Hey everyone, just pointing out real quick in case anyone missed it in the description or doesn't see the card, yes, there ARE three versions of the Neo Geo CD, I forgot to mention the very limited production run of the front loading model in Japan. There were about 25,000 of those manufactured. So yup, three versions. Sorry, I'll find a fitting punishment for myself... maybe doing one of these on the Jaguar 😬
Fantastic video! What I wonder, how did it move so many frames of animation per sprite AND so many sprites? It wasn't just a 12 mhz processor, what was rhe sprite processor? Even friggin dream cast didn't have all frames of animation thst the neo did! Look into that one if you wanna get mindblown. Think it was one of the street fighter games. Anyway, it had some crazy chips thst no one mentions.
What an outstanding video! Love the nostalgia. Honestly, as impressive as it was, I think it was the games that really let it down: Neo Geo was an arcade in your home, but most arcade games were designed to munch your quarters, and not around groundbreaking or particularly deep gameplay (with some exceptions like fighting games). That’s where the NES and SNES (and to a lesser extent, the Genesis) stole the game from SNK. Nintendo understood the difference between playing a game at home and playing it in the arcades, and designed games with that philosophy. That’s why you had the Marios, the Final Fantasies and the Metroids. The Neo had nothing along those lines. It was flash and eye meltingly fast for sure, but it was those deep and ‘intimate’ Nintendo worlds that kept people coming back. And both the Genesis and SNES had kick ass run n gun games like Mega/Super Turrican and the Contras, as well as Mortal Kombat, plus all those shmups. The Neo Geo just didn’t have that depth (even if you don’t factor in the cost). And when the new gen came around, it was all over. Not a point you hear being made all that often, but I think it’s something to think about (and you did well to note it). Still want one though haha!
Nice! That was every kid's dream. But I'm curious, how many games did you afford to buy back in the day? Or did you manage to play Neo Geo games by other means other than buying?
@@31leoceara Just had 2 and then one day a few weeks later my brother decided he wanted to return it and get half of his money back. It was a sad day for me but those few weeks were so so amazing. It was so hard going back to anything else at the time.
I don't want to be 'that guy' but there where actually three models of the Neo Geo CD. The Original was the front loader with A CD tray, the Second was the Top loader and the third was the CDZ.
Don't worry, it's OK, you're right, I realized I missed it after someone reminded me earlier. I updated the description already and will add a card in at that point in the video soon.
I got a bit annoyed at everyone saying that the Neo•Geo was 85% fighting games, so several years ago I separated them by genre. It was very similar to your list,,except that I combined AES/MVS/and NGCD. Here's what I came up with: NEO-GEO MASTER LIST (157 Games Total) AES/MVS/NGCD FIGHTERS 50 SPORTS 24 SHOOT 'EM UPS 16 RUN AND GUN 16 PUZZLE 12 ACTION 7 PLATFORM 6 BEAT 'EM UP 5 BOARD GAME 6 RACING 4 QUIZ 4 WRESTLING 3 COMPILATION 3 RPG 1 157 total /MRH _2012
The Neo Geo was an awesome system for it's time. I can still remember seeing them in arcades all over through the first half of the 90s (and less so later on.) There was one guy who I went to school with that had an AES system at home. His family was quite well off and he had ALL the consoles and handhelds back then as well as an Atari ST and an Amiga. He was also the only guy I knew that had a Sega Genesis until sometime after Sonic was released and the Genesis really took off in popularity. To respond to the question about 3rd party support for the Neo Geo. There wasn't more 3rd party support for the system for a number reasons. 1. The Neo Geo MVS was seen as a direct competitor by the other major Japanese players in the arcade market like Sega, Capcom, Konami and so on as all of them were doing their own in house hardware and software development at the time. The MVS was initially developed & marketed for the arcade market as a lower cost option for arcade owners similar to the Capcom CPS system. Arcade owners wanted a less expensive & easier way to convert a machine from one game to another. 2. Capcom in particular was a fierce competitor to SNK in the late 80s and most of the 90s after Takashi Nishiyama left Capcom to join SNK after he developed Street Fighter. He was instrumental in the development of the Neo Geo MVS so there was no way Capcom would have released games for it early in it's life. 3. Outside of Japan, Nintendo had most major 3rd parties wrapped around their fingers in the home console market up until after the Neo Geo AES had launched in the home market. It wasn't until after Nintendo was sued by the US DOJ that more 3rd parties became able to develop games more freely for non Nintendo home consoles. By then the installed base of NES, Genesis & SNES consoles dwarfed the AES. The high price of the AES and the games also did not help even if those prices were necessary due to component costs. 4. SNK did not have enough money to directly fund additional 3rd party developers that weren't already working with or being funded by Nintendo or Sega. They tended to instead hire individuals or teams into SNK proper like when SNK bought the relatively small Nazca Corporation (Metal Slug) in 1996. I'm sure there's a ton of additional reasons but those are 4 major ones back then. The Neo Geo was a great arcade system and an awesome home system for it's time but was pretty much always going to be a niche one.
Excellent points made here. Thanks for the informative comment. It's almost ironic how the MVS was seen as a budget option for arcade owners while the AES was the highest premium "option" for the home console market (I put option in quotes for the home console market because for the vast majority of people it wasn't even an option at all).
My brothers and I loved the Neo Geo games, KOF95 was the reason we wanted the system, then my older brother bought a Saturn in 1997 and we had access to all current Capcom and SNK arcade games we wanted to play, among many exclusives and 3D titles we enjoyed on the system. Since we know more now, it's clear that, while the NEO GEO is indeed powerful as far as sprite and plain 2D games go. There are many things it couldn't do that the Mega Drive and the SNES do, such as 3D games like Formula One (Domark), Virtua Racing or transparencies and other techniques the SNES has that other consoles lacked. It's quite interesting the effect devs applied on games like Super Sidekicks 3, for instance, but overall, I don't think the console is as dynamic as the other two main 16-bit juggernauts. Let's also consider that both GEN/SNES games would benefit greatly had the ROM sizes been less restrained, specially looking now at what the homebrew community brings on the Mega Drive. Many cutbacks were due to cost reduction for the cartridges, it made these consoles look considerably weaker, when the truth is that they hardly used their full capacity.
To me the best fighting game on the Neo Geo was Last Blade 2. One of the earlier titles that was a ton of fun was Super Baseball. You didn't have to like baseball at all to appreciate a game with cyborgs and robots and people with jetpacks for fielding and landmines in the out field.
As a video game developer, one of my goals is to make an epic RPG with the console, because it was an arcade, normally you would never see such a game. So the idea is to make games for it, that you would not normally see. A game like Final Fantasy 6 would never be an arcade game, so it would be interesting to see such a game for the system.
I remember as a kid in middle school in the early 90s and going to toys r us. They had a big isle dedicated to video games with rows of flip cards that had the front and back cover of the games. Used to spend long time going through and flipping over all the cards, reading about the games. At the end of the isle was a big display with the Neo Geo…always used to look longingly at the sweet machine locked away behind the glass.
I never saw a Neo Geo at my local Toys R Us back then. But, they did have them at Child World before it went out of business. They even had them in stock when they went to 70% closeout pricing! I only ever saw them for sale in person at Child World and some specialty gaming shops in my area back in those days.
Fantastic video as always mate. 👊 I actually had the CD unit for a short while but sold it because the loading times did my head in. As for games, I really like Samurai Showdown on that system and of course, who doesn’t like Metal Slug? ;) Anyway thanks again for the great content. I was today years old when I learn that fighting games were only around 40% of its overall library!
The only competitor that SNK had in the arcade to home console space was Capcom with their CPS Changer. Though the CPS Changer unit was more a "supergun" since the hardware was all in the "cartridges" (based on the CPS1). The CPS Changer was only officially released in Japan with a similar price point and so was even more commercially limited than the Neo Geo.
@InglebardGaming Are you talking about the WOWOW, or was there another one? Regardless, this is the first I have heard that Taito thought of entering the home console market. I think I will try to see if I can read more about it. So, thanks for that bit of information.
The part that really surprised me was the percentage of fighting games, I really thought that they were at least over 50%😅 Like yes of course there were the most well-known KOF (and all their original "prequels") and Samurai Shodown, but there were at least a dozen other franchises like World Heroes. I know there were some sport games like Super Sidekicks that was really popular games herre in my country, but what was the rest? Shooters and puzzle games? I really don't remember that many of those, and the MVS machines were really common in this part of the world
Yeah, I thought the percentage would be a smidge higher myself, you can check out the wiki with every game for every version of the system to see what genre every game is in. There are a bunch of platformers, shooters, and puzzle games as probably the next three biggest genres on the system.
I remember the magazines all those years, I used to drool over the Neo-Geo releases, but after SF2 hit the arcades the Neo section started to just be fighting games. It was really disappointing to see at the time, felt like a huge waste of such a badass system.
Being mainly an arcade platform, focus was heavy on what did well in the arcades, with fighting games eventually becoming the main. These types of games were most common on the system (with some good examples): Beat 'em Up/Hack 'n Slash -- (Sengoku series, Crossed Swords series, Mutation Nation) Fighters -- (Fatal Fury series, Samurai Shodown series, King of Fighters series) Platformers -- (Blue's Journey, Magician Lord, Nightmare in the Dark) Puzzle -- (Puzzle Bobble series, Neo Bomberman, Puzzled) Racing -- (Thrash Rally, Neo Drift Out, Over Top) Sports -- (Baseball Stars series, Windjammers, Street Slam) Run 'n Gun -- (Metal Slug series, Shock Troopers series, Ninja Commando) Shmups -- (Pulstar/Blazing Star, Aero Fighters series, Viewpoint)
The Neo•Geo Gold System and Silver Systems were released in the USA on 12.20.1990. I read about SNK releasing it back in April 1990, and started saving up for the system and a few games. The Gold System was $550 (2 sticks, 1 game, either Baseball Stars Professional, or NAM-1975). The Silver System, lien you've said, was $399 (1stick, no game). Most places would throw in a free $30 memory card w/ order. It was pretty amazing to own one. I felt very lucky, as a 17 year old. I had a business with my older brother, doing snow removal, and lawn care, so it didn't take long to save up. (I was also supporting a Genesis, NES, and TG-16 habit). The games, prior to Summer 1991, were all dynamically priced according to their ROM size. From $120 (League Bowling, Puzzled) to $170 (Nam-1975, Top Players Golf). -Matt
It was definitely 650 at the only place I knew that had it early on (Child World). They had the early games all for $200, too. But, it was pretty common to see varied game prices especially among the mail order places, I showed a few of those contemporary mail order ads in the video with games priced lower in mid 1992. But yeah, especially back then it was common for some stores to have way different pricing for the same gaming stuff than some others. I never bought anything without checking eb, babbages, toys r us, child world, kay bee and the local flea market.
I agree that 3rd party support was a fatal flaw, probably due to the cost of the console itself it seemed pointless, but I don't understand why it happenned on the arcade market also.
Yeah, it would have seemed like a no brainer for other companies to save on hardware development by using an existing system. Who knows, maybe their fees were crazy or something.
There was a period where first generation Neo Geo games cost $318 at Babbages in South Florida, which was insane! I could simply play most of those Neo Geo games at my local arcades for a single token/quarter and knew that none of them were even worth spending anywhere near that kind of money on. I always felt $150 would've been the sweet spot for Neo Geo games.
Yeah, prices were nuts in NY when I was teen and this stuff was new. I just played the games that I wanted to on MVS units in the arcade, too. Almost bought a Neo Geo on clearance for $200, held off to see if it would get a bigger discount but then it was gone. Oh, well.
Hi Inglebard, What a fantastic and informative video on the 11 facts on the Neo-Geo. Glad that the Neo-Geo is to your liking. To me, the Neo-Geo is one of my all time favorites in the Arcade and for the home entertainment market. I've been playing Neo-Geo for 34 years. The first time I played on a Neo-Geo was in 1990 off a MVS 4 slot "Bug Red" cabinet at a local Dairy Queen in Paramus, New Jersey. The first game I ever played was Magician Lord, and I been a buff ever since. I wish I could relive that moment again. 8^) Also bro, I posted your video up on, The Official NEO-GEO thread for others like our members/guest to take notice and to help with additional exposure to your work on the forums at AtariAge. Thank you for sharing this with us Inglebard. Pleased to meet you and looking forward to see more of your content soon bro. 8^) Anthony...
Thanks, appreciate it and glad you liked it! The first game I played on the system was also Magician Lord in a 4 slot cabinet, and not too far away, in NY. I was super impressed by the screenshots in EGM for a while before actually getting to try it myself. Despite its flaws, it's probably still my favorite game on the system. I'm still bummed it never got that sequel it was supposed to.
You made a good point in bringing up the fact that the Neo Geo had a far smaller library of games for the lifespan of their consoles when compared with systems like SNES and Genesis. However, I would counter that point by arguing that although they did have far less games to choose from, their greater lifespan (14 years?) is in fact a testament to the quality of their games. Although you may disagree, I don't think the Neo Geo would have had the longevity it did were it not for the high quality of their games and the impassioned following their games have (even to this day seen with release of Garou City of the Wolves trailer) demonstrates that. I get that you're not a big fan of fighting games (sure they're not for everyone) but it can't be said that SNK didn't revolutionize the genre in so many ways. Not to mention all the great games of other genres (which you did mention in the video was over 50% of their library). I think when you compare the overall quality of the games released on the Neo Geo to the SNES and Genesis or even the TurboGrafix 16 we find that the Neo Geo has a higher percentage of games that aged well and are still worth playing today, despite its much smaller library. And this is coming from someone who had both SNES and Genesis but never a Neo Geo back in the 90s. In conclusion, I would say ultimately SNK was going for quality over quantity, and to that end I think they were successful.
