I sincerely hope you enjoy this video, I loved working on it even if it's really hard to find some reliable sources for such an uncommon console! Sorry that my English is not perfect, it's not my native language. Made by Sakharu, voiced over by Brad Ziffer.
The only clue I heard that you are not a native speaker: You switched between present tense language and past tense language. A few modern American and British books try to do all present tense, but the standard is to speak in complete past tense, even if you are imagining or representing things as they happened. Examples: Present tense: Sega creatES the Mega Drive, it SELLS well. Past tense: Sega creatED the MD, it SOLD well. It’s still a great video, but changing this in future videos will make it more pleasant/professional sounding to a larger English speaking audience. Also, I grew up during this era, and you did a great job of capturing why we were enchanted by stories of this arcade-at-home system. Again, great job on this video.
I used to work for a mom'n pop's brick and mortar videogame store in the 90's. One day after work I visited a competing toy store to check their pricing. The owner recognized me and we had a chat, he points to an unsold Neogeo box on a shelf collecting dust and asks if I can take it off his hands for a mere 3000kr (roughly 300$/€). Even if we adjust for inflation it was still dirt cheap, so I rushed to the bank and got the money. Returned home with a Neogeo + Cyberlip, Magician Lord, League Bowling, Blue's Journey, Top Player's Golf & Puzzled. I paid less for all that than I paid for King of Fighters 94. Good times.
Now that’s an amazing story! Which country was that in? It must’ve been so cool to work in a games store in that era. The 90s had the biggest development of games and working in a shop that time must’ve been great! I was a child during those times so I grew up with those systems (but I was a computer child, I loved the versatility and the easy cracks lol) so I experienced them but I was to young to work or fully understand the technology. Nowadays I deeply care about the technology of my childhood and teenage years and want to learn everything about them! My first home console was the SNES, my first handheld the original DMG Gameboy and my PC a 486, amazing times. I wish I could go back and live in those days forever! Do you still have the Neo Geo? :)
@@rolux4853 This was in Sweden, the kr currency I mentioned is Swedish Krona (or SEK), and yes, it was a pretty cool era to work with games. Just before the franchise stores took over. I sold the system when an emulator known as Neorage started playing games well. Kinda regret it, but I got a good a price. My real retro regret is throwing away a perfectly good CRT monitor, an expensive one too.
@@rolux4853 It was incredible. I remember waiting for generation of console following the 32 / 64 bits era. Devouring every video game magazines I could. My best friend had a Dreamcast with Soulcalibur very early and it blew our mind. Now I can play dreamcast on my phone... Playing early PC multiplayer with Starcraft broodwar with dial-up internet, with my parents counting the minutes spent so I would not go beyond the 2 hours. I also remember playing SNES and thinking it would be cool if the CPU could be replaced by another player playing at the same time. Then Mame arrived with the Kaillera module ! Then GGPO ! Also the LAN parties organised during high school to play Counter Strike and Day of Defeat.
@@rolux4853 Since "kr" in currency stands for "Krona" (meaning crown) or variations thereof, I would say it has to be Danish krone, Estonian kroon, Icelandic króna, Norwegian krone or Swedish krona (or technically Faroese krona). Estonia uses the Euro these days, but the exchange rate against Euro he mentions don't fit the Estonian kroon so Denmark, Sweden or Norway are your best bets.
I think the console case was designed after the Lamborghini Countach...the absolute super car of the 80s but for some reason, the neogeo was always called the Rolls Royce of consoles.
@PurpleTeamer because Neo-Geo was a luxury console only for very rich people and if you remember at the beginning the console was only for renting, hotels, etc...in Japan.
@John_Locke_108 Neo-Geo was ahead of it's time. 90s were a gold rush of consoles, everyone wanted its slice of the marked but just few knew how to do it. Most of the tech makers failed like Sega with 32x/Mega CD, Commodore with ACD32, Phillips with CD-I, Apple with Pippin, Atari with Jaguar, Trip Hawkins with 3DO, Nec with Turbografx, etc...
Eventually the "port era" came to the rescue with the street fighter 2 series on snes and Genesis, mortal kombat, nba jam, final fight, ninja turtles, man i miss the 90s!
@@supadupa6891 7th gen consoles and PC emulators , destroyed arcades. 2nd and 3rd gen consoles, only showed why arcades were better back then. The original neo geo AES was the only true arcade game home console of its gen. All other systems had to struggle with older arcade games being poorly smudged into a cartridge or onto CD. (PS1 ridge racer was rubbish for example, and even its 2d fighters, missed frames to keep up. Daytona USA had to wait for PS3 to give it a true arcade port outside PC emulation ).
@@supadupa6891 They were special, and represented video game perfection. Arcade devs had to make things instantly gripping and fun for anyone in ear/eye shot. And they succeeded. level to level, challenging attractive and addictive on the spot.
I absolutely adore the Neo-Geo. I will always remember my high school graduation night. There was a truck stop a few miles outside of town that had a little cafe in it that sold nasty, greasy burgers and had a small arcade. They had a 4 game Neo cabinet. Me and some friends spent the entire night playing World Heroes 2 and eating those nasty burgers. Damn, damn good times man.
Ah the neo geo mvs, Wish i had the pleasure of playing on one, Although i was fortunate to have played on neo geo arcades at my local arcade place, Such great memories 🥰
I actually recall you telling this story in a comment from ten years ago. What town was this in? Were the burgers actually bad? I remember you saying they were greasy.
That was a legitimately interesting video! Thank a for posting. As a teenager in 1990, the neo geo was a world apart from anything we were playing back then. The thought of a $600 console and $200 games may as well have been a million dollars to us, but it was an amazing machine.
