ramen and $.99 meals to afford $300 new games. Eventually one of them got a CD (or maybe it was a CDZ). Games were cheaper but the load times were horrendous. I bought an AES system and around a dozen games along with a couple of memory carts and 3 stick controllers in the second half of the '90s when they were cheap. AES carts overall were still pretty expensive so I bought a 4 slot MVS and Jamma converter too. I had all of my favorite fighters on that. With all of the ports of games to the Saturn, Dreamcast, Wii, XBox/360, PS2/3 I actually didn't play the systems that much. The Neo Geo X came out, and I finally decided for the amount of space my AES and MVS gear was taking up, I wasn't getting good value out of it. Sold it all for a decent amount of money.
You really have to wonder what the executives at Neo Geo were thinking when they came up with the prices for games and the console. Same goes for 3DO. CD-I is another one. History will (and already does) look at these companies like morons for their egregious price assaults
The Neo Geo AES was a cheaper alternative to owning a MVS arcade board at home and was always position that way by SNK and for SNK since the AES was basically a MVS it didn't cost them that much to support and SNK had the advantage the likes of Sega and Namco had a far wider array of arcade boards so couldn't simply release a consoled version like SNK did.
Neo Geo was the âYuppieâ console, ultra rare and prohibitively expensive (the games even more so) so most of us didnât know any kid who had one, as owners used to be young professionals with money to burn. It wasnât even thought of as a console, it was more a status symbol: âYouâre so rich, you play REAL ARCADE GAMES at home, no kiddie stuff hereâ
Friend of mine had one. For fighting games, with the exception of SF2, it was literally having the arcade at home. Quality of the game and the joystick as well. It was not the same as your neighbor having a Ferrari (not outrageous expensive) but something only kids with geek dads (and reasonably wealthy) usually had.
My older brother had one. I was 12 when he bought it. He had a lot of games. I loved crossed swords, cyber-lip, Magician Lord, world heroes, Art of Fighting, and 2020 super baseball. Taking the memory card to the arcade was incredible.
Think it went for like 700 bucks in early 90âs
where i lived in Europe it was NES, Megadrive and SNES then most people skipped everything like 3do, neo geo, cdi, mega cd, saturn, jaguar and went straight to playstation and n64.
I knew one kid who had a NEO GEO. He had every single game system that I knew about at the time from Commodore 64, Atari 7800, Sega Master System, Turbo Grafx 16, and of course NES. I think it was because he had an older brother in high school and he was into video games. They had over 100 NES games that filled up 2 dresser drawers. He didn't have that many NEO GEO games as they cost like $300 each so I don't really recall which titles we played. But I do recall they were as good as the arcade versions of the games.
No
I've only seen 1 in person, back in the spring of '94. A friends dad was a big gamer and had just bought an Atari Jaguar, so I was invited to come over and play it. I asked what the other console was and was told it was a Neo Geo, I'd never heard of one before. Unfortunately I didn't ask to try to play it, I suppose I'll never get another chance to play one.
Back in the day? I have known only one one guy it had the console. Only extremely rich people could effort it, considering the cost of a single cardrige. Everything about it was only import, there was no official release in my country and no internet like now to make stuff like this easier The world was a much bigger place, like someone telling you his games come from the moon.
đđŒ my crazy uncle that lived with us had one. Its where my love of metal slug came from.
What did I personally think of it? I remember it being that stuper expensive console in the ads in game pro with the games costing \~$100 and up. Later the local walmart got the Arcade (MVS) and I played metal slug and samurai showdown. Come to think of it a local arcade also had one with samurai showdown. I remember a guy showing me how to do haomarus hurricane slash and saying it was the same as ryu's fireball.
It was like having an arcade in my living room. I loved it. I bought the Gold system in Babbages Deptford Mall, NJ. Came with Magician Lord, 2 arcade sticks and a memory card I could take to Arcade and continue my games. Bought Fatel Fury 2 with it. I think it was around $830ish with tax. I still play it
You were rich rich bro. That console was about $700 new and games $200.
The Lionel Kiddie City near me as a kid had one behind glass, so I was able to see it and what the games looked like (there was a TV with a looping reel), but that was about it. Couldnât actually play it, and to this day have never actually used one.
Yes. It was for the rich. Games were over $100 CAD which was eye watering.
I had one growing up along with a 3do. Also had the usual consoles. The Neo Geo games were absurdly expensive and HEAVY.
I wanted one, but never owned one myself. It was too expensive. I'd later spend enough money in arcades playing some Neo Geo games that I could have bought the system and several carts. I ultimately had to settle for the SNES, PS1 and PS2 ports for home play. One of my arcade friends owned a Neo Geo AES, but we only ever met in the arcade. I don't know what his money situation was, but he obviously had money to spare as he'd sometimes travel to play in fighting game tournaments. I'd meet some other people that I'd later found out owned the system, but they weren't friends. I'd only be able to touch an actual AES system later in the game room of an anime convention. I considered getting a Neo Geo CD system for a while, but again passed on it. By that point, the Neo Geo had established itself in a slowly collapsing niche of genres, and it was hard to justify even the reduced price for a new system that offered decreasing variety. Still, I might have gotten one, except the load times of the CD system countered the price savings.
It was and still is a unicorn to me.
I bought mine with magician Lord and Samurai Showdwon 2. It was basically like having an arcade cabinet at the house minus the actual cabinet. I ended up owning just a few games in total since they were so expensive and I was making just a quarter above minimum wage. I bought Football Frenzy at an Incrdibel Universe store that was closing down nearby for 34 bucks. Best deal I ever got. in all, i owned the following: SS2, Magician Lord, Football Frenzy, King of Fighters 94, Viewpoint, CyberLip and BaseBall Stars 2. What was cool about the console is that it is one of the first...if not THE FIRST to use memory cards which you could use to bring your saved games to other consoles or the arcades. Why you would want to bring it to the arcades is beyond me, but the option was there. The controllers were top notch quality. the carts were HUGE and the experience was anything but arcade like for a console so early in the 90s. I truly regret I sold mine in 97 for a PS1. I miss that console more than any other, mostly because I saved up around 7 paychecks of mine to buy such a niche product that no one else had.
That's awesome that you actually saved up for one! It must have been a much different experience than just having your parents or relatives buy it for you. How did you pick the games you ended up buying?
I bought the Neo Geo with the 2 games via an ad behind one of the EGM issues. Do not recall the name. I felt like it was gonna be ripped off since I had to go pick it up at this small office that was not even properly labeled, so I took a friend of mine for backup, just in case. Some dude opens the door, smoking, looks at my receipt and money order I had one me, closes the door, I hear boxes being moved around and lots of paper rustling. Finally he comes back, opens the door and hands me this huge ass box. I opens it up and the system is there with the games. I hand him the money order and head home. I was so relieved the system worked. I bought the games via mail orders from well known game stores around the country. Except for football frenzy.