I don't think the long life-span can necessarily be equated with the quality of the games. I'm not knocking the games, there are plenty of pretty good ones, I just don't think those two things are related. It's more that SNK created a platform that was powerful enough when it debuted to create profitable games in popular genres for a long time. A system with an even longer lifespan is technically the Sega Master System, you can hear about that in my 11 facts video for that system from a while back :) Here it is: th-cam.com/video/Xb_EZnOtwAo/w-d-xo.html
never did own the system so my only exposure was the random arcade appearances! loved stuff like metal slug 2, aero fighters 2, samsho 2, and fatal fury special. I knew there were a lot of fighters on the system, but being only a third of the library was quite surprising! thankful for the arcade archives releases, I can't imagine what the other MVS/AES versions are even going for these days, if metal slug is any indication!
Yeah, I knew the percentage of fighters would be lower than most people thought, but I thought it would have been a smidge higher myself. Check out pricecharting.com if you want to be shocked about game prices!
The all star chipset of the neo geo is never mentioned, dig this! "GPU chipset:[46] SNK LSPC2-A2 (line sprite generator & VRAM interface) @ 24 MHz[45] SNK PRO-B0 (palette arbiter)[47] SNK PRO-A0, NEO-B1, NEO-GRC"
You're welcome Inglebard. Thank you for the reply back and glad that Magician Lord was also your first game you played on the Neo-Geo. I see you uploaded a Samurai Shodown comparison video. I'll be glad to share that on the Neo-Geo thread as well if you wish me to bro. Anthony..
One claim to fame I have is that I purchased and owned a NeoGeo AES kit complete in box, during the 1990's. It was a $150 used item in '97, but still. Came with Magician Lord, no way to realistically get new games for it, wish I had kept it for the GOTF SamSho2.
I bought a US AES for £100 with 4 games about 10 years ago and it just sat in a cupboard. Ended up selling it a couple of years back and then went heavy into MVS. Should have kept it, it had a really low serial num and i didn't really know what I had at the time.
Some of my favorite games from the Neo Geo got ported to other systems but lacked the OG fidelity which really made them feel like authentic arcade games. To this day I would still like to own an AES or MVS cabinet, but settled for the mini arcade console (ie. emulator) because of the huge cost savings.
Also due to something in it's architecture/vdp the Neo Geo couldn't display a single polygon. Strange but apparently true especially when you consider that the Megadrive and even the Snes have a few polygon games.
Yes, programmers have stated that you couldn't draw directly to the system's framebuffer, essentially making real time polygon rendering impossible. Honestly, performance probably wouldn't have been great even if the system supported that, you really would have needed a coprocessor to handle some of the heavy lifting, which would have added significantly to the cost back then.
The Neo Geo AES could scale sprites, feature full rotation, and all manner of sprite manipulation. You can see these effects happen on some of the consoles earliest games. For example the baseball in Baseball Stars 1+2 feature scaling as does The Super Spy/Crossed Swords. How did it achieve these effects without specialized hardware? Development teams used software solutions to produce these kinds of effects. The two biggest consoles to utilize these effects was the Sega Genesis and Neo Geo AES. Examples of full sprite scaling can be seen on a Neo Geo in Baseball Stars 1+2 (baseball), The Super Spy, and Crossed Swords just to name a few. On the Genesis all one has to do is check out Red Zone and be totally amazed by what you see, it's nuts. Addendum- As poor as it is Riding Hero does feature scaling. Had SNK waited a couple of years before attempting to tackle Super Scalers on the AES they may have been successf at it. Developers needed to get to know the hardware first before jumping in like that with both feet first. If the Sega Genesis can pull off Panorama Cotton just think what really could be pulled off on a much more powerful console.
Of the things you mentioned, in the hardware itself, it could only scale sprites down. This video was about what the hardware had built-in. It's not my opinion, it's a technical fact of the hardware itself. Lots of games for lots of systems employed alternate solutions for scaling and rotation, most often just using animation frames for sprites at different sizes and angles. It can look good when done well, but never as good as contemporary hardware with the capabilities built-in.
@@InglebardGaming Yes, I know what the Neo Geo could do. They were in the same boat as the Genesis with much, much more powerful hardware. They utilized that extra headroom to run software scaling on their games (just like Sega did). Had they not done this, their games would be quite a bit different today.
Technically the last NeoGeo MVS/AES game was Samurai Spirits V perfect but the game was only included in the Samurai Showdown collection on the Switch, Xbox one, PS4. But was originally ment to be a neo geo release. Also there was 3 versions of the neo geo cd . Not 2.
Megadrive and SNES games were also measured in megabits. Strider that was 8 megabit cartridge was actually 1024 Kbytes or 1 Megabyte. Bits were used probably for marketing and yes, those leaps in space between arcade and home ports were real. Final Fight cps1 was 32 megabits fit into an 8 megabits cartridge for the snes, so a character, a whole level and a lot of detail had to go for it.
Yes, I covered that with examples in that section of the video, I even specifically mentioned Strider on Genesis and showed the box 😁 While it was a big deal for Sega and they eventually put a lot of cart sizes on boxes, SNK really leaned into more and emphasized it on all their boxes right from the start. And I get it, they wanted to differentiate themselves from the other systems on the market. At least that was a better way to do it then trying to claim the system was 24 or 32-bit.
Neo Geo MVS is my favorite of all time. Never had a chance to own my own AES. As I kid I'd skip other cabinets. Loved the video and I respect your take on the fighting games, but KOF and SamSho are my bread and butter. Subscribing now
I still have the front loading CD version, a very nice looking console back in the day I thought. The loading times did break up the action but loved some of the re-arranged sound tracks, especially on Neo Turf Masters. Remember seeing the AES PAL version over in the UK and despising the rabid dog logo over the original Japanese one.
Yes, that front loading version that I temporarily forgot existed, ugh! Some of the newer redbook soundtracks were nice, but there were also definitely cases where the original songs sounded better. Which just goes to prove my own old adage: just because a version of a game had redbook audio doesn't necessarily mean it had better music that a cartridge version!
I didn't learn anything new but I'm 5 carts away from a full MVS set so you could say I'm pretty deep in at this point. Great video though. I totally agree with you on the points of a lot of the games not being AAA but there's just something more esoteric about the NeoGeo that seems to help gloss over that. Think it's cos I was about when the AES was first on the market and always saw it listed at the back of magazines and never saw on in the wild so it was always this system that had so much mystique surrounding it, esp with carts going for £200+.
Interesting point on why they didn’t have more 3rd party games. Capcom, Konami, and Namco had their own R&D divisions and their own games but there were dozens of other developers at the time
This video reminded me of the Neo Geo special on Video Power back in the 90's. Especially the part about the memory cards when I thought to myself why would anybody pay to play a game at the arcades, save your progress, and continue playing the same game at home for free?
I guess the idea would be you'd play the game in the arcade, like it, save your progress, then when you bought the home version you could continue. Almost like how some demos on modern platforms work today, they let you play the first few hours and then transfer your save to the full game when it comes out.
@@InglebardGaming Yeah, perhaps that was the idea, or to save your stage progress on 'beat 'em ups.' It was the way the host from Video Power (I forgot his name. Johnny Power or something.) said it that stuck with me every time I saw the empty memory card slot when I played Neo Geo games on the arcade.
The whole bitness stuff was such great marketing BS in the 90's anyway, like doing the math on the "64-Bit" Jaguar. Or the fact that the Turbografx-16 was an 8-Bit system. Even the Genesis has an 8-Bit CPU next to it's 16-Bit CPU, while the SNES CPU was more like a 16-Bit addition to an 8-Bit CPU. It's really more of a vibe: The TG16 is 16-Bit because the graphics chip makes it look like other 16-Bit systems, and because it's 8-Bit CPU was clocked (comparatively) really high. The Neo Geo looks better than 16-Bit systems so it had to be something better, but not quite as good as CD-based/3D-enabled 32-Bit systems.
Recall not buying the NeoGeo at the time due to price of console and cost of games around $200 and up but mostly because I honestly felt my Genesis & Super Nintendo had so many more AAA games from more genres that were close to, just as good and in some cases better than what were available on the AES. Again, my opinion back in the early 90’s. Sure, I may have been trying to justify not buying the AES but when I did buy what I felt was superior to my “16 bit” consoles it was the 3DO which cost more than the AES with exception of game costs
I think THE SUPER SPY demonstates how well the NEO GEO could scale sprites. I would have liked to have seen an experienced driving game developer from Megadrive or Amiga give the NEO GEO a go, very different architecture but I think more could have been done than that bike game.
The Neo Geo was literally the arcade at home and I always thought it wasn’t 24 bit, just 16 bit like the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo. It’s my dream to own a Neo Geo AES, if I win the lottery 😂😂😂
Owning an AES is the easy part. You can find some reasonably priced units.. It's the games that will break the bank. 😆 Anything that isn't a first generation fighting game is going to put a dent in your wallet.
I will always see the Neo-Geo as an unobtainable system that I can look but not touch, that only the super rich kids will ever get to have. I guess I could buy one but it will always be stuck in my head that way :P (It became less desirable after SNK clearly became a fighting-game only company post SF2.)
It's one of those systems where the potential was incredible, but went sadly untapped, especially in the home market. Still, it was a big success in the arcades, it was amazing how long it hung around.
The Motorola 680x0 processor family was 16-bit external, 32-bit internal... which is why the Atari ST series of personal computers was named the ST... for Sixteen Thirty-two. Now having said that, most other systems that used the 68000 only claimed to be 16-bit... so SNK would be a bit weird there especially using "24-bit". The Atari Jaguar claimed to be a 64-bit system and it also has a 68000 CPU... in addition to several custom designed CPUs that were 64-bit... but the whole system was not 64-bit... but there were parts of it that were. Some people think Atari was stretching it but others, including me, don't.
I talk about this in some other videos. Still, in the end the external 16-bit bus on the chip is the main reason why it's considered 16-bit instead of 24 or 32. Reading 32-bit data on the 68000 took two cycles because of the 16-bit bus. This didn't change until the 68020 was released, the first fully 32-bit CPU in motorola's 68k line.
Why do you write “series” ? Motorola started with a 16 bit bus, but the ISA was meant to be future proof. So later is was 32 bit. 386DX would load 8088 instructions in 32bit chunks. Intel had a patent for this and licensed it to AMD under the pressure of IBM. Now I wonder if Motorola also licensed it? What number is it? So the Jaguar indeed has a 64 bit memory data bus. So you would guess that sound samples would be read in those chunks and then split inside Jerry. You would have thought that texture is read in chunks and split inside Tom. Same for code. But despite high sampling rate and horizontal resolution, Atari focused on down scaling and pulling individual 16 bit values from memory… why ? Or writing 16 bit values ( Jaguar can do 3do like quads, but suuuper slow ).
Ah, oh, my brain was a bit behind So you write CPU "family". There already is the problem. And later STs were 32 bit, weren't they, just like the Amigas. Or did Atari rename ST to Falcon? And is it really a family or just a series of ever better CPUs? Yeah there was the 68008 and later the CMOS versions. But we don't speak about those @@lsdowdle
I love obscure hardware from my childhood. Nowadays the hardware venue has become somewhat homogeneous, for instance consoles are using pc components, and their programming is the same for pc and xbox... Also we have a ton of retro handheld machines for emulators and nearly all of them are Android.
Yeah, I definitely miss the uniqueness that each system used to have. Every time a new system came out it used to feel like a real event and that something was changing permanently in the gaming landscape. I still like playing stuff on my PS5 and Switch, but yeah, PS5s and Xboxes are really just PCs internally and the Switch is pretty much just Android hardware not running Android.