Yeah. It was like the video game version of a Lamborghini, or a Ferrari, totally unobtainable to regular kids like I was one too. I think my SEGA Mega Drive console together with a bundle of 4 games cost as much as a single Neo Geo game cartridge. I still vividly remember how I stared longingly at Neo Geo ads and articles in video game magazines. I was so obsessed with this stuff and would have sold my organs or my soul to be able to afford a Neo Geo, or later the first (front-loader) version of the SEGA CD. It was as if my whole life, my identity, my being would somehow depend on what consoles I had. Quite pathetic and embarrassing, looking back. As a little kid in the early to mid-80s, it was all about action figures and other plastic toys and then in the late 80s and early 90s, all about video game consoles. I genuinely got super involved and emotional about this nonsense too. The "16 bit War" between Nintendo and SEGA really mattered to me. I was a SEGA fanboy and hated Nintendo and I was genuinely proud of stuff like that the Mega Drive/Genesis version of Street Fighter 2 was 36 MB big while the SNES version was only 30 MG big. lol As if that meant that the SEGA version was better, 6 MB better to be precise. hehehe Maybe spazzing out like that in my childhood and early teens was a good thing though. Maybe this hyper consumerist part of my brain somehow overheated and burned out or something, because as a adult I relatively early figured out that buying and owning stuff doesn't really make me happy.
@@TrangleC that is an accurate reflection of my outlook. The Neo Geo was an obscure system only seen in ads, begging the question "who could afford that?" (More accurately, whose parents would buy them it). There is nothing like moving house (or refurbing house) to make you want less stuff 😂
The Neo-Geo may have had a short few years at the top - but my god, when some kid told you they had one, it was like dropping an atom bomb on the conversation. It's hard to put it into words today, because the difference between the best console today, and the best PC doesnt feel that vast. But a Neo-Geo felt like a quantum computer from the future by comparison.
Ya, the Neo Geo was considered the absolute pinnacle of home console gaming in the first half of the 90s. It was the only system with 100% parity arcade vs. home experience, and near-arcade pricing to get. A system where one game was $200? The base console was more than a Genesis, Sega CD, and 32X combined, BEFORE a single game is purchased? The Neo Geo was the golden chalice; few could drink from it, and those that could had parents with significant financial fortitude. And everyone, including me, parroted the “24-bit” thing, not knowing at the time it was just the most powerful 16-bit system with massive ROM capacity and bandwidth. The pricing was absolutely the #1 reason it was so uncommonly seen outside arcades, and why so many 8-15 year-old school kids (boys, really) told great tales about someone they knew who had one, but they lived out of state…
We had a kid like that on our street. He had every console, including the AES. It was kind of sad because you could tell the dad was trying to buy his kids' love since he was a salesman and never around.
As a kid, I only knew NEO GEO arcade games were simply the best! That NEO GEO startup screen is ingrained in my mind. I never knew they actually made a home console, and by the price of it, I'm actually thankful I wasn't aware of it, I would never be able to afford it. They wanted to make the Rolls-Royce of 16-bit consoles, and they did just that.
They were mythical in the '90s. A lot of us wondered if they even existed. One day I was invited to a classmate's birthday party in '96. Her dad was a rich prop provider and had an little mini casino, with a Neo Geo and small library sitting in the corner. I spent a few hours playing Metal Slug and when I asked her dad where he got it, he simply said "don't bother, your parents will kill you if you ask for one". Nowadays you can just buy the console and flash cart or play on a MiSTer FPGA, both of which are pricey options. We really weren't missing out in that much, but it's cool to finally play it again.
Our local Pizza Hut had two NEOGEO cabinets and I absolutely adored them. When I got older, I realized how beautiful their games were. They’re like the analogue record(LP) of video games. Warm and inviting.
That was a beautiful presentation and history of the neo geo,something I longed for as a kid but was always out of reach.thats what life's about wanting the best and that journey of getting there,I never got one as with everything time moves on and now we all have access to the fantastic games we have today.
I was lucky to grow up in upstate New York. We had loads of arcades in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. Every arcade in the 90s had either a 4 or 6 slot, neo Geo arcade machine. Typically the selection was a sports game (baseball stars or street hoop) a puzzle game (puzzle Bobble) a fighting game (fatal fury or art of fighting or samurai Showdown) and a side scroller like metal slug or cyber lip or magician lord.
It’s so nice to see a part of our gaming proto history so well documented. Greetings from a national champion of Sega Virtua Striker from Argentina 🇦🇷!
I owned a NeoGeo as a kid. I only had 4 games for it as they were expensive AF, but it was by far the most fun I've had playing fighting games with friends. Fatal Fury 1&2, Samurai Shodown, and Art of Fighting were incredible games. People would think it was so cool that I could use a memory card at arcades to unlock all sorts of characters.
@@TheSpacemanSpliffwow. how much were each of those NeoGeo cartridges on average? I'm gonna guess you had a nice paper route! Yes? Or were you mowing lawns?
I remember drooling over screenshots of Metal Slug in Babbages catalogs way back in the day. I lived in a very low income area, and never knew anyone with a Neo Geo, but I knew from those screenshots that it had to be something amazing. I didn't actually come across an MVS unit until maybe 2002, and I dumped 5 or 6 bucks into Metal Slug 3. This is a very well researched and informative video, and I appreciate the effort that you put into it. Cheers, Sir!
I am a veteran of the 16 bit Wars and I remember how I longingly stared at Neo Geo ads in video game magazines. The thing and especially the single game cartridges were just crazy expensive. If I remember correctly, a single game cost like 300 to 400 Deutschmarks (150 to 200 US Dollars), which was about as much as a SEGA Mega Drive (Genesis) bundled with 4 games cost back then.
The Neo Geo graphics hardware was very weird everything is made up of sprites that are 16 pixels wide and up to 512 pixels high. The hardware is not tile based it uses 16 bit color (5 bits each for RGB + a "dark" bit so the leftover 1 bit doesn't go to waste) with 12 bits per pixel. Basically it works like VGA 256 color mode but on steroids i.e. there are 4096 16-bit pallet entries and the 12-bit pixel values point to a specific entry and will be displayed using the 16-bit color value stored there. There are no graphics tile layers at all only a non scrolling text layer to be used for the HUD. There are 380 sprites with a maximum of 96 per scanline or 1536 sprite pixels per line. The Sega Genesis by comparison had 80 sprites and a maximum of 320 sprite pixels per scanline) Basically the Genesis could display an entire screen width worth of sprite pixels and the Neo Geo could display just shy of five times that (4.8 screen widths). Though that's not as insanely high as it sounds because you had to build your background sets out of sprites too where other contemporary hardware would use multiple tile layers for that purpose. But there were far less restrictions on parallax scrolling for example you could have a cityscape in the background where every building scrolls by at a different rate and overlap with each other.