Hey Inglebard... the 1983 Nintendo FamiCom IS essentially an arcade hardware PCB customized for home consumer use but with interchangeable ROM Cartridges... and the Nintendo PlayChoice 10 preceded the idea that SNK later expanded upon. The reason most American gamers tend to NOT see things that way is because they disregard the Japanese perspective... Before the Nintendo FamiCom launched in Japan there just was nothing as powerful released for the mass production of home use... and that is mass production and balanced lower price of the time so even when the NES finally launched in North America in 1985 (note originally they were going to launch in 1984, one whole year earlier but most American Retail reps had developed an "anti-videogame system or anti-console mentality and somehow most believed that micro-computers were more credible for videogames which ignores the fact that a videogame system is really a customized gaming computer that if properly programmed software was made, could handle stuff like office software of the time, a keyboard and mouse, etc but it is just that the shell design was tougher than the average computer of the time to survive the use of the entire family, including younger kids before the U.S. media painted the picture of Nintendo NES toddlers being babysat by the NES and Super Mario later in the 80s) The FamiCom was very powerful hardware in 1983, especially when it out performed the Sega SG-1000 hands down launched the same day and year. Likewise Sega managed to claim hardware supremacy in 1985 with the Sega Mark III aka later to be known as Sega Master System... reguardless of special HIGHER end posh hardware NOT meant for mass production or cost limitations that arcade game makers in Japan used. Because often that arcade hardware could get heavily revised and upgraded and changed and modified and replaced from one year to another because the arcade hardware was a battlefield of extreme competition with technology to do things that just could not be feasibly or even sustainably possible at "home" by say Taito using three monitors and an extravagant aspect ratio in many of their games, by Sega using a ride on seat that resembles a motorcycle and later a bucket seat or racing seat with a steering wheel and shifter, etc. Most of the amazing arcade hardware of the 1980s was not really designed to be "affordable" at all... even if Sega were to have tried to attempt it, it would have been impossible because of the variants that the Sega System 16 had and how quickly the hardware changed year to year... so while there is this idea to dismiss the consoles as childrens toys... that is not really true because for the year they launched they were still the most powerful hardware that was mass produced... that means if Sega's Outrun hardware was mass produced in the same way a Nintendo FamiCom was, it would then be expected to match sales figures reaching past five million which is just not possible... even two million and one million is a stretch because that hardware was only able to run one game. Also despite your American only mentality, you used the Japanese SNK NeoGeo launch date but then the American Sega and Super Nintendo launch dates.. imagine if you lived in the U.K. and decided to believe that hardware only existed when it officially launched in your area. Sega MegaDrive launched in 1988, it was cutting edge hardware that year and coming from an arcade game maker and hardware maker the Sega MegaDrive was indeed designed for lower cost and higher volume of mass production... but so was the NEC PC-Engine in 1987 Japan and yes so was the Super FamiCom in 1990 Japan despite the CPU clock speed having the appearance of being slower than the competition even though it was a different CPU architecture and Nintendo's original plans for the Super FamiCom had to be changed... like how they initially were trying to maintain backward compatibility. The SNK NeoGeo AES and even MVS are indeed still exotic looking by design and they ignored any of the comtemporary ROM size limitations which should be first discussed in terms of Megabits, not "Megabytes" as the latter is only for comparison to much later rom space taken up by CD-ROM media and later media. Meanwhile the idea that the Super FamiCom with it's slow looking CPU was able to handle an extremely close home version of Capcom's Street Fighter II TWW in the year 1992 and then sell 3.5 million ROM Cartridges in Japan alone and over 6 million ROM Cartridges in in North America (Canada, U.S.A. and Mexico which all had fully represented official Nintendo distribution channels unlike how Sega of America acted like a headless chicken) and on top of that that they used the largest ROM size that was considered affordable for 1992 in 16 Megabits and the fact that the majority of buyers were late teens and twenty plus year olds who actually went to compete at arcades even though they later got ignored/snubbed and the public was gaslit into believing that parents purchased SFII and not the left over stock after the hype was on fire is another major issue because a 46 Megabit ROM Cartridge for Sega MegaDrive or Super Nintendo or even NEC PC-Engine was just impossible in 1992 or you're looking at a game that would have to cost almost roughly four times the retail price of SNES SFII that same year. So even though the Sega MegaDrive hardware seems slower and weaker than the Sega System 16 and it's variants, it does not stop it from being true arcade hardware... just that unfortunately Sega did not prioritize leading the games on the arcade version, then distributing into arcade centers to be purchased by arcade operators where those games might have had a different image and the con-artists at Sega of America would never have been able to change the name of Bare Knuckle series. Finally the SNK NeoGeo was very profitable to SNK in the form of the MVS... that said, they did attempt to make NEW hardware which failed miserably due to the cost and not making the arcade sales with the Hyper NeoGeo 64 because 3d hardware also evolving and was even more expensive to develop initially yet both the Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 fully surpassed the SNK NeoGeo MVS/AES (and it's possible that the N64 could have humbled the Hyper NeoGeo 64 if ports of the 3d games would have been made on the large 512 Megabit aka 64 Megabyte N64 ROM Cartridge size reached around late 1998 or 1999) hardware capabilities and speed as long as the Sega Saturn would require the 1MB Ram Cartridge but more so if it had required the 4MB RAM Cartridge more commonly if Dreamcast had not been made and the N64 could handle all those NeoGeo AES games if more ports had been made which means if N64 sales had spiked more in Japan which was happening due to Pocket Monsters IP in late 90s but again if only Dreamcast had not been made because that console only triggered a next gen hardware production war. Also in a technical way the Sony PlayStation 1 surpassed the SNK NeoGeo in terms of having near 1:1 arcade to home conversions with the obvious fact that the Sony/Namco System 11 was a PlayStation PCB with ROM chip storage, just not interchangeable as cartridges... but Sony PS1/System 11 basically increased the number of arcade games produced in the late 1990s on a mass production and low cost hardware which means that Tekken arcade cabinet could retail for probably less than $2,000 or maybe $3,000 because remember that cabinet is affordable but its also a potentially big money maker like the stories of people who bought the SFII cabinets were later able to buy $50,000 dollar cars and boats in the early 90s
@@InglebardGamingMostly the fighting games that had missing animations. Art of Fighting 3 really took a hit with the CD version because of the lack of memory.
The reason SNK didn't get more developers on board with the system was because to each of them there was no real money to be made while dealing with a console that went for a jacked up price and game carts that also went for jacked up prices. They especially weren't going to get companies like Capcom or Konami on board with them since they already made their own arcade boards and were both porting games to nes, snes and genesis where the real money was and games could actually be affordable. The idea behind the Neogeo home system was a good idea but sadly it was doomed to fail from everything for it simply being too expensive for everyone to get which is why the 8 to 32-bit systems were the best options.
I understand why they didn't do AES carts. But why not use the arcade MVS hardware instead of developing new boards all the time? Seems that companies like Capcom, Taito and Konami (among others) could have saved a lot of r&d money if they made their arcade titles for the platform and then still ported them to Genesis and SNES afterwards.
@@InglebardGaming No, that actually would have hurt them if they did focus on the MVS system because of the cost to make the games and because the system simply lacked the hardware to do what was needed for what each wanted to do. while the Neogeo was fine at what it did, the system was still a bottleneck and those games we saw Capcom and others make as the years went on honestly would have looked and in some cases played terribly if they had tried to make them for the MVS. Games like Konami's TMNT, Simpsons, X-Men and Capcom's Street Fighter/Darkstalkers/Marvel series and their own brawlers and some shooters just would have been terrible on Neogeo because of the hardware limits and the cost it would have taken to make chips to add in the carts to even try to get close to what we saw as the years went on. Also, Data East tried to do what you said but look at where they ended up because of doing that. :(
@HellTantrumbull The vast majority of Capcom's CPS1 and 2 games would have ran fine on the system, just at a lower resolution. We're talking about a lot of games that had relatively close conversions on much weaker hardware than the Neo Geo. What CPS 1 and 2 games do you think it couldn't handle? They'd just involve resolution drops but would gain a few other perks. CPS3 would be tougher, but when you look at the animation in some later fighters on the system, they aren't far off. Attraction games that needed 4-6 player cabinets wouldn't have been feasible without expensive cabinet and hardware adjustments, so I get why Konami didn't use it for those games. Still, it just seems unless it was outrageously overpriced on SNK's side, that it would have been a benefit for a lot of companies. And I'm not a wacky Neo Geo evangelist. I just thought its library was ok. But it WAS more powerful than the boards a lot of early 90s companies used in the arcade. Once games primarily shifted to polygons though, that would have been a different story. Ate any devs from the era reading this that can tell us what fees would have been like? Oh, and Data East, they were already in decline at that point. You can't blame NG development for that one. They were swallowed up by changing market conditions they didn't adjust to.
@@InglebardGaming You actually said it yourself why the games wouldn't work out good on the Neogeo in the video and that was the sprites acting as backgrounds. the MVS really needed to have proper background support but that just wasn't there for whatever reason when the system was being designed. that's also why a number of games for the system suffer from slowdown and SNK's own games were no exception while their ports actually ran better on other consoles. Final Fight not going to be perfect on the system because the MVS actually does have problems with brawlers and trying to handle a lot of large objects. I remember someone in another video talking about why there were so few brawlers on the system and it did have to do with the limits of the hardware. Any of Capcom's fighters would have been a step back in appearance, sound and performance on the MVS along with being only a 4 button fighter and people weren't going to accept that from any Capcom fighting game since for whatever reason MVS games were always 4 buttons. Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam the same way with both being made on much better hardware. I agree the MVS was a powerful system but only for a really short time since Sega, Capcom Konami and a few others were making killer hardware around that same time that could do and handle a lot more than what MVS could do and handle. I'm sure some more technical people that might come along eventually and read this could give you much better insight than me, but something I already know ahead of time is a lot of them will tell you the MVS would struggle trying to run more advanced games made on other arcade systems around that time frame and just wouldn't be able to pull some features used because of the hardware limits. 👍
@@HellTantrumbull Can you name one Neo Geo port released during the entire 1990's, that was better than the original? Slow-down was common back then. None of the old tech, be it consoles or arcades, ran completely smooth. That's one of the reasons emulating them usually feels different, even introducing lag to the controls sometimes. The Neo Geo's GPU works only with sprites, which besides the downsides you mentioned, has the benefits of less repeating patterns throughout levels and making a certain scenes look more lively with more ease. Comparing it to arcade boards that were designed for one specific or a just a few games, is like comparing all those different boards in the first place. Indeed, it cannot run a port of every arcade game from it's era, just like most of the other arcade boards at the time.
The 32X and Jaguar are really part of the same generation as the Saturn and PS1. The FM Towns had decent capabilities, but is behind all of those things, IMO. I'd say really only straight up polygonal games were more impressive on the 32x or Jag since the 3DO didn't really have any as they couldn't really be done because of hardware idiosyncrasies.
@@Fularu Not correct - the various system cards (standard, super, and arcade) didn't contain any writable areas on the card, CD based game saves were made to writable memory included on the CD Rom unit itself. Some PCE Hucards / Turbochips included a save option that actually only worked if you had the CD Rom unit attached (without the system card inserted), like Dragon's Curse, the port of Monster World 2/ Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap. Several games had this capability. Again, you literally couldn't have the system card inserted while you had a HuCard / Turbochip game inserted since the system only had one card slot. These games accessed the 2kb or so of save memory built into the CD-Rom unit. The system cards were ROM cards that essentially contained the BIOS along with extra RAM - the amount of which varies depending on the system card version (standard, super or arcade card). Some accessories like the Turbo Booster Plus included the save memory the CD-Rom add-on so you could save in standard HuCards and Tuebochip games that supported the CD-Rom's save functionality without needing the CD-Rom or its system cards. For confirmation, see the "saving" part of this article: necretro.org/CD-ROM%C2%B2_systems
@@InglebardGaming The saving mechanism was in the interface unit itself and the system card allowed its management. Again, it was basically the introduction of memory cards through the interface port on the back of the PC Engine. Furthermore, shortly after the release of the IFU NEC released the Ten no Koe2 which was a... memory card that allowed you to save your hucard games data in november 1989. Once the Duo (and its R/RX variants) got released, the external Ten No Koe 2 was released as a hucard as the Ten no Koe bank. (in 1991)
@@Fularu That's still stretching the definition of a memory card. The Ten no Koe cards are more akin to the backup cartridge for the Sega /Mega CD. They were also far from standard for the system. The original Ten no Koe plugged into the back of the PCE not the card slot. The Ten no Koe bank that plugged into the card slot was released in 1991 (after the Neo Geo) and still wouldn't be considered a memory card in the same way we used the term for the Neo Geo, PlayStation and other systems.
I still have mine that I bought used in the 90's. I should've invested in more games back then. Now I have to take out a mortgage loan to buy some of these games smh 😥😥
There were 'three' NEO•CD consoles, not two. The front loader was also Japan only and was only 1,000 made. The 24 bit and 32 bit marketing was limited to USA, it never occurred outside of there that i ever saw. Certainly never was a thing here.
Yes, you are of course correct. I added a note already to the video description about the front loader which I knew about but totally forgot about when putting this together. When I'm at home later I'll add a card during that section of that video to point out the oversight. The whole 24/32-bit thing was just, ugh. I remember being mad at the time even though I was just a teenager 😁
The Jag's graphics accelerators (the Blitter and Object processors) are indeed 64-bit, as was the memory bus. So sure, Tom & Jerry were both 32-bits, but at least they didn't outright lie. Regardless, we all now know that bits never determined the power of a console/arcade, but many of us didn't know better back then.
@@MoonScythe1but in fact the 64 bit are missing in too many places. For example JRISC runs at twice the clock as RAM. So you would expect load and store of register pairs ( or even more to utilize fast page mode ). On both Tom and Jerry, DSP and GPU. JRISC did have a multi reg-mem instruction: Multiply and Accumulate. JRISC could not even MUL 32x32=> 32:32 multiply.
Man...where were you in 1989? You know, it's funny though. I always said that if the SuperGrafx was machine the west got instead (albeit, at a much more competitive price point, and actually software support) Sega would have had a hell of a time cornering the market in North America. On the balance though, TurboGrafx 16/PC Engine really had some ports that I thought were better, or at least held there own against a more powerful Genesis.