When working with sprites only, there's usually less repetition in scenery and it's easier to make evironments look more active and alive with animations. Also, the Neo Geo's total color palette is 65536. Creating a game for this console requires some serious artistic effort, if the goal is to make it look like a Neo Geo game at least.
Why do Jump’n’Runs and RPGs always use tiles? Neither Amiga, ST, PC ( Keen and Tux ) have tiles. The genesis is genius. It renders sprites in the border back to front. Then on the screen it renders on tile background and on top of this one tile foreground. So a single buffer is enough to keep the renderer occupied. But it needs kinda z values of the sprites. Pure z order as in NeoGeo and Jaguar allows translucency.
@@DancesRainyStreets 65536 is 16-bit color, each pallet entry used 5 bits for red green and blue which is only 15 bit, the leftover 1 bit is used as a "dark" bit. Unlike 16-bit color in the PC world where it was 5-6-5 color with green channel having an extra bit of resolution (green was used for the extra bit because the human eye is most sensitive to green)
I remember being scammed by Sega. On the back of Super Monaco GP's Clam Shell case for the Genesis it had screen shots of the Arcade version of the game and it instantly sold me with it's incredible graphics. Once I got it home and started playing I immediately felt betrayal by their "Mistake". I was so upset about it I still remember it 30+ years later.
Man… growing up this console had like mythical unicorn Sasquatch vibes. You’d hear about someone who had it but never saw it yourself. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I had the chance to play one. Felt good man.
Yep! In the UK we all still had 8bit micros that loaded from tapes. No one I knew even had a NES. I remember thinking it wasn't real when hearing about it at school. 😂
The presentation of the history is great, really does this unique Console justice. The Neo-Geo is such a great design aesthetically, so premium and understated and its aged like the finest Wine.
This was a fantastic video. Having a Neo-Geo back in the day was the ultimate flex. I've always wanted one and they are just as expensive today as they were brand new.
An MVS (not sure if thats the right acronym) version was the hardware in the actual arcade machine. It also used carts, if im not mistaken i think it can play the home console carts as well? In any regard its the same exact game, for a fraction of the price, i mean like lmao a fraction its the diff between 500+ usd.
Im not sure about these days, my buddy had one when i lived in Australia back in 9th 10th grade in 2004-2005. The mvs carts at the time were 50 bucks average for 900 dollar home versions. I cant imagine the prices now, im not even going to google it bcuz my wife would kill me cuz id buy it.
If you just want to play and aren't so deep into collecting, a consolized MVS is a cost effective solution. You could get the 161in1 cart, which has most of the games. If you have extra money to spend, you could get a Neo SD Flash cart or Darksoft flash cart.
AES and MVS carts are not directly compatible, the electrical connections are the same, but it's mechanically different. To this day, MVS carts are a lot cheaper than AES ones, just because MVS hardware was produced in much larger numbers. Or you can save yourself a ton of money and just get an Analogue Pocket or MiSTer FPGA, both of which run Neo Geo titles perfectly at a fraction of the price.
When I was a kid the Neo-Geo was the holy grail of consoles, most only dreamt of the console, luckily we had an amusement arcade on the block fully stocked with the same games
Even knowing all of this and having lived through it, I still watch these vids. Nowadays, it's hard to grasp just how much the evolution of gaming has been in the past. From huge paper floppy disks and atari to 8 bit, to 16 bit, and 3d with 16 and 32, to actually good looking 3d in the ps2/xb era. The pa3/360 era was the last era where console upgrades were huge. Everything from ps360 onwards is only marginally better looking ganes. The innovation and huge difference from previous generations is gone.
I feel the same. The huge leaps are far behind. I own a ps5 and meh, the games are good but they haven't advanced so much. We have better resolution and reflections, of course. The gameplay is the same as in 360/Ps3.
Yea, from 92 to 96, we went from wolf 3d to quake. 90-96 consoles went from snes to psx. It was a wild time to game. As you said we are pretty much just higher resolutions from twenty years ago. If you weren’t there you probably can’t comprehend how jaw dropping these leaps were, like you couldn’t believe what you were seeing but there it was. I’m not even sure what a jump like that today would even look like. Just like when I was playing dragon warrior on the snes, absolutely captivated, little did I know 8 years later I’d be on ff7 and you couldn’t have made my mind visualize what it would look with even the best attempts of Hollywood.
I bought a Neo Geo in 1990 and kept it for about a year. There was a shop fairly nearby that let you trade in old games for new ones at an extortionate price but cheaper than buying another cartridge. In the end it was just too expensive to do this and when the 16 bit nintendo came out I traded it in for that. Great hardware and there were a few games that really did feel arcade compared to other consoles like Art of Fighting, KOF and Nam 1975
Maybe the best video covering the history of such an iconic video game console. Your research and presentation were excellent, thank you so much for the rich and valuable information. Very captivating. Here in Brazil, most Neo Geos appeared to play in rental places, we usually paid by every 15 minutes. Good times.
I remember seeing the box for the Neo Geo at Babbages for the first time. I'd read about it in EGM but somehow the enormous box really hit home that this was arcade equipment. Then I saw the price and thought "Oh, well I've never play that" lol
I used to go to Babbages all the time, I loved that store. However I don't ever recall seeing a Neo Geo there. I would have started at the box for at least 15 minutes. Longer than I used to stare at the Sega CD console box. This was was in Buffalo NY. I didn't know anyone that owned one and their arcade games were never that popular in my area.
@@PubeStache the one I went to was in the Summit Place Mall in Waterford Michigan. Thats where they had the giant box on display and a few of the game boxes on display too.
Got my first Neogeo back in fall 1994 with Fatal Fury Special and League Bowling in mint condition for only 150$ (of the time). I remember being blowed away by the graphics and the sound. 30 Years later, I own 4 of them, about 20 AES carts of the game I played / I cherish the most. That's the only gaming system I have. everything else is played on PC.