In 1989 I was most likely sitting in front of a monitor at home playing Genesis, TurboGrafx -16, NES or SMS 😁 Edit: whoops, hit send by accident instead of enter. I'd even still be messing with the C64 at that point, the atari 7800 and Amiga. I don't dislike the Turbo/PCE, I have a lot of positive coverage on the channel, but I'm always going to be honest with my opinions on it. The SuperGrafx was a giant wasted opportunity. NEC should have made it a CD only system considering the popularity of the CD add on for PCE in Japan. But there's a LOT they should have done differently with that system. It had potential, but it added features the PCE should have really had from the start.
@@InglebardGaming whoa, this message wound up on the wrong channel! I completely agree with your assessment, but this message was actually supposed to posted on Sega Lord X's video about saving the TurboGrafx 16. Your video was qued up next on my feed, but TH-cam must have glitched 'cause I started typing it on the video before. Sorry if that was confusing, dude.
Well, not for the average gamer back then. If you were rich, there were decent enough games for it. But for the most part the cost of the games just made it inaccessible to most people.
@@InglebardGaming back then for sure because most of us were kids. But today I'm nearly 40 and it has become affordable. That to me makes it special now
@@marcellachine5718 they are 32 bits internally, they may have bigger bus or many 32 bit pipelines. They are now 64 bit, but no games use that. When you look for the TFLOPS, they are given for 16, 32 and 64 bits. But videogames use only 16 and 32.
I’m not sure why you consider a 24-bit wide graphics bus to be a lie. By that rationale, the PCE/ TG16 would be an 8-bit system because it’s 16-bit graphics bus “was a lie”. Although maybe a bit “dirty” in it’s approach to claim 24-bit, I would say it was roughly fair. NEO GEO was doing graphics and sound about 50% better (very roughly) than SNES and Genesis. So 50% better than 16-bit is 24-bit. Sega Saturn was marketed in Japan as 64-bit using a similar “dirty” technique. Also fair to mention the 24-bit wide bus also ran at 24 MHz… compare that speed to the SNES… way faster and wider.
You were on the right track at the beginning, the PCE/Turbo IS an 8-bit system, like the Neo Geo is a 16-bit system. It's not an insult, but the when the main CPU that manages everything on simple systems like these, that's really how you have to measure it, IMO. The whole 'bitness' thing really only starts to get truly murky beyond the 32-bit era. Even with the 68000, it can process 32-bit instructions, but the 16-bit external bus means it has to do them in two cycles, so it was still considered a 16-bit chip and companies that used it labelled it as such. So in the end, you can't really make a fair argument that a 24-bit graphics bus makes the whole system 24-bit. We don't call modern PCs with 4090s 384-bit bit systems because that GPU has a 384-bit graphics bus, they're 64-bit because that's what the CPU driving everything handles.
@@InglebardGamingmost retro gamers would easily categorize the TG16 as a 16-bit console. It’s CPU, although 8-bit, was clocked pretty fast and could keep up with the 68000 in the Genesis on most gaming tasks. I’ve even seen benchmarks on TH-cam where the TG16 actually beats the SNES and Genesis in CPU tasks in some areas. So categorizing it as 8-bit system really isn’t fair, even though it technically has a 8-bit CPU. you’re right that bit-ness is basically the Teraflops of the day and not a good technical measure of hardware power. My main point was that the 24-bit claim WAS NOT A LIE, as you put it in your video. It’s NOT baseless to say that. Some aspects were 24-bit… and the actual preceived graphics and sound to the ordinary gamer was not entirely out of line with that claim of power. You were getting MUCH more power than the other consoles, and SNK wanted to represent that to ordinary gamers in a marketing term. I don’t think the claim was as disingenuous as say the Atari Jaguar’s 64-bit claim, when most of its games looked and played like 16-bit games. I wouldn’t have framed the whole issue as a “lie”… the consumer was getting hardware roughly on that level of “bit-ness”. BTW, the 68000 has 32-bit wide registers internally, so it’s considered both 16-bit AND 32-bit as a CPU. Like you said, it takes 2 clocks to process 32-bit instructions, but the NEO GEO was clocked nearly twice as fast as the Genesis, so it could do 32 bit close to the speed at which Genesis could do 16 bit processing. Along with the massively powerful GPU chips, I feel the 24-bit moniker was generally earned… maybe even slightly understated.
It's not a "most retrogamers" agree thing, there's zero evidence of that. To this day there is still debate with people arguing how it should be classified. What I'd say most retrogamers agree on, based on articles, videos on the subject, forum posts and more is that it should be classified as a console of the 16-bit era, which I can get behind. It's not a matter of fair or not fair, the 6502 variant inside the PCE/Trubo is 8-bit. I've seen the benchmarks you're talking about on TH-cam and the logic behind them is very flawed, the ASM code wasn't written in the optimal way for each chip. Even a bog standard 6502 can run *some* code faster than a 68000 because of the way the architecture of each chip works. What I stated in the last reply is accurate, it is not normal practice to measure a system's "bit-ness" by anything other than the central processing unit that has to drive the entire thing, especially up through the 32-bit era before things get less cut and dry. It's not derogatory to the system to refer to it accurately. If anything making up things up to try and classify them as different than they are is the problem. Calling the PCE 16-bit is a disservice in my opinion - as an 8-bit system it's the most powerful one out there and impressive. As a 16-bit system it would be near the bottom of the pack since it's missing lots of common 16-bit system features. Sure the Neo Geo was massively more powerful than a Genesis or SNES, there's no argument there. But so is Capcom's 16-bit CPS1 and 2 systems. Are those 24-bit now just because they're more powerful? Even though they are also driven by 16-bit 68000s that run at either 10 or 12mhz? Is the X68000 anything other than 16-bit? Again, the Neo Geo is a very powerful 16-bit system, it's not an insult to call it what it is, the most powerful 16-bit game console that was ever made. It doesn't matter if it was clocked at ten times the speed of the Genesis, it's still got a 16-bit processor driving the whole system. Is the SNES suddenly 8-bit because its max cpu speed is 3.58 mhz? No? Then the NG isn't 24-bit because it runs at 12mhz, either. And modern versions of the 6502, btw, run at up to 20mhz. Or nearly twice the 12 mhz of the Neo Geo. That doesn't make the 6502 any less 8-bit.
Street Fighter II literally saved arcades in the early 90s. They were in steep decline until it came along and then suddenly after over a decade people were forming long lines to play just that game. Then Mortal Kombat and its sequels kept thr flame roaring for a few years. I do agree there were too many fighting games that tried to piggyback off that success, but once the polygon era came roaring in, especially the model 2 games, we had way more genres thriving again for a while until home systems got so powerful from the DC and beyond that you didn't really see games more powerful than home systems anymore and they became kinda pointless.
@@InglebardGaming What really killed the arcade and this is from an insider perspective (working at an arcade distributer in Montreal): -Arcade cabinet became bigger and bigger costing more and eating more floor space. -Arcade became less powerfull than home version. -Too many buttons Back in the days the Arcade had custom hardware with 20x the memory and 20x the power of the home computers and home consoles. They also stop producing a diversity of games, only racing sims, fighting and casual shit for the NPCs. Arcade was the peek of gaming and technology, the day they put cheap PC in the arcades is the day they died. The quality of the arcade games went from amazing (and we still play these games today) to web/flash quality.
It's disappointing to hear the _FAMILY COMPUTER_ being downplayed and somewhat being kept mispronounced as the sharp's twin famicom. While the rest of the japanese consoles are accurately being pronounced such as megadrive and pc engine. In asia, it's always known and famous as its accurate branding : _FAMILY COMPUTER_
Saw comment on another channel regarding this console, and he pointed out, from experience, that a lot of the facts quoted in videos like this are actually incorrect, cos the creator simply used Wikipedia - and it's FULL of errors - like the 650 dollar pride, game prices and a few others. Your description of scaling on neo geo is not entirely accurate either. Ahhh, TH-cam, the capital of wrong information/misinformation and disinformation...
Well, let me point from experience, the person you listened to is wrong. I personally saw the Neo Geo in stores for $650 for the gold version when it launched, they had it in Child World on Long Island, NY for that price from the launch day forward until they went out of business a few years later. When Child World was going out of business, they eventually had everything on clearance, including the Neo Geo for 70% off and were selling it for just under $200. Other local stores, the very few that carried it, and mail order outfits had the "Gold" version for $650, too, that was the MSRP. The silver version sold for $399.99, which I also mentioned in the video. Guess you missed that part. And game prices wrong? I literally showed ads from gaming magazines of the era, so no, game prices weren't wrong. I showed three ads from magazines from 1991 and 1992 in the video. I could have showed about 20 ads from that time frame they're easy to find. Guess you didn't want to put forth any effort on your own before saying something uninformed. If you need some help, check out archive.org and search for egm, you'll find all the old magazines with their original ads intact. Or your magazine of choice if you want to see a different one. The description of scaling? Tell me what's wrong with it. Why not check out this article on scaling from neogeodev.org and then explain to me how I'm wrong. wiki.neogeodev.org/index.php?title=Sprite_shrinking#:~:text=Shrinking%20(also%20known%20as%20scaling,of%20pixel%20lines%20or%20columns. I don't mind being corrected, I happily accepted the correction that I forgot to mention the front loading Neo Geo CD. However, literally everything you've said in your comment is just plain wrong. Ironic you complain about misinformation on TH-cam but base all your opinions on a comment in another video. Also, not a single piece of information from this video was sourced from Wikipedia.
@InglebardGaming wow! That's some comeback!! The other guy's comment was also quite long. And I'll stand corrected on the 'ironic' bit at the end - fair comment mate. That actually made me laugh. Aw man, I can't believe i was actually about to get into a debate/argument about a 30odd year old console. Though I will say it would appear that someone's experience regarding prices depended on their location in the country. However, I just learned a valuable lesson from you mate. Sir, I doff my cap to you. No hard feelings mate, sincerely.
Ha, no problem. I admit I was annoyed, but just like I'll admit when I get something wrong, I appreciate when anyone does the same instead of digging in. No hard feelings here, either.
Video was going good until you started blabbering about how the system lacks variety and how you aren't that big of a fan on much of the games. What a let down. Not subscribing.
Hey everyone, just pointing out real quick in case anyone missed it in the description or doesn't see the card, yes, there ARE three versions of the Neo Geo CD, I forgot to mention the very limited production run of the front loading model in Japan. There were about 25,000 of those manufactured. So yup, three versions. Sorry, I'll find a fitting punishment for myself... maybe doing one of these on the Jaguar 😬
Took my "like" back as I love the Jaguar xD
@joaquin6726 ha, it's not about the quality, it's about the controversy!
Fantastic video! What I wonder, how did it move so many frames of animation per sprite AND so many sprites? It wasn't just a 12 mhz processor, what was rhe sprite processor? Even friggin dream cast didn't have all frames of animation thst the neo did! Look into that one if you wanna get mindblown. Think it was one of the street fighter games. Anyway, it had some crazy chips thst no one mentions.
What an outstanding video! Love the nostalgia. Honestly, as impressive as it was, I think it was the games that really let it down: Neo Geo was an arcade in your home, but most arcade games were designed to munch your quarters, and not around groundbreaking or particularly deep gameplay (with some exceptions like fighting games). That’s where the NES and SNES (and to a lesser extent, the Genesis) stole the game from SNK. Nintendo understood the difference between playing a game at home and playing it in the arcades, and designed games with that philosophy. That’s why you had the Marios, the Final Fantasies and the Metroids. The Neo had nothing along those lines. It was flash and eye meltingly fast for sure, but it was those deep and ‘intimate’ Nintendo worlds that kept people coming back. And both the Genesis and SNES had kick ass run n gun games like Mega/Super Turrican and the Contras, as well as Mortal Kombat, plus all those shmups. The Neo Geo just didn’t have that depth (even if you don’t factor in the cost). And when the new gen came around, it was all over. Not a point you hear being made all that often, but I think it’s something to think about (and you did well to note it). Still want one though haha!
Sorry for the late reply, great points all around!
I had one! My brother and I split price working at local grocery store. We were kings on the block back in the early 90s.
Ha, I bet! I almost bought one for $200 on clearance once!
Respect
Nice! That was every kid's dream.
But I'm curious, how many games did you afford to buy back in the day? Or did you manage to play Neo Geo games by other means other than buying?
@@31leoceara Just had 2 and then one day a few weeks later my brother decided he wanted to return it and get half of his money back. It was a sad day for me but those few weeks were so so amazing. It was so hard going back to anything else at the time.
I don't want to be 'that guy' but there where actually three models of the Neo Geo CD. The Original was the front loader with A CD tray, the Second was the Top loader and the third was the CDZ.
Don't worry, it's OK, you're right, I realized I missed it after someone reminded me earlier. I updated the description already and will add a card in at that point in the video soon.
I'm one of those people that forgot there are three models for the system. 😅
Oh man, I'd love to be that guy. Right now I'm just this guy.
@@InglebardGaming Thanks man. I enjoyed the Video and I like your Channel. Its just the Gaming Geek in me. I can't help myself!
Metal slug not killer?
I got a bit annoyed at everyone saying that the Neo•Geo was 85% fighting games, so several years ago I separated them by genre. It was very similar to your list,,except that I combined AES/MVS/and NGCD. Here's what I came up with:
NEO-GEO MASTER LIST (157 Games Total) AES/MVS/NGCD
FIGHTERS 50
SPORTS 24
SHOOT 'EM UPS 16
RUN AND GUN 16
PUZZLE 12
ACTION 7
PLATFORM 6
BEAT 'EM UP 5
BOARD GAME 6
RACING 4
QUIZ 4
WRESTLING 3
COMPILATION 3
RPG 1
157 total /MRH _2012
I never knew Neo had an RPG, I looked it up, now I also never knew there was a Neo Geo CD. pretty neat.
It also just got a fan translation into english a few months ago!
Sam show rpg?
@@MagicDonut00 Yes. Full Japanese NGCD name is Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits Bushidō Retsuden
The Neo Geo was an awesome system for it's time. I can still remember seeing them in arcades all over through the first half of the 90s (and less so later on.) There was one guy who I went to school with that had an AES system at home. His family was quite well off and he had ALL the consoles and handhelds back then as well as an Atari ST and an Amiga. He was also the only guy I knew that had a Sega Genesis until sometime after Sonic was released and the Genesis really took off in popularity.
To respond to the question about 3rd party support for the Neo Geo. There wasn't more 3rd party support for the system for a number reasons.
1. The Neo Geo MVS was seen as a direct competitor by the other major Japanese players in the arcade market like Sega, Capcom, Konami and so on as all of them were doing their own in house hardware and software development at the time. The MVS was initially developed & marketed for the arcade market as a lower cost option for arcade owners similar to the Capcom CPS system. Arcade owners wanted a less expensive & easier way to convert a machine from one game to another.
2. Capcom in particular was a fierce competitor to SNK in the late 80s and most of the 90s after Takashi Nishiyama left Capcom to join SNK after he developed Street Fighter. He was instrumental in the development of the Neo Geo MVS so there was no way Capcom would have released games for it early in it's life.
3. Outside of Japan, Nintendo had most major 3rd parties wrapped around their fingers in the home console market up until after the Neo Geo AES had launched in the home market. It wasn't until after Nintendo was sued by the US DOJ that more 3rd parties became able to develop games more freely for non Nintendo home consoles. By then the installed base of NES, Genesis & SNES consoles dwarfed the AES. The high price of the AES and the games also did not help even if those prices were necessary due to component costs.
4. SNK did not have enough money to directly fund additional 3rd party developers that weren't already working with or being funded by Nintendo or Sega. They tended to instead hire individuals or teams into SNK proper like when SNK bought the relatively small Nazca Corporation (Metal Slug) in 1996.
I'm sure there's a ton of additional reasons but those are 4 major ones back then. The Neo Geo was a great arcade system and an awesome home system for it's time but was pretty much always going to be a niche one.
Excellent points made here. Thanks for the informative comment. It's almost ironic how the MVS was seen as a budget option for arcade owners while the AES was the highest premium "option" for the home console market (I put option in quotes for the home console market because for the vast majority of people it wasn't even an option at all).
My brothers and I loved the Neo Geo games, KOF95 was the reason we wanted the system, then my older brother bought a Saturn in 1997 and we had access to all current Capcom and SNK arcade games we wanted to play, among many exclusives and 3D titles we enjoyed on the system.
Since we know more now, it's clear that, while the NEO GEO is indeed powerful as far as sprite and plain 2D games go. There are many things it couldn't do that the Mega Drive and the SNES do, such as 3D games like Formula One (Domark), Virtua Racing or transparencies and other techniques the SNES has that other consoles lacked.
It's quite interesting the effect devs applied on games like Super Sidekicks 3, for instance, but overall, I don't think the console is as dynamic as the other two main 16-bit juggernauts. Let's also consider that both GEN/SNES games would benefit greatly had the ROM sizes been less restrained, specially looking now at what the homebrew community brings on the Mega Drive. Many cutbacks were due to cost reduction for the cartridges, it made these consoles look considerably weaker, when the truth is that they hardly used their full capacity.
We all had a system in the 90's. I don't know a single friend who owned a Neo Geo.
To me the best fighting game on the Neo Geo was Last Blade 2. One of the earlier titles that was a ton of fun was Super Baseball. You didn't have to like baseball at all to appreciate a game with cyborgs and robots and people with jetpacks for fielding and landmines in the out field.
Love the Neo Geo, and loved the episode, subscribed 😅
Thanks and welcome!
As a video game developer, one of my goals is to make an epic RPG with the console, because it was an arcade, normally you would never see such a game.
So the idea is to make games for it, that you would not normally see. A game like Final Fantasy 6 would never be an arcade game, so it would be interesting to see such a game for the system.
Good luck with it! Feel free to let me nkow either here or Twitter/X if you make any significant progress on it.
I remember as a kid in middle school in the early 90s and going to toys r us. They had a big isle dedicated to video games with rows of flip cards that had the front and back cover of the games. Used to spend long time going through and flipping over all the cards, reading about the games. At the end of the isle was a big display with the Neo Geo…always used to look longingly at the sweet machine locked away behind the glass.
I never saw a Neo Geo at my local Toys R Us back then. But, they did have them at Child World before it went out of business. They even had them in stock when they went to 70% closeout pricing! I only ever saw them for sale in person at Child World and some specialty gaming shops in my area back in those days.
Fantastic video...keep up! Oddities like the capcom CPS-changer :P
Thanks, always appreciate your comments! As for CPS-Changer... who knows? Probably not any time soon, but maybe eventually!
Fantastic video as always mate. 👊
I actually had the CD unit for a short while but sold it because the loading times did my head in.
As for games, I really like Samurai Showdown on that system and of course, who doesn’t like Metal Slug? ;)
Anyway thanks again for the great content. I was today years old when I learn that fighting games were only around 40% of its overall library!
Thanks, appreciate it!
I always found it amusing that most games AES or MVS contain all regions and modes enabled by the BIOS..
The only competitor that SNK had in the arcade to home console space was Capcom with their CPS Changer. Though the CPS Changer unit was more a "supergun" since the hardware was all in the "cartridges" (based on the CPS1). The CPS Changer was only officially released in Japan with a similar price point and so was even more commercially limited than the Neo Geo.
Yeah. It's too bad Taito never released their F2 home system. But, it would have also been for a really niche market in the end.
@InglebardGaming Are you talking about the WOWOW, or was there another one? Regardless, this is the first I have heard that Taito thought of entering the home console market. I think I will try to see if I can read more about it. So, thanks for that bit of information.
It's in an issue of EGM from back then. You may just find it on the Internet Archive these days!
Great timing for this video. I just bought an MVS board to play neo geo games on real hardware.
The part that really surprised me was the percentage of fighting games, I really thought that they were at least over 50%😅 Like yes of course there were the most well-known KOF (and all their original "prequels") and Samurai Shodown, but there were at least a dozen other franchises like World Heroes. I know there were some sport games like Super Sidekicks that was really popular games herre in my country, but what was the rest? Shooters and puzzle games? I really don't remember that many of those, and the MVS machines were really common in this part of the world
Yeah, I thought the percentage would be a smidge higher myself, you can check out the wiki with every game for every version of the system to see what genre every game is in.
There are a bunch of platformers, shooters, and puzzle games as probably the next three biggest genres on the system.
I remember the magazines all those years, I used to drool over the Neo-Geo releases, but after SF2 hit the arcades the Neo section started to just be fighting games. It was really disappointing to see at the time, felt like a huge waste of such a badass system.
Being mainly an arcade platform, focus was heavy on what did well in the arcades, with fighting games eventually becoming the main.
These types of games were most common on the system (with some good examples):
Beat 'em Up/Hack 'n Slash -- (Sengoku series, Crossed Swords series, Mutation Nation)
Fighters -- (Fatal Fury series, Samurai Shodown series, King of Fighters series)
Platformers -- (Blue's Journey, Magician Lord, Nightmare in the Dark)
Puzzle -- (Puzzle Bobble series, Neo Bomberman, Puzzled)
Racing -- (Thrash Rally, Neo Drift Out, Over Top)
Sports -- (Baseball Stars series, Windjammers, Street Slam)
Run 'n Gun -- (Metal Slug series, Shock Troopers series, Ninja Commando)
Shmups -- (Pulstar/Blazing Star, Aero Fighters series, Viewpoint)
The Neo•Geo Gold System and Silver Systems were released in the USA on 12.20.1990. I read about SNK releasing it back in April 1990, and started saving up for the system and a few games. The Gold System was $550 (2 sticks, 1 game, either Baseball Stars Professional, or NAM-1975). The Silver System, lien you've said, was $399 (1stick, no game). Most places would throw in a free $30 memory card w/ order. It was pretty amazing to own one. I felt very lucky, as a 17 year old. I had a business with my older brother, doing snow removal, and lawn care, so it didn't take long to save up. (I was also supporting a Genesis, NES, and TG-16 habit).
The games, prior to Summer 1991, were all dynamically priced according to their ROM size. From $120 (League Bowling, Puzzled) to $170 (Nam-1975, Top Players Golf). -Matt
It was definitely 650 at the only place I knew that had it early on (Child World). They had the early games all for $200, too. But, it was pretty common to see varied game prices especially among the mail order places, I showed a few of those contemporary mail order ads in the video with games priced lower in mid 1992. But yeah, especially back then it was common for some stores to have way different pricing for the same gaming stuff than some others. I never bought anything without checking eb, babbages, toys r us, child world, kay bee and the local flea market.
I agree that 3rd party support was a fatal flaw, probably due to the cost of the console itself it seemed pointless, but I don't understand why it happenned on the arcade market also.
Yeah, it would have seemed like a no brainer for other companies to save on hardware development by using an existing system. Who knows, maybe their fees were crazy or something.
There was a period where first generation Neo Geo games cost $318 at Babbages in South Florida, which was insane!
I could simply play most of those Neo Geo games at my local arcades for a single token/quarter and knew that none of them were even worth spending anywhere near that kind of money on. I always felt $150 would've been the sweet spot for Neo Geo games.
Yeah, prices were nuts in NY when I was teen and this stuff was new. I just played the games that I wanted to on MVS units in the arcade, too. Almost bought a Neo Geo on clearance for $200, held off to see if it would get a bigger discount but then it was gone. Oh, well.
Hi Inglebard,
What a fantastic and informative video on the 11 facts on the Neo-Geo. Glad that the Neo-Geo is to your liking. To me, the Neo-Geo is one of my all time favorites in the Arcade and for the home entertainment market. I've been playing Neo-Geo for 34 years. The first time I played on a Neo-Geo was in 1990 off a MVS 4 slot "Bug Red" cabinet at a local Dairy Queen in Paramus, New Jersey. The first game I ever played was Magician Lord, and I been a buff ever since. I wish I could relive that moment again. 8^)
Also bro, I posted your video up on, The Official NEO-GEO thread for others like our members/guest to take notice and to help with additional exposure to your work on the forums at AtariAge. Thank you for sharing this with us Inglebard. Pleased to meet you and looking forward to see more of your content soon bro. 8^)
Anthony...
Thanks, appreciate it and glad you liked it!
The first game I played on the system was also Magician Lord in a 4 slot cabinet, and not too far away, in NY. I was super impressed by the screenshots in EGM for a while before actually getting to try it myself. Despite its flaws, it's probably still my favorite game on the system. I'm still bummed it never got that sequel it was supposed to.
You made a good point in bringing up the fact that the Neo Geo had a far smaller library of games for the lifespan of their consoles when compared with systems like SNES and Genesis. However, I would counter that point by arguing that although they did have far less games to choose from, their greater lifespan (14 years?) is in fact a testament to the quality of their games. Although you may disagree, I don't think the Neo Geo would have had the longevity it did were it not for the high quality of their games and the impassioned following their games have (even to this day seen with release of Garou City of the Wolves trailer) demonstrates that. I get that you're not a big fan of fighting games (sure they're not for everyone) but it can't be said that SNK didn't revolutionize the genre in so many ways. Not to mention all the great games of other genres (which you did mention in the video was over 50% of their library). I think when you compare the overall quality of the games released on the Neo Geo to the SNES and Genesis or even the TurboGrafix 16 we find that the Neo Geo has a higher percentage of games that aged well and are still worth playing today, despite its much smaller library. And this is coming from someone who had both SNES and Genesis but never a Neo Geo back in the 90s. In conclusion, I would say ultimately SNK was going for quality over quantity, and to that end I think they were successful.
I don't think the long life-span can necessarily be equated with the quality of the games. I'm not knocking the games, there are plenty of pretty good ones, I just don't think those two things are related. It's more that SNK created a platform that was powerful enough when it debuted to create profitable games in popular genres for a long time.
A system with an even longer lifespan is technically the Sega Master System, you can hear about that in my 11 facts video for that system from a while back :) Here it is: th-cam.com/video/Xb_EZnOtwAo/w-d-xo.html
never did own the system so my only exposure was the random arcade appearances! loved stuff like metal slug 2, aero fighters 2, samsho 2, and fatal fury special. I knew there were a lot of fighters on the system, but being only a third of the library was quite surprising! thankful for the arcade archives releases, I can't imagine what the other MVS/AES versions are even going for these days, if metal slug is any indication!
Yeah, I knew the percentage of fighters would be lower than most people thought, but I thought it would have been a smidge higher myself.
Check out pricecharting.com if you want to be shocked about game prices!