I got 1 as a kid from a friend for cheap as well (200 with 2 joysticks and 2 games). Had to return it in a week after I told my mother what the games cost. This was in 92, I was 11 back then.
@@bigshorty4855 real neogeo fans, I mean those who actually play with it or grew up with it, not the youtube retro-hipsters with 2000$ GAROU Cart in their shelf, were all 11 or 12 in 92 ;)
Always wanted the Neo Geo, and my dad said yes we could buy it but when we got to the shop and they said it was like $1,500 for console and over $500 (in Australia) he said no way. I would like to find one of those hand held ones from 2012 now if possible. Awesome video.
Around 37:10 it's mentioned that Neo-Geo AES games often had unlimited Continues, but I remember it being different; I'm pretty sure that the AES versions of games usually limited the player to a total of 4 credits. In many games, this could be worked around by using a memory card and simply loading a mid-game save with a fresh set of 4 credits. But the default behavior (thankfully) didn't simply allow credit-feeding every time. Anyway, this video was very entertaining, so thank you very much for producing it =)
Another fantastic video! I especially liked how this was a story I never heard before-Neo Geo is a relatively obscure topic but vastly interesting, and it’s great to see someone like you bring it to attention like this. Always a pleasure to watch!
This video is another banger of a history lesson, it's a nice niche as there aren't a ton of videos about this topic, well at least not as many as other launches. Keep up the excellent work!
Perhaps the most focused and timeless 2D games/console. The combination of uniqueness, rarity and art style, driven by both the hardwares capabilities as well as its constraints, really created something special.
Neo Geo, Neo Geo. Four bright buttons and two joysticks. Neo Geo, Neo Geo. Cool red cab and a name that sticks. No one quite did 2D fighters like you did. No one quite did runnin' and gunnin' like you did No one quite did Puzzle Bobble like you did I'll always love my four slot model cause I, I... I played that cab for hours on end to the point where that thing was my only friend. With a heavy machine gun in my hand I beat Metal Slug over and over again. You're 32 bits of endless fun. You're a 1990 revolution. You're ahead of the game. You are the best. You're the SNK king of MVS.
Neo Geo brought 2D arcade games of its time home for real. The next system to do that was Dreamcast, which marked the decline of arcades as now even 3D games were identical at home.
Bought my neo geo in 94. I worked part-time at dunkin' Donuts, starting in 93 at age 13 to save up for the Neo Geo. Got the system and KOF 94 at the same time. I only had 2 games on it. Kof 94 and 95. After that, the imported JP Saturn ports were good enough with their included ram carts that I stopped buying KOF games for my neo geo.
My brother and I was ages 14 and 15 and both made extra money from running newspaper routes. We combined out money to buy every video game console that we wanted and games. I recall both of us badly wanting the Neo Geo and we had the money to buy one. We started doing the math about how many games we could get and the cheapest USED games were $100 and games we actually wanted cost $200+ each we decided to just get a Sega CD instead and later a Jaguar. Even though Sega CD was somewhat disappointing I still think we made the right choice. We loved fighting games though and I can imagine we'd have probably sunk countless hours playing them seeing as how many hours we sunk into SFII and Killer Instinct on SNES and Mortal Kombat on Genesis. Later on we bought a PSX and Nintendo Virtual Boy and N64. PSX and Saturn made Neo Geo pretty much obsolete.
Very comprehensive documentary! At that time SNK and NeoGeo had a divine aura, both in performance and price. I didn’t believe it could run games like in the arcades. Had the opportunity to play it for the first time only in 97 and was really impressed, even already having a good PC and emulators. My favorite fighting game to this day is Garou: Mark of the Wolves, I still play this game and it’s still fun and challenging
I am 42 .... to this day and ever since the 90s , I would looooove to have a neo group.... best controller ever and some of the best beat m ups in history
Neo Geo successfully brought arcade machine quality into the home tv screens. Sadly the age of arcades died out and was replaced with a totally new home console culture.... they couldnt keep up with the new world. like arcade games, Neo Geo has its place in gaming history and I respect them for keeping to their original values. I grew up playing arcade games at every chance i could get, and i always have nostalgia for those happy days❤ I give a salute to Neo Geo - thanks for the memories!
I was a huge NeoGeo fan but i did not know Neogeo AES existed until I was 10 busy spending all my money daily at the arcades. Then I saw the holy grail in the nearby videogame store in 95. The storeowner had left it out for hours for local kids to play. He didn’t cheap out on the game either as it had Samurai Showdown 2 in it. Fast forward to 2018, knowing my love affair with Neogeo, my best friends bought me the AES with KOF95. Cost them a truckload of money just as it would’ve in 1995. Every now and then when Ive had a few drinks, I love playing it, thinking about the middle 90s and that nice storeowner who left it out for us kids to play on.
That was an absolutely fantastic video. I remember as a kid the mystique that the Neo Geo console held. It's strange that the console was so expensive that many of us never got a chance to play it yet the arcade cabinet being so cheap meant that we played a lot of the arcade games because shops etc could afford to have a cabinet on site.
I grew up in the 80's and went to arcades often. Neo Geo games cost more to play, and looked great, but weren't so much better than other games that I would spend the money on them.
I know this was focused on the Neo Geo, but I think the entire piece was a great review of the golden age of console gaming and arcade gaming. Enjoyed this one a lot.
Glad I found this channel, very impressed with the work and effort. Definitely the best documentary on video games I've seen and I learned a lot about SNK/The Neo-Geo.
Back in the early 90s Neo Geo was a myth, a creature of legend; the holy "32" gb grail that some kids in the neighborhood claimed to have played when they went to visit their family who just happened to live on the other side of the country. Like claiming to have found a Shaq rookie card in a random Upper Deck pack, or claiming to be able to hack the cable box so that the Spice Channel would come through perfectly clear, claiming to have played with the Neo Geo was a bragging right for us. A way to let all of the other good for nothings in the neighborhood know that you were top dog.
Making a small supposition to convey emotion or importance instead of just doing it to fill time is a trap many documentarians fall in into, and you don't at all. This is an excellent job, the source graphics gathered & scaling work to make 'em look good is on point, and I'm going to go and watch the others. Killer stuff.
I didn't own a Neo Geo but I got all the collections I could in the PS2/Xbox era. KOF is my go to fighting series these days. Street Fighter was really good up through III but after that it just wasn't the same for me.
Neo Geo AES is still a grail for a lot of people, and for us who grew in the 90s, it has a main spot in our gaming memories, even if most didn't even touch one. Great video!
Always wanted one as a kid. I would play Neo Geo arcade games all day long at local arcade shops. Fatal Fury was one of my all time favourite games! Auch a cool game. And the line up of cool fighting games they had was the best!
Man I remember seeing this console at Toys R Us and the cartridge was like $100 a pop or more. The system was expensive as well. When I played at the arcades I was at awe by the NEO GEO graphics and the unique type of games. I even like the fact they had a memory type credit card that you could use it for both home and arcade. Just an amazing system. If they had made the price more affordable, it would’ve crushed both the NES, SNES and Genesis system period. It was a true 32 bit arcade home gaming system. It was way far ahead of its time. Farther than the Jaguar and Nintendo 64.
Ive been growing up and getting into games at the time of the NES and SNES so when i discoverd the NEo-GEO there at my local games retailer i was shocked how the graphics looked. It was really an arcade cabinet like experience. Alos since there are so many YT videos now around these day that have historic or a "doc-style" to them, i can only say that this one is the best i have every seen. Very well made. Great historic accuracy. Great narration. Althouhg i noticed a "King of Fighting" instead of "King of Fighters"... but i wont tell anyone :D Joking aside it only stood out because the rest was so very well made. Great video.
I remember my brother and I in the early 90s heading to the mall straight to Software Etc with months of money saved up. When brought home we were literally blown away from the difference in graphics and sound for the time. We were also the most popular kids in the neighborhood for some reason! 😁
Always love those neo geo games. Any where i play my emulators I keep my full set of neo geo games on there. As a kid I would of never imagined having an entire neo geo arcade set on a micro sd card among thousands of other arcade games and other retro systems. Gotta love technology.
It was considered 24 bit due to the 24 bit graphics data bus, not because it had a 16 bit and 8 bit processors. Also, the cartridges didn’t hold anywhere near the amount of data as CD. 90 vs. 650 MiB.
I remember hearing about the neo geo as a kid, likely from the sega magazines, but it was a mysterious sort of console, no1 iknew owned one, we just marvelled at it from the magazine pictures lol good times.
the first time i saw the neo geo was at e.b electronics. what shocked me was the price. the games were $200 & the system was almost $1000. i couldn't afford that
Great documentary! Very well put together and narrated. I've always enjoyed when the less mainstream gaming consoles are given a fair shake. Looking forward to seeing what's next!
I sincerely hope you enjoy this video, I loved working on it even if it's really hard to find some reliable sources for such an uncommon console!
Sorry that my English is not perfect, it's not my native language.
Made by Sakharu, voiced over by Brad Ziffer.
We love it Sakharu! Your videos are amazing!
I love your videos, @sakaharubaguette. Can you do the chronicles of the SEGA Dreamcast?
The only retro console from this brand that I own is the Neo Geo Pocket Color, but I love it!
@@sakharubaguette you absolutely crushed it! Every video you have made has been amazing! Keep up the great work!
The only clue I heard that you are not a native speaker:
You switched between present tense language and past tense language. A few modern American and British books try to do all present tense, but the standard is to speak in complete past tense, even if you are imagining or representing things as they happened.
Examples:
Present tense: Sega creatES the Mega Drive, it SELLS well.
Past tense: Sega creatED the MD, it SOLD well.
It’s still a great video, but changing this in future videos will make it more pleasant/professional sounding to a larger English speaking audience.
Also, I grew up during this era, and you did a great job of capturing why we were enchanted by stories of this arcade-at-home system. Again, great job on this video.
I used to work for a mom'n pop's brick and mortar videogame store in the 90's. One day after work I visited a competing toy store to check their pricing. The owner recognized me and we had a chat, he points to an unsold Neogeo box on a shelf collecting dust and asks if I can take it off his hands for a mere 3000kr (roughly 300$/€). Even if we adjust for inflation it was still dirt cheap, so I rushed to the bank and got the money.
Returned home with a Neogeo + Cyberlip, Magician Lord, League Bowling, Blue's Journey, Top Player's Golf & Puzzled.
I paid less for all that than I paid for King of Fighters 94. Good times.
Now that’s an amazing story!
Which country was that in?
It must’ve been so cool to work in a games store in that era.
The 90s had the biggest development of games and working in a shop that time must’ve been great!
I was a child during those times so I grew up with those systems (but I was a computer child, I loved the versatility and the easy cracks lol) so I experienced them but I was to young to work or fully understand the technology.
Nowadays I deeply care about the technology of my childhood and teenage years and want to learn everything about them!
My first home console was the SNES, my first handheld the original DMG Gameboy and my PC a 486, amazing times.
I wish I could go back and live in those days forever!
Do you still have the Neo Geo? :)
@@rolux4853 This was in Sweden, the kr currency I mentioned is Swedish Krona (or SEK), and yes, it was a pretty cool era to work with games. Just before the franchise stores took over.
I sold the system when an emulator known as Neorage started playing games well. Kinda regret it, but I got a good a price. My real retro regret is throwing away a perfectly good CRT monitor, an expensive one too.
@@rolux4853 It was incredible. I remember waiting for generation of console following the 32 / 64 bits era. Devouring every video game magazines I could. My best friend had a Dreamcast with Soulcalibur very early and it blew our mind. Now I can play dreamcast on my phone...
Playing early PC multiplayer with Starcraft broodwar with dial-up internet, with my parents counting the minutes spent so I would not go beyond the 2 hours.
I also remember playing SNES and thinking it would be cool if the CPU could be replaced by another player playing at the same time. Then Mame arrived with the Kaillera module ! Then GGPO ! Also the LAN parties organised during high school to play Counter Strike and Day of Defeat.
Deal of a lifetime.. Do you still have it?