Love the tech explanations on your videos. Joined!
Thanks and welcome!
The all star chipset of the neo geo is never mentioned, dig this! "GPU chipset:[46]
SNK LSPC2-A2 (line sprite generator & VRAM interface) @ 24 MHz[45]
SNK PRO-B0 (palette arbiter)[47]
SNK PRO-A0, NEO-B1, NEO-GRC"
You're welcome Inglebard. Thank you for the reply back and glad that Magician Lord was also your first game you played on the Neo-Geo. I see you uploaded a Samurai Shodown comparison video. I'll be glad to share that on the Neo-Geo thread as well if you wish me to bro.
Anthony..
One claim to fame I have is that I purchased and owned a NeoGeo AES kit complete in box, during the 1990's. It was a $150 used item in '97, but still. Came with Magician Lord, no way to realistically get new games for it, wish I had kept it for the GOTF SamSho2.
I would have probably bought it for that price with Magician Lord back then. Almost bought a new one for $200 in about 1993.
I bought a US AES for £100 with 4 games about 10 years ago and it just sat in a cupboard. Ended up selling it a couple of years back and then went heavy into MVS. Should have kept it, it had a really low serial num and i didn't really know what I had at the time.
Some of my favorite games from the Neo Geo got ported to other systems but lacked the OG fidelity which really made them feel like authentic arcade games. To this day I would still like to own an AES or MVS cabinet, but settled for the mini arcade console (ie. emulator) because of the huge cost savings.
I always wanted the AES in 90s. Now i am 44 and bought one 🎉sooooooo satisfying🤩😎
Cool, congrats!
Also due to something in it's architecture/vdp the Neo Geo couldn't display a single polygon.
Strange but apparently true especially when you consider that the Megadrive and even the Snes have a few polygon games.
Yes, programmers have stated that you couldn't draw directly to the system's framebuffer, essentially making real time polygon rendering impossible.
Honestly, performance probably wouldn't have been great even if the system supported that, you really would have needed a coprocessor to handle some of the heavy lifting, which would have added significantly to the cost back then.
The Neo Geo AES could scale sprites, feature full rotation, and all manner of sprite manipulation. You can see these effects happen on some of the consoles earliest games. For example the baseball in Baseball Stars 1+2 feature scaling as does The Super Spy/Crossed Swords. How did it achieve these effects without specialized hardware?
Development teams used software solutions to produce these kinds of effects. The two biggest consoles to utilize these effects was the Sega Genesis and Neo Geo AES. Examples of full sprite scaling can be seen on a Neo Geo in Baseball Stars 1+2 (baseball), The Super Spy, and Crossed Swords just to name a few. On the Genesis all one has to do is check out Red Zone and be totally amazed by what you see, it's nuts.
Addendum- As poor as it is Riding Hero does feature scaling. Had SNK waited a couple of years before attempting to tackle Super Scalers on the AES they may have been successf at it. Developers needed to get to know the hardware first before jumping in like that with both feet first. If the Sega Genesis can pull off Panorama Cotton just think what really could be pulled off on a much more powerful console.
Of the things you mentioned, in the hardware itself, it could only scale sprites down. This video was about what the hardware had built-in. It's not my opinion, it's a technical fact of the hardware itself.
Lots of games for lots of systems employed alternate solutions for scaling and rotation, most often just using animation frames for sprites at different sizes and angles. It can look good when done well, but never as good as contemporary hardware with the capabilities built-in.
@@InglebardGaming
Yes, I know what the Neo Geo could do. They were in the same boat as the Genesis with much, much more powerful hardware. They utilized that extra headroom to run software scaling on their games (just like Sega did). Had they not done this, their games would be quite a bit different today.
Technically the last NeoGeo MVS/AES game was Samurai Spirits V perfect but the game was only included in the Samurai Showdown collection on the Switch, Xbox one, PS4. But was originally ment to be a neo geo release. Also there was 3 versions of the neo geo cd . Not 2.
For the CD situation, yes, I put a correction up about that one shortly after the video went live. Appreciate the info, though!
Megadrive and SNES games were also measured in megabits. Strider that was 8 megabit cartridge was actually 1024 Kbytes or 1 Megabyte. Bits were used probably for marketing and yes, those leaps in space between arcade and home ports were real. Final Fight cps1 was 32 megabits fit into an 8 megabits cartridge for the snes, so a character, a whole level and a lot of detail had to go for it.
Yes, I covered that with examples in that section of the video, I even specifically mentioned Strider on Genesis and showed the box 😁
While it was a big deal for Sega and they eventually put a lot of cart sizes on boxes, SNK really leaned into more and emphasized it on all their boxes right from the start. And I get it, they wanted to differentiate themselves from the other systems on the market. At least that was a better way to do it then trying to claim the system was 24 or 32-bit.
Neo Geo MVS is my favorite of all time. Never had a chance to own my own AES. As I kid I'd skip other cabinets. Loved the video and I respect your take on the fighting games, but KOF and SamSho are my bread and butter. Subscribing now
Thanks amd welcome!
I still have the front loading CD version, a very nice looking console back in the day I thought. The loading times did break up the action but loved some of the re-arranged sound tracks, especially on Neo Turf Masters. Remember seeing the AES PAL version over in the UK and despising the rabid dog logo over the original Japanese one.
Yes, that front loading version that I temporarily forgot existed, ugh! Some of the newer redbook soundtracks were nice, but there were also definitely cases where the original songs sounded better. Which just goes to prove my own old adage: just because a version of a game had redbook audio doesn't necessarily mean it had better music that a cartridge version!
Yep, that ol adage rings true, redbook can be a bit hit an miss, PCE CD R-Type being a good example 😅
Capcom CPS changer was the closest thing for home use that tried to do the NEO-GEO strategy. It was more like a super gun though.
I didn't learn anything new but I'm 5 carts away from a full MVS set so you could say I'm pretty deep in at this point. Great video though. I totally agree with you on the points of a lot of the games not being AAA but there's just something more esoteric about the NeoGeo that seems to help gloss over that. Think it's cos I was about when the AES was first on the market and always saw it listed at the back of magazines and never saw on in the wild so it was always this system that had so much mystique surrounding it, esp with carts going for £200+.
It was definitely... let's say an aspirational purchase! I didn't know anyone that wouldn't have LIKED to have one if they could have.
Interesting point on why they didn’t have more 3rd party games. Capcom, Konami, and Namco had their own R&D divisions and their own games but there were dozens of other developers at the time
This video reminded me of the Neo Geo special on Video Power back in the 90's. Especially the part about the memory cards when I thought to myself why would anybody pay to play a game at the arcades, save your progress, and continue playing the same game at home for free?
I guess the idea would be you'd play the game in the arcade, like it, save your progress, then when you bought the home version you could continue. Almost like how some demos on modern platforms work today, they let you play the first few hours and then transfer your save to the full game when it comes out.
@@InglebardGaming Yeah, perhaps that was the idea, or to save your stage progress on 'beat 'em ups.' It was the way the host from Video Power (I forgot his name. Johnny Power or something.) said it that stuck with me every time I saw the empty memory card slot when I played Neo Geo games on the arcade.
When you talk about sprite scaling games you should mention "the super spy" blew me away back in the 90's
Fair point, I was just trying to keep the video as concise as possible so I had to leave a lot of stuff out that I would like to have included.
@@InglebardGaming understood 👍
the Spy who blew me.
Inglebard the rebel teacher...11 Facts!!
Such a badass questionin the marketing of 24/32 bit 😅
Ha, you should hear the social media rants I gave in my classes this week! 😁
@@InglebardGaming 😆
The whole bitness stuff was such great marketing BS in the 90's anyway, like doing the math on the "64-Bit" Jaguar. Or the fact that the Turbografx-16 was an 8-Bit system. Even the Genesis has an 8-Bit CPU next to it's 16-Bit CPU, while the SNES CPU was more like a 16-Bit addition to an 8-Bit CPU. It's really more of a vibe: The TG16 is 16-Bit because the graphics chip makes it look like other 16-Bit systems, and because it's 8-Bit CPU was clocked (comparatively) really high. The Neo Geo looks better than 16-Bit systems so it had to be something better, but not quite as good as CD-based/3D-enabled 32-Bit systems.
Recall not buying the NeoGeo at the time due to price of console and cost of games around $200 and up but mostly because I honestly felt my Genesis & Super Nintendo had so many more AAA games from more genres that were close to, just as good and in some cases better than what were available on the AES. Again, my opinion back in the early 90’s. Sure, I may have been trying to justify not buying the AES but when I did buy what I felt was superior to my “16 bit” consoles it was the 3DO which cost more than the AES with exception of game costs
I think THE SUPER SPY demonstates how well the NEO GEO could scale sprites. I would have liked to have seen an experienced driving game developer from Megadrive or Amiga give the NEO GEO a go, very different architecture but I think more could have been done than that bike game.
The Neo Geo was literally the arcade at home and I always thought it wasn’t 24 bit, just 16 bit like the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo. It’s my dream to own a Neo Geo AES, if I win the lottery 😂😂😂
Owning an AES is the easy part. You can find some reasonably priced units..
It's the games that will break the bank. 😆
Anything that isn't a first generation fighting game is going to put a dent in your wallet.
i never would have guessed that one day there would be more processing power in my phone than there was in a neo geo :0
Or that there's more processing power in your phone than every game system made before say the PS3 combined 😁
This is really good information.
Thanks for the video.
Glad you liked it!
I will always see the Neo-Geo as an unobtainable system that I can look but not touch, that only the super rich kids will ever get to have. I guess I could buy one but it will always be stuck in my head that way :P (It became less desirable after SNK clearly became a fighting-game only company post SF2.)
It's one of those systems where the potential was incredible, but went sadly untapped, especially in the home market. Still, it was a big success in the arcades, it was amazing how long it hung around.
The Motorola 680x0 processor family was 16-bit external, 32-bit internal... which is why the Atari ST series of personal computers was named the ST... for Sixteen Thirty-two. Now having said that, most other systems that used the 68000 only claimed to be 16-bit... so SNK would be a bit weird there especially using "24-bit".
The Atari Jaguar claimed to be a 64-bit system and it also has a 68000 CPU... in addition to several custom designed CPUs that were 64-bit... but the whole system was not 64-bit... but there were parts of it that were. Some people think Atari was stretching it but others, including me, don't.
I talk about this in some other videos. Still, in the end the external 16-bit bus on the chip is the main reason why it's considered 16-bit instead of 24 or 32. Reading 32-bit data on the 68000 took two cycles because of the 16-bit bus. This didn't change until the 68020 was released, the first fully 32-bit CPU in motorola's 68k line.
Why do you write “series” ? Motorola started with a 16 bit bus, but the ISA was meant to be future proof. So later is was 32 bit. 386DX would load 8088 instructions in 32bit chunks. Intel had a patent for this and licensed it to AMD under the pressure of IBM. Now I wonder if Motorola also licensed it? What number is it?
So the Jaguar indeed has a 64 bit memory data bus. So you would guess that sound samples would be read in those chunks and then split inside Jerry. You would have thought that texture is read in chunks and split inside Tom. Same for code. But despite high sampling rate and horizontal resolution, Atari focused on down scaling and pulling individual 16 bit values from memory… why ? Or writing 16 bit values ( Jaguar can do 3do like quads, but suuuper slow ).
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt - I wrote series because they started with a 520ST, then a 1040ST, and then 1040STe, then MegaSTe, etc.
Ah, oh, my brain was a bit behind So you write CPU "family". There already is the problem. And later STs were 32 bit, weren't they, just like the Amigas. Or did Atari rename ST to Falcon? And is it really a family or just a series of ever better CPUs? Yeah there was the 68008 and later the CMOS versions. But we don't speak about those @@lsdowdle
I love obscure hardware from my childhood. Nowadays the hardware venue has become somewhat homogeneous, for instance consoles are using pc components, and their programming is the same for pc and xbox... Also we have a ton of retro handheld machines for emulators and nearly all of them are Android.
Yeah, I definitely miss the uniqueness that each system used to have. Every time a new system came out it used to feel like a real event and that something was changing permanently in the gaming landscape.
I still like playing stuff on my PS5 and Switch, but yeah, PS5s and Xboxes are really just PCs internally and the Switch is pretty much just Android hardware not running Android.
Neo Geo is cool 😎, I Didn't have one or even know about it until Emulation Experimentation.
Hey Inglebard... the 1983 Nintendo FamiCom IS essentially an arcade hardware PCB customized for home consumer use but with interchangeable ROM Cartridges... and the Nintendo PlayChoice 10 preceded the idea that SNK later expanded upon.