@@rolux4853 Since "kr" in currency stands for "Krona" (meaning crown) or variations thereof, I would say it has to be Danish krone, Estonian kroon, Icelandic króna, Norwegian krone or Swedish krona (or technically Faroese krona). Estonia uses the Euro these days, but the exchange rate against Euro he mentions don't fit the Estonian kroon so Denmark, Sweden or Norway are your best bets.
Neo-Geo will be always a Rolls-Royce of the video consoles.
Ahh tthe 80-90s i miss them so much.
I think the console case was designed after the Lamborghini Countach...the absolute super car of the 80s but for some reason, the neogeo was always called the Rolls Royce of consoles.
@PurpleTeamer because Neo-Geo was a luxury console only for very rich people and if you remember at the beginning the console was only for renting, hotels, etc...in Japan.
Yup. I was fascinated by it but didn't know anybody who actually had one. Maybe they kid I went to school with who had the Atari Jaguar had one.
@John_Locke_108 Neo-Geo was ahead of it's time. 90s were a gold rush of consoles, everyone wanted its slice of the marked but just few knew how to do it.
Most of the tech makers failed like Sega with 32x/Mega CD, Commodore with ACD32, Phillips with CD-I, Apple with Pippin, Atari with Jaguar, Trip Hawkins with 3DO, Nec with Turbografx, etc...
you know whats crazy we are kinda having that Gold rush right now but its for PC handle consoles @@lukasjozef1774
We all wanted the arcade at home back then, little did we know it will be the end of arcades.
Eventually the "port era" came to the rescue with the street fighter 2 series on snes and Genesis, mortal kombat, nba jam, final fight, ninja turtles, man i miss the 90s!
@@supadupa6891 7th gen consoles and PC emulators , destroyed arcades. 2nd and 3rd gen consoles, only showed why arcades were better back then. The original neo geo AES was the only true arcade game home console of its gen. All other systems had to struggle with older arcade games being poorly smudged into a cartridge or onto CD. (PS1 ridge racer was rubbish for example, and even its 2d fighters, missed frames to keep up. Daytona USA had to wait for PS3 to give it a true arcade port outside PC emulation ).
@@Surgicaldamage one thing for sure as a 43 year old, Im glad to have experience the arcade life and times
@@supadupa6891 They were special, and represented video game perfection. Arcade devs had to make things instantly gripping and fun for anyone in ear/eye shot. And they succeeded.
level to level, challenging attractive and addictive on the spot.
I absolutely adore the Neo-Geo. I will always remember my high school graduation night. There was a truck stop a few miles outside of town that had a little cafe in it that sold nasty, greasy burgers and had a small arcade. They had a 4 game Neo cabinet. Me and some friends spent the entire night playing World Heroes 2 and eating those nasty burgers. Damn, damn good times man.
Wholesome
Ah the neo geo mvs, Wish i had the pleasure of playing on one, Although i was fortunate to have played on neo geo arcades at my local arcade place, Such great memories 🥰
I still love World Heroes! I played it in a small cafe.
those "NASTY BURGERS" and World Heroes 2 (or any Neogeo fighter )
Bliss.
I actually recall you telling this story in a comment from ten years ago. What town was this in? Were the burgers actually bad? I remember you saying they were greasy.
That was a legitimately interesting video! Thank a for posting. As a teenager in 1990, the neo geo was a world apart from anything we were playing back then. The thought of a $600 console and $200 games may as well have been a million dollars to us, but it was an amazing machine.
Me and my friends were in the same boat but at least we had the MVS arcade machines
Yeah. It was like the video game version of a Lamborghini, or a Ferrari, totally unobtainable to regular kids like I was one too.
I think my SEGA Mega Drive console together with a bundle of 4 games cost as much as a single Neo Geo game cartridge.
I still vividly remember how I stared longingly at Neo Geo ads and articles in video game magazines.
I was so obsessed with this stuff and would have sold my organs or my soul to be able to afford a Neo Geo, or later the first (front-loader) version of the SEGA CD. It was as if my whole life, my identity, my being would somehow depend on what consoles I had.
Quite pathetic and embarrassing, looking back.
As a little kid in the early to mid-80s, it was all about action figures and other plastic toys and then in the late 80s and early 90s, all about video game consoles.
I genuinely got super involved and emotional about this nonsense too.
The "16 bit War" between Nintendo and SEGA really mattered to me. I was a SEGA fanboy and hated Nintendo and I was genuinely proud of stuff like that the Mega Drive/Genesis version of Street Fighter 2 was 36 MB big while the SNES version was only 30 MG big.
lol
As if that meant that the SEGA version was better, 6 MB better to be precise.
hehehe
Maybe spazzing out like that in my childhood and early teens was a good thing though. Maybe this hyper consumerist part of my brain somehow overheated and burned out or something, because as a adult I relatively early figured out that buying and owning stuff doesn't really make me happy.
There was always that someone who knew someone who had one lol😂
I knew one person with Neo Geo. Safe to say, his parents had money!!!
@@TrangleC that is an accurate reflection of my outlook. The Neo Geo was an obscure system only seen in ads, begging the question "who could afford that?" (More accurately, whose parents would buy them it).
There is nothing like moving house (or refurbing house) to make you want less stuff 😂
A dream come true for children of the 90s.
Even now 30 years later I still collect and play those incredible games.
The Neo-Geo may have had a short few years at the top - but my god, when some kid told you they had one, it was like dropping an atom bomb on the conversation. It's hard to put it into words today, because the difference between the best console today, and the best PC doesnt feel that vast. But a Neo-Geo felt like a quantum computer from the future by comparison.
Yep. I've only seen it once in my childhood at a kids home. It was a real wtf how the hell did u get that moment when the rest of us had Nes.
If a kid at school claimed neo geo ownership the default response was to accuse them of lying.
Ya, the Neo Geo was considered the absolute pinnacle of home console gaming in the first half of the 90s. It was the only system with 100% parity arcade vs. home experience, and near-arcade pricing to get. A system where one game was $200? The base console was more than a Genesis, Sega CD, and 32X combined, BEFORE a single game is purchased? The Neo Geo was the golden chalice; few could drink from it, and those that could had parents with significant financial fortitude. And everyone, including me, parroted the “24-bit” thing, not knowing at the time it was just the most powerful 16-bit system with massive ROM capacity and bandwidth. The pricing was absolutely the #1 reason it was so uncommonly seen outside arcades, and why so many 8-15 year-old school kids (boys, really) told great tales about someone they knew who had one, but they lived out of state…
As a big NeoGeo fan, I have to say this is one of the best videos of SNK history I've ever seen... and with some nice voiceover work, too. Well done!
agree 100%
In school there was one kid whose father bought him a neogeo. I asked my dad and when he found out how much the games cost he just laughed.
We had a kid like that on our street. He had every console, including the AES. It was kind of sad because you could tell the dad was trying to buy his kids' love since he was a salesman and never around.
fuuuuug my dad wouldn’t even buy me a snes or genesis. He wouldve shxt his pants if i asked for a neogeo 😂
Amiga/AtariST guys enjoying super low cost games in 1991.
She was of the belief.If you don't work for something you're really don't want it
Every school seemed to have that one kid that had one! Mine did. He had a rich Saudi dad too.
As a kid, I only knew NEO GEO arcade games were simply the best! That NEO GEO startup screen is ingrained in my mind. I never knew they actually made a home console, and by the price of it, I'm actually thankful I wasn't aware of it, I would never be able to afford it. They wanted to make the Rolls-Royce of 16-bit consoles, and they did just that.
They were mythical in the '90s. A lot of us wondered if they even existed. One day I was invited to a classmate's birthday party in '96. Her dad was a rich prop provider and had an little mini casino, with a Neo Geo and small library sitting in the corner.
I spent a few hours playing Metal Slug and when I asked her dad where he got it, he simply said "don't bother, your parents will kill you if you ask for one".
Nowadays you can just buy the console and flash cart or play on a MiSTer FPGA, both of which are pricey options. We really weren't missing out in that much, but it's cool to finally play it again.
Our local Pizza Hut had two NEOGEO cabinets and I absolutely adored them. When I got older, I realized how beautiful their games were. They’re like the analogue record(LP) of video games. Warm and inviting.
That was a beautiful presentation and history of the neo geo,something I longed for as a kid but was always out of reach.thats what life's about wanting the best and that journey of getting there,I never got one as with everything time moves on and now we all have access to the fantastic games we have today.
Neo Geo the holy Grail of my childhood. I always loved their cabinets because most often they were never more than a quarter.
I was lucky to grow up in upstate New York. We had loads of arcades in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s.
Every arcade in the 90s had either a 4 or 6 slot, neo Geo arcade machine.
Typically the selection was a sports game (baseball stars or street hoop) a puzzle game (puzzle Bobble) a fighting game (fatal fury or art of fighting or samurai Showdown) and a side scroller like metal slug or cyber lip or magician lord.
It’s so nice to see a part of our gaming proto history so well documented.
Greetings from a national champion of Sega Virtua Striker from Argentina 🇦🇷!
THE BEST IS BACK!!!! Can’t wait to watch ANOTHER awesome video game retrospective!! Thank you, Sakharu!
I owned a NeoGeo as a kid. I only had 4 games for it as they were expensive AF, but it was by far the most fun I've had playing fighting games with friends. Fatal Fury 1&2, Samurai Shodown, and Art of Fighting were incredible games. People would think it was so cool that I could use a memory card at arcades to unlock all sorts of characters.
You were a mythical neo geo owner, never found one in the wild.
So you did exist……..
"only had 4 games"
😳😳😳
Did your parents sell your siblings??
@@MostlyPennyCat lmao, no I saved every bit of money I made back then and would buy one game a year LOL.
@@TheSpacemanSpliffwow. how much were each of those NeoGeo cartridges on average? I'm gonna guess you had a nice paper route! Yes? Or were you mowing lawns?
This beast was around $600 cdn when it came out... I used to stare longingly at it and curse my mom for not being a millionaire, lol
“Back in the day” I would’ve gladly helped Hans Gruber plunder Nakatomi plaza if there was a Neo-Geo console in it for each of us
I remember drooling over screenshots of Metal Slug in Babbages catalogs way back in the day. I lived in a very low income area, and never knew anyone with a Neo Geo, but I knew from those screenshots that it had to be something amazing. I didn't actually come across an MVS unit until maybe 2002, and I dumped 5 or 6 bucks into Metal Slug 3.
This is a very well researched and informative video, and I appreciate the effort that you put into it. Cheers, Sir!
I hope you played all those great games on emulators for free later when they became avaliable.
If you haven't, just download them and check em out.
I am a veteran of the 16 bit Wars and I remember how I longingly stared at Neo Geo ads in video game magazines. The thing and especially the single game cartridges were just crazy expensive. If I remember correctly, a single game cost like 300 to 400 Deutschmarks (150 to 200 US Dollars), which was about as much as a SEGA Mega Drive (Genesis) bundled with 4 games cost back then.
This was my dream console. Well, this or the TurboGrafx-CD/PC Engine CD. I was happy to actually play a Sega CD at a friend's house growing up.
The Neo Geo graphics hardware was very weird everything is made up of sprites that are 16 pixels wide and up to 512 pixels high. The hardware is not tile based it uses 16 bit color (5 bits each for RGB + a "dark" bit so the leftover 1 bit doesn't go to waste) with 12 bits per pixel. Basically it works like VGA 256 color mode but on steroids i.e. there are 4096 16-bit pallet entries and the 12-bit pixel values point to a specific entry and will be displayed using the 16-bit color value stored there. There are no graphics tile layers at all only a non scrolling text layer to be used for the HUD. There are 380 sprites with a maximum of 96 per scanline or 1536 sprite pixels per line. The Sega Genesis by comparison had 80 sprites and a maximum of 320 sprite pixels per scanline) Basically the Genesis could display an entire screen width worth of sprite pixels and the Neo Geo could display just shy of five times that (4.8 screen widths). Though that's not as insanely high as it sounds because you had to build your background sets out of sprites too where other contemporary hardware would use multiple tile layers for that purpose. But there were far less restrictions on parallax scrolling for example you could have a cityscape in the background where every building scrolls by at a different rate and overlap with each other.