The reason most American gamers tend to NOT see things that way is because they disregard the Japanese perspective... Before the Nintendo FamiCom launched in Japan there just was nothing as powerful released for the mass production of home use... and that is mass production and balanced lower price of the time so even when the NES finally launched in North America in 1985 (note originally they were going to launch in 1984, one whole year earlier but most American Retail reps had developed an "anti-videogame system or anti-console mentality and somehow most believed that micro-computers were more credible for videogames which ignores the fact that a videogame system is really a customized gaming computer that if properly programmed software was made, could handle stuff like office software of the time, a keyboard and mouse, etc but it is just that the shell design was tougher than the average computer of the time to survive the use of the entire family, including younger kids before the U.S. media painted the picture of Nintendo NES toddlers being babysat by the NES and Super Mario later in the 80s)
The FamiCom was very powerful hardware in 1983, especially when it out performed the Sega SG-1000 hands down launched the same day and year. Likewise Sega managed to claim hardware supremacy in 1985 with the Sega Mark III aka later to be known as Sega Master System... reguardless of special HIGHER end posh hardware NOT meant for mass production or cost limitations that arcade game makers in Japan used. Because often that arcade hardware could get heavily revised and upgraded and changed and modified and replaced from one year to another because the arcade hardware was a battlefield of extreme competition with technology to do things that just could not be feasibly or even sustainably possible at "home" by say Taito using three monitors and an extravagant aspect ratio in many of their games, by Sega using a ride on seat that resembles a motorcycle and later a bucket seat or racing seat with a steering wheel and shifter, etc.
Most of the amazing arcade hardware of the 1980s was not really designed to be "affordable" at all... even if Sega were to have tried to attempt it, it would have been impossible because of the variants that the Sega System 16 had and how quickly the hardware changed year to year... so while there is this idea to dismiss the consoles as childrens toys... that is not really true because for the year they launched they were still the most powerful hardware that was mass produced... that means if Sega's Outrun hardware was mass produced in the same way a Nintendo FamiCom was, it would then be expected to match sales figures reaching past five million which is just not possible... even two million and one million is a stretch because that hardware was only able to run one game.
Also despite your American only mentality, you used the Japanese SNK NeoGeo launch date but then the American Sega and Super Nintendo launch dates.. imagine if you lived in the U.K. and decided to believe that hardware only existed when it officially launched in your area.
Sega MegaDrive launched in 1988, it was cutting edge hardware that year and coming from an arcade game maker and hardware maker the Sega MegaDrive was indeed designed for lower cost and higher volume of mass production... but so was the NEC PC-Engine in 1987 Japan and yes so was the Super FamiCom in 1990 Japan despite the CPU clock speed having the appearance of being slower than the competition even though it was a different CPU architecture and Nintendo's original plans for the Super FamiCom had to be changed... like how they initially were trying to maintain backward compatibility.
The SNK NeoGeo AES and even MVS are indeed still exotic looking by design and they ignored any of the comtemporary ROM size limitations which should be first discussed in terms of Megabits, not "Megabytes" as the latter is only for comparison to much later rom space taken up by CD-ROM media and later media. Meanwhile the idea that the Super FamiCom with it's slow looking CPU was able to handle an extremely close home version of Capcom's Street Fighter II TWW in the year 1992 and then sell 3.5 million ROM Cartridges in Japan alone and over 6 million ROM Cartridges in in North America (Canada, U.S.A. and Mexico which all had fully represented official Nintendo distribution channels unlike how Sega of America acted like a headless chicken) and on top of that that they used the largest ROM size that was considered affordable for 1992 in 16 Megabits and the fact that the majority of buyers were late teens and twenty plus year olds who actually went to compete at arcades even though they later got ignored/snubbed and the public was gaslit into believing that parents purchased SFII and not the left over stock after the hype was on fire is another major issue because a 46 Megabit ROM Cartridge for Sega MegaDrive or Super Nintendo or even NEC PC-Engine was just impossible in 1992 or you're looking at a game that would have to cost almost roughly four times the retail price of SNES SFII that same year.
So even though the Sega MegaDrive hardware seems slower and weaker than the Sega System 16 and it's variants, it does not stop it from being true arcade hardware... just that unfortunately Sega did not prioritize leading the games on the arcade version, then distributing into arcade centers to be purchased by arcade operators where those games might have had a different image and the con-artists at Sega of America would never have been able to change the name of Bare Knuckle series.
Finally the SNK NeoGeo was very profitable to SNK in the form of the MVS... that said, they did attempt to make NEW hardware which failed miserably due to the cost and not making the arcade sales with the Hyper NeoGeo 64 because 3d hardware also evolving and was even more expensive to develop initially yet both the Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 fully surpassed the SNK NeoGeo MVS/AES (and it's possible that the N64 could have humbled the Hyper NeoGeo 64 if ports of the 3d games would have been made on the large 512 Megabit aka 64 Megabyte N64 ROM Cartridge size reached around late 1998 or 1999) hardware capabilities and speed as long as the Sega Saturn would require the 1MB Ram Cartridge but more so if it had required the 4MB RAM Cartridge more commonly if Dreamcast had not been made and the N64 could handle all those NeoGeo AES games if more ports had been made which means if N64 sales had spiked more in Japan which was happening due to Pocket Monsters IP in late 90s but again if only Dreamcast had not been made because that console only triggered a next gen hardware production war.
Also in a technical way the Sony PlayStation 1 surpassed the SNK NeoGeo in terms of having near 1:1 arcade to home conversions with the obvious fact that the Sony/Namco System 11 was a PlayStation PCB with ROM chip storage, just not interchangeable as cartridges... but Sony PS1/System 11 basically increased the number of arcade games produced in the late 1990s on a mass production and low cost hardware which means that Tekken arcade cabinet could retail for probably less than $2,000 or maybe $3,000 because remember that cabinet is affordable but its also a potentially big money maker like the stories of people who bought the SFII cabinets were later able to buy $50,000 dollar cars and boats in the early 90s
You forgot to mention that the NeoGeo CD some of the games have animation cuts to them compared to the MVS and AES.
It's something I could have pointed out. If I covered 12 things instead of 11, this would have definitely been number 12!
@@InglebardGamingMostly the fighting games that had missing animations. Art of Fighting 3 really took a hit with the CD version because of the lack of memory.
Best game system ever.
The reason SNK didn't get more developers on board with the system was because to each of them there was no real money to be made while dealing with a console that went for a jacked up price and game carts that also went for jacked up prices. They especially weren't going to get companies like Capcom or Konami on board with them since they already made their own arcade boards and were both porting games to nes, snes and genesis where the real money was and games could actually be affordable.
The idea behind the Neogeo home system was a good idea but sadly it was doomed to fail from everything for it simply being too expensive for everyone to get which is why the 8 to 32-bit systems were the best options.
I understand why they didn't do AES carts. But why not use the arcade MVS hardware instead of developing new boards all the time?
Seems that companies like Capcom, Taito and Konami (among others) could have saved a lot of r&d money if they made their arcade titles for the platform and then still ported them to Genesis and SNES afterwards.
@@InglebardGaming No, that actually would have hurt them if they did focus on the MVS system because of the cost to make the games and because the system simply lacked the hardware to do what was needed for what each wanted to do. while the Neogeo was fine at what it did, the system was still a bottleneck and those games we saw Capcom and others make as the years went on honestly would have looked and in some cases played terribly if they had tried to make them for the MVS.
Games like Konami's TMNT, Simpsons, X-Men and Capcom's Street Fighter/Darkstalkers/Marvel series and their own brawlers and some shooters just would have been terrible on Neogeo because of the hardware limits and the cost it would have taken to make chips to add in the carts to even try to get close to what we saw as the years went on.
Also, Data East tried to do what you said but look at where they ended up because of doing that. :(
@HellTantrumbull The vast majority of Capcom's CPS1 and 2 games would have ran fine on the system, just at a lower resolution. We're talking about a lot of games that had relatively close conversions on much weaker hardware than the Neo Geo. What CPS 1 and 2 games do you think it couldn't handle? They'd just involve resolution drops but would gain a few other perks. CPS3 would be tougher, but when you look at the animation in some later fighters on the system, they aren't far off.
Attraction games that needed 4-6 player cabinets wouldn't have been feasible without expensive cabinet and hardware adjustments, so I get why Konami didn't use it for those games. Still, it just seems unless it was outrageously overpriced on SNK's side, that it would have been a benefit for a lot of companies.
And I'm not a wacky Neo Geo evangelist. I just thought its library was ok. But it WAS more powerful than the boards a lot of early 90s companies used in the arcade. Once games primarily shifted to polygons though, that would have been a different story.
Ate any devs from the era reading this that can tell us what fees would have been like?
Oh, and Data East, they were already in decline at that point. You can't blame NG development for that one. They were swallowed up by changing market conditions they didn't adjust to.
@@InglebardGaming You actually said it yourself why the games wouldn't work out good on the Neogeo in the video and that was the sprites acting as backgrounds. the MVS really needed to have proper background support but that just wasn't there for whatever reason when the system was being designed. that's also why a number of games for the system suffer from slowdown and SNK's own games were no exception while their ports actually ran better on other consoles.
Final Fight not going to be perfect on the system because the MVS actually does have problems with brawlers and trying to handle a lot of large objects. I remember someone in another video talking about why there were so few brawlers on the system and it did have to do with the limits of the hardware.
Any of Capcom's fighters would have been a step back in appearance, sound and performance on the MVS along with being only a 4 button fighter and people weren't going to accept that from any Capcom fighting game since for whatever reason MVS games were always 4 buttons. Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam the same way with both being made on much better hardware.
I agree the MVS was a powerful system but only for a really short time since Sega, Capcom Konami and a few others were making killer hardware around that same time that could do and handle a lot more than what MVS could do and handle.
I'm sure some more technical people that might come along eventually and read this could give you much better insight than me, but something I already know ahead of time is a lot of them will tell you the MVS would struggle trying to run more advanced games made on other arcade systems around that time frame and just wouldn't be able to pull some features used because of the hardware limits.
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@@HellTantrumbull Can you name one Neo Geo port released during the entire 1990's, that was better than the original? Slow-down was common back then. None of the old tech, be it consoles or arcades, ran completely smooth. That's one of the reasons emulating them usually feels different, even introducing lag to the controls sometimes. The Neo Geo's GPU works only with sprites, which besides the downsides you mentioned, has the benefits of less repeating patterns throughout levels and making a certain scenes look more lively with more ease. Comparing it to arcade boards that were designed for one specific or a just a few games, is like comparing all those different boards in the first place. Indeed, it cannot run a port of every arcade game from it's era, just like most of the other arcade boards at the time.
Should never have sold mine. I had the AES and the CDZ .
Depends how you look at it, in some ways the Jaguar, 32X and Fm towns are more powerful.
The 32X and Jaguar are really part of the same generation as the Saturn and PS1. The FM Towns had decent capabilities, but is behind all of those things, IMO.
I'd say really only straight up polygonal games were more impressive on the 32x or Jag since the 3DO didn't really have any as they couldn't really be done because of hardware idiosyncrasies.
@@InglebardGamingI'd love to have FM Towns (Marty) just for Project Raid Wind and Project Raid Wind 2: Altyanx. Please support Siter Skain folks.
Samurai Shodown 2 would have been the killer app for me back in the day but I never had that kind of cash.
The Neogeo wasn't the first system with a memory card, the PC Engine was by about 18 months with the CD-RomRom addon (the system card provided it)
@@Fularu Not correct - the various system cards (standard, super, and arcade) didn't contain any writable areas on the card, CD based game saves were made to writable memory included on the CD Rom unit itself.
Some PCE Hucards / Turbochips included a save option that actually only worked if you had the CD Rom unit attached (without the system card inserted), like Dragon's Curse, the port of Monster World 2/ Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap. Several games had this capability. Again, you literally couldn't have the system card inserted while you had a HuCard / Turbochip game inserted since the system only had one card slot. These games accessed the 2kb or so of save memory built into the CD-Rom unit.
The system cards were ROM cards that essentially contained the BIOS along with extra RAM - the amount of which varies depending on the system card version (standard, super or arcade card).
Some accessories like the Turbo Booster Plus included the save memory the CD-Rom add-on so you could save in standard HuCards and Tuebochip games that supported the CD-Rom's save functionality without needing the CD-Rom or its system cards.
For confirmation, see the "saving" part of this article: necretro.org/CD-ROM%C2%B2_systems
@@InglebardGaming The saving mechanism was in the interface unit itself and the system card allowed its management. Again, it was basically the introduction of memory cards through the interface port on the back of the PC Engine.
Furthermore, shortly after the release of the IFU NEC released the Ten no Koe2 which was a... memory card that allowed you to save your hucard games data in november 1989.
Once the Duo (and its R/RX variants) got released, the external Ten No Koe 2 was released as a hucard as the Ten no Koe bank. (in 1991)
@@Fularu That's still stretching the definition of a memory card. The Ten no Koe cards are more akin to the backup cartridge for the Sega /Mega CD. They were also far from standard for the system.
The original Ten no Koe plugged into the back of the PCE not the card slot. The Ten no Koe bank that plugged into the card slot was released in 1991 (after the Neo Geo) and still wouldn't be considered a memory card in the same way we used the term for the Neo Geo, PlayStation and other systems.
I still have mine that I bought used in the 90's. I should've invested in more games back then. Now I have to take out a mortgage loan to buy some of these games smh 😥😥
Retro game prices have definitely gotten ridiculous in the last 5 or so years, no argument there.
Those prices are insane
Thanks
You should make one on the Panasonic 3DO!!!!! 🤘🤘🤘
Maybe I'll do one of these on 3DO some day, but it'll be a while if I do.
That would rule! 🤘🤘🤘
Kinda surprised that the Neo Geo CD had 97 games, for some reason I thought that thing failed and had like 20 games.
A lot of earlier games were rereleased for it.
😅so if we could of bought Metal Slug in the 90s without opening it. It would be worth 120k. Today 🤔
Yup, crazy, right? I thought I had some valuable games, but all of them put together are worth nowhere near AES Metal Slug!
Good video
Thanks!
There were 'three' NEO•CD consoles, not two. The front loader was also Japan only and was only 1,000 made.
The 24 bit and 32 bit marketing was limited to USA, it never occurred outside of there that i ever saw. Certainly never was a thing here.
Yes, you are of course correct. I added a note already to the video description about the front loader which I knew about but totally forgot about when putting this together. When I'm at home later I'll add a card during that section of that video to point out the oversight.
The whole 24/32-bit thing was just, ugh. I remember being mad at the time even though I was just a teenager 😁
It did 16bit better than actual 16bit systems. World Heroes on genesis was embarrassing. I'll allow them the 24bits they claim. They can back it up
Now I know where Atari got their idea for the "do the math" 64bit jaguar lol.
Ha, yeah. Atari's math was two 32-bit coprocessors = a 64-bit system. Nope.
The Jag's graphics accelerators (the Blitter and Object processors) are indeed 64-bit, as was the memory bus. So sure, Tom & Jerry were both 32-bits, but at least they didn't outright lie. Regardless, we all now know that bits never determined the power of a console/arcade, but many of us didn't know better back then.
@@MoonScythe1but in fact the 64 bit are missing in too many places. For example JRISC runs at twice the clock as RAM. So you would expect load and store of register pairs ( or even more to utilize fast page mode ). On both Tom and Jerry, DSP and GPU. JRISC did have a multi reg-mem instruction: Multiply and Accumulate.
JRISC could not even MUL 32x32=> 32:32 multiply.
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt Now your digging deep here lol. But you're not wrong.
Man...where were you in 1989? You know, it's funny though. I always said that if the SuperGrafx was machine the west got instead (albeit, at a much more competitive price point, and actually software support) Sega would have had a hell of a time cornering the market in North America. On the balance though, TurboGrafx 16/PC Engine really had some ports that I thought were better, or at least held there own against a more powerful Genesis.
In 1989 I was most likely sitting in front of a monitor at home playing Genesis, TurboGrafx -16, NES or SMS 😁
Edit: whoops, hit send by accident instead of enter.
I'd even still be messing with the C64 at that point, the atari 7800 and Amiga.
I don't dislike the Turbo/PCE, I have a lot of positive coverage on the channel, but I'm always going to be honest with my opinions on it. The SuperGrafx was a giant wasted opportunity. NEC should have made it a CD only system considering the popularity of the CD add on for PCE in Japan. But there's a LOT they should have done differently with that system. It had potential, but it added features the PCE should have really had from the start.
@@InglebardGaming whoa, this message wound up on the wrong channel! I completely agree with your assessment, but this message was actually supposed to posted on Sega Lord X's video about saving the TurboGrafx 16. Your video was qued up next on my feed, but TH-cam must have glitched 'cause I started typing it on the video before. Sorry if that was confusing, dude.
Ha, no problem. Appreciate you letting me know!
Agree with you about the AES. It just isn't worth the money.
Depends on the amount of disposable income you have.
@@drunkensailor112 enough, but I rather spend it on some more Mega Drive games.
@@CasperEgas yes but buying an aes game to me is like an event because it is expensive.
Well, not for the average gamer back then. If you were rich, there were decent enough games for it. But for the most part the cost of the games just made it inaccessible to most people.
@@InglebardGaming back then for sure because most of us were kids. But today I'm nearly 40 and it has become affordable. That to me makes it special now
PC-Engine was a 21 bit machine.
Modern PC and consoles are not 64 bits, only their CPU is 64 bits, most of the work inside the GPU is 32 and 16 bits.
Weren't pc graphics cards 128 and 256 bit like a dogs age ago?
@@marcellachine5718 they are 32 bits internally, they may have bigger bus or many 32 bit pipelines. They are now 64 bit, but no games use that. When you look for the TFLOPS, they are given for 16, 32 and 64 bits. But videogames use only 16 and 32.
I'd say Top Hunter's probably the best platformer on the system.
Very under appreciated that one..
@orderofmagnitude-TPATP It's like Megaman crossed with Guardian Heroes. Hard to not like it.
I always thought it was 18 bit
I’m not sure why you consider a 24-bit wide graphics bus to be a lie. By that rationale, the PCE/ TG16 would be an 8-bit system because it’s 16-bit graphics bus “was a lie”. Although maybe a bit “dirty” in it’s approach to claim 24-bit, I would say it was roughly fair. NEO GEO was doing graphics and sound about 50% better (very roughly) than SNES and Genesis. So 50% better than 16-bit is 24-bit. Sega Saturn was marketed in Japan as 64-bit using a similar “dirty” technique. Also fair to mention the 24-bit wide bus also ran at 24 MHz… compare that speed to the SNES… way faster and wider.
You were on the right track at the beginning, the PCE/Turbo IS an 8-bit system, like the Neo Geo is a 16-bit system. It's not an insult, but the when the main CPU that manages everything on simple systems like these, that's really how you have to measure it, IMO. The whole 'bitness' thing really only starts to get truly murky beyond the 32-bit era.
Even with the 68000, it can process 32-bit instructions, but the 16-bit external bus means it has to do them in two cycles, so it was still considered a 16-bit chip and companies that used it labelled it as such.
So in the end, you can't really make a fair argument that a 24-bit graphics bus makes the whole system 24-bit. We don't call modern PCs with 4090s 384-bit bit systems because that GPU has a 384-bit graphics bus, they're 64-bit because that's what the CPU driving everything handles.
@@InglebardGamingmost retro gamers would easily categorize the TG16 as a 16-bit console. It’s CPU, although 8-bit, was clocked pretty fast and could keep up with the 68000 in the Genesis on most gaming tasks. I’ve even seen benchmarks on TH-cam where the TG16 actually beats the SNES and Genesis in CPU tasks in some areas. So categorizing it as 8-bit system really isn’t fair, even though it technically has a 8-bit CPU. you’re right that bit-ness is basically the Teraflops of the day and not a good technical measure of hardware power. My main point was that the 24-bit claim WAS NOT A LIE, as you put it in your video. It’s NOT baseless to say that. Some aspects were 24-bit… and the actual preceived graphics and sound to the ordinary gamer was not entirely out of line with that claim of power. You were getting MUCH more power than the other consoles, and SNK wanted to represent that to ordinary gamers in a marketing term. I don’t think the claim was as disingenuous as say the Atari Jaguar’s 64-bit claim, when most of its games looked and played like 16-bit games. I wouldn’t have framed the whole issue as a “lie”… the consumer was getting hardware roughly on that level of “bit-ness”. BTW, the 68000 has 32-bit wide registers internally, so it’s considered both 16-bit AND 32-bit as a CPU. Like you said, it takes 2 clocks to process 32-bit instructions, but the NEO GEO was clocked nearly twice as fast as the Genesis, so it could do 32 bit close to the speed at which Genesis could do 16 bit processing. Along with the massively powerful GPU chips, I feel the 24-bit moniker was generally earned… maybe even slightly understated.
It's not a "most retrogamers" agree thing, there's zero evidence of that. To this day there is still debate with people arguing how it should be classified. What I'd say most retrogamers agree on, based on articles, videos on the subject, forum posts and more is that it should be classified as a console of the 16-bit era, which I can get behind.
It's not a matter of fair or not fair, the 6502 variant inside the PCE/Trubo is 8-bit. I've seen the benchmarks you're talking about on TH-cam and the logic behind them is very flawed, the ASM code wasn't written in the optimal way for each chip. Even a bog standard 6502 can run *some* code faster than a 68000 because of the way the architecture of each chip works.
What I stated in the last reply is accurate, it is not normal practice to measure a system's "bit-ness" by anything other than the central processing unit that has to drive the entire thing, especially up through the 32-bit era before things get less cut and dry. It's not derogatory to the system to refer to it accurately. If anything making up things up to try and classify them as different than they are is the problem. Calling the PCE 16-bit is a disservice in my opinion - as an 8-bit system it's the most powerful one out there and impressive. As a 16-bit system it would be near the bottom of the pack since it's missing lots of common 16-bit system features.
Sure the Neo Geo was massively more powerful than a Genesis or SNES, there's no argument there. But so is Capcom's 16-bit CPS1 and 2 systems. Are those 24-bit now just because they're more powerful? Even though they are also driven by 16-bit 68000s that run at either 10 or 12mhz? Is the X68000 anything other than 16-bit? Again, the Neo Geo is a very powerful 16-bit system, it's not an insult to call it what it is, the most powerful 16-bit game console that was ever made. It doesn't matter if it was clocked at ten times the speed of the Genesis, it's still got a 16-bit processor driving the whole system. Is the SNES suddenly 8-bit because its max cpu speed is 3.58 mhz? No? Then the NG isn't 24-bit because it runs at 12mhz, either.
And modern versions of the 6502, btw, run at up to 20mhz. Or nearly twice the 12 mhz of the Neo Geo. That doesn't make the 6502 any less 8-bit.
@@InglebardGamingI’m not sure you fully understood my post. Everything I said still stands.
Fighting games not only killed Neo-Geo, it killed the arcades.
No it didnt!
Street Fighter II literally saved arcades in the early 90s. They were in steep decline until it came along and then suddenly after over a decade people were forming long lines to play just that game. Then Mortal Kombat and its sequels kept thr flame roaring for a few years.
I do agree there were too many fighting games that tried to piggyback off that success, but once the polygon era came roaring in, especially the model 2 games, we had way more genres thriving again for a while until home systems got so powerful from the DC and beyond that you didn't really see games more powerful than home systems anymore and they became kinda pointless.
@@InglebardGaming What really killed the arcade and this is from an insider perspective (working at an arcade distributer in Montreal):
-Arcade cabinet became bigger and bigger costing more and eating more floor space.
-Arcade became less powerfull than home version.
-Too many buttons
Back in the days the Arcade had custom hardware with 20x the memory and 20x the power of the home computers and home consoles. They also stop producing a diversity of games, only racing sims, fighting and casual shit for the NPCs. Arcade was the peek of gaming and technology, the day they put cheap PC in the arcades is the day they died. The quality of the arcade games went from amazing (and we still play these games today) to web/flash quality.
It's disappointing to hear the _FAMILY COMPUTER_ being downplayed and somewhat being kept mispronounced as the sharp's twin famicom. While the rest of the japanese consoles are accurately being pronounced such as megadrive and pc engine. In asia, it's always known and famous as its accurate branding : _FAMILY COMPUTER_
I would not give them 1 dollar for those games.
Saw comment on another channel regarding this console, and he pointed out, from experience, that a lot of the facts quoted in videos like this are actually incorrect, cos the creator simply used Wikipedia - and it's FULL of errors - like the 650 dollar pride, game prices and a few others. Your description of scaling on neo geo is not entirely accurate either. Ahhh, TH-cam, the capital of wrong information/misinformation and disinformation...
Well, let me point from experience, the person you listened to is wrong. I personally saw the Neo Geo in stores for $650 for the gold version when it launched, they had it in Child World on Long Island, NY for that price from the launch day forward until they went out of business a few years later. When Child World was going out of business, they eventually had everything on clearance, including the Neo Geo for 70% off and were selling it for just under $200. Other local stores, the very few that carried it, and mail order outfits had the "Gold" version for $650, too, that was the MSRP. The silver version sold for $399.99, which I also mentioned in the video. Guess you missed that part.
And game prices wrong? I literally showed ads from gaming magazines of the era, so no, game prices weren't wrong. I showed three ads from magazines from 1991 and 1992 in the video. I could have showed about 20 ads from that time frame they're easy to find. Guess you didn't want to put forth any effort on your own before saying something uninformed. If you need some help, check out archive.org and search for egm, you'll find all the old magazines with their original ads intact. Or your magazine of choice if you want to see a different one.
The description of scaling? Tell me what's wrong with it. Why not check out this article on scaling from neogeodev.org and then explain to me how I'm wrong. wiki.neogeodev.org/index.php?title=Sprite_shrinking#:~:text=Shrinking%20(also%20known%20as%20scaling,of%20pixel%20lines%20or%20columns.
I don't mind being corrected, I happily accepted the correction that I forgot to mention the front loading Neo Geo CD. However, literally everything you've said in your comment is just plain wrong. Ironic you complain about misinformation on TH-cam but base all your opinions on a comment in another video.
Also, not a single piece of information from this video was sourced from Wikipedia.
@InglebardGaming wow! That's some comeback!! The other guy's comment was also quite long. And I'll stand corrected on the 'ironic' bit at the end - fair comment mate. That actually made me laugh. Aw man, I can't believe i was actually about to get into a debate/argument about a 30odd year old console. Though I will say it would appear that someone's experience regarding prices depended on their location in the country. However, I just learned a valuable lesson from you mate. Sir, I doff my cap to you. No hard feelings mate, sincerely.
Ha, no problem. I admit I was annoyed, but just like I'll admit when I get something wrong, I appreciate when anyone does the same instead of digging in. No hard feelings here, either.
Video was going good until you started blabbering about how the system lacks variety and how you aren't that big of a fan on much of the games. What a let down. Not subscribing.
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Huh, I had One, Almost As Soon As it Was Made Available, I Guess I Am Special After All