When working with sprites only, there's usually less repetition in scenery and it's easier to make evironments look more active and alive with animations. Also, the Neo Geo's total color palette is 65536. Creating a game for this console requires some serious artistic effort, if the goal is to make it look like a Neo Geo game at least.
Why do Jump’n’Runs and RPGs always use tiles? Neither Amiga, ST, PC ( Keen and Tux ) have tiles.
The genesis is genius. It renders sprites in the border back to front. Then on the screen it renders on tile background and on top of this one tile foreground. So a single buffer is enough to keep the renderer occupied. But it needs kinda z values of the sprites. Pure z order as in NeoGeo and Jaguar allows translucency.
@@DancesRainyStreets 65536 is 16-bit color, each pallet entry used 5 bits for red green and blue which is only 15 bit, the leftover 1 bit is used as a "dark" bit. Unlike 16-bit color in the PC world where it was 5-6-5 color with green channel having an extra bit of resolution (green was used for the extra bit because the human eye is most sensitive to green)
they knew what they were doing. neogeo games are beautiful
One of the holy grails. I just took the plunge, have an AES coming in from Japan, can`t wait.
I remember being scammed by Sega. On the back of Super Monaco GP's Clam Shell case for the Genesis it had screen shots of the Arcade version of the game and it instantly sold me with it's incredible graphics. Once I got it home and started playing I immediately felt betrayal by their "Mistake". I was so upset about it I still remember it 30+ years later.
Sega did a lot of scummy practices back then to make quick bucks. Kinda like what they do now with Sonic games.
Man… growing up this console had like mythical unicorn Sasquatch vibes. You’d hear about someone who had it but never saw it yourself. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I had the chance to play one. Felt good man.
Yep! In the UK we all still had 8bit micros that loaded from tapes. No one I knew even had a NES. I remember thinking it wasn't real when hearing about it at school. 😂
The presentation of the history is great, really does this unique Console justice. The Neo-Geo is such a great design aesthetically, so premium and understated and its aged like the finest Wine.
This was a fantastic video.
Having a Neo-Geo back in the day was the ultimate flex.
I've always wanted one and they are just as expensive today as they were brand new.
An MVS (not sure if thats the right acronym) version was the hardware in the actual arcade machine. It also used carts, if im not mistaken i think it can play the home console carts as well? In any regard its the same exact game, for a fraction of the price, i mean like lmao a fraction its the diff between 500+ usd.
Im not sure about these days, my buddy had one when i lived in Australia back in 9th 10th grade in 2004-2005. The mvs carts at the time were 50 bucks average for 900 dollar home versions. I cant imagine the prices now, im not even going to google it bcuz my wife would kill me cuz id buy it.
If you just want to play and aren't so deep into collecting, a consolized MVS is a cost effective solution. You could get the 161in1 cart, which has most of the games. If you have extra money to spend, you could get a Neo SD Flash cart or Darksoft flash cart.
AES and MVS carts are not directly compatible, the electrical connections are the same, but it's mechanically different. To this day, MVS carts are a lot cheaper than AES ones, just because MVS hardware was produced in much larger numbers. Or you can save yourself a ton of money and just get an Analogue Pocket or MiSTer FPGA, both of which run Neo Geo titles perfectly at a fraction of the price.
@@JjJetplan Dude, if you want to play the games just use an emulator.
The games are all available to download.
When I was a kid the Neo-Geo was the holy grail of consoles, most only dreamt of the console, luckily we had an amusement arcade on the block fully stocked with the same games
Such alot of work and research put into this educational program
Neo Geo was the stuff of legends. It's 2g games even competed with next gen 32 and 64 bit systems
Its Graphics GPU was 24bit running at 24Mhz
The only prob, was the price of course. It was like buying 2 SNESes with each cartridge.
@WhatIsMatter101 Yes, that's why it was the "stuff of legends" and not common and practical. It was like a Porsche
I still remember the music to this game. Still plays in my head, and I'm in my 40's
Even knowing all of this and having lived through it, I still watch these vids.
Nowadays, it's hard to grasp just how much the evolution of gaming has been in the past.
From huge paper floppy disks and atari to 8 bit, to 16 bit, and 3d with 16 and 32, to actually good looking 3d in the ps2/xb era. The pa3/360 era was the last era where console upgrades were huge.
Everything from ps360 onwards is only marginally better looking ganes. The innovation and huge difference from previous generations is gone.
I feel the same. The huge leaps are far behind. I own a ps5 and meh, the games are good but they haven't advanced so much. We have better resolution and reflections, of course.
The gameplay is the same as in 360/Ps3.
@@matamarcianos7596 exactly, it's only marginal nowadays from ps360 onwards.
Yea, from 92 to 96, we went from wolf 3d to quake. 90-96 consoles went from snes to psx. It was a wild time to game. As you said we are pretty much just higher resolutions from twenty years ago. If you weren’t there you probably can’t comprehend how jaw dropping these leaps were, like you couldn’t believe what you were seeing but there it was. I’m not even sure what a jump like that today would even look like. Just like when I was playing dragon warrior on the snes, absolutely captivated, little did I know 8 years later I’d be on ff7 and you couldn’t have made my mind visualize what it would look with even the best attempts of Hollywood.
I bought a Neo Geo in 1990 and kept it for about a year. There was a shop fairly nearby that let you trade in old games for new ones at an extortionate price but cheaper than buying another cartridge. In the end it was just too expensive to do this and when the 16 bit nintendo came out I traded it in for that. Great hardware and there were a few games that really did feel arcade compared to other consoles like Art of Fighting, KOF and Nam 1975
you traded it for a snes? i get that. Nintendo was the console everybody wanted so peer pressure was a factor. in my hood at least
@@poindextertunesI wanted the SNES anyway but cheaper carts… then I saw pilot wings and Super Mario and it was an easy decision!
Maybe the best video covering the history of such an iconic video game console. Your research and presentation were excellent, thank you so much for the rich and valuable information. Very captivating. Here in Brazil, most Neo Geos appeared to play in rental places, we usually paid by every 15 minutes. Good times.
Wow, this is a very high-quality documentary. Thank you for your hard work.
I was lucky to own one on release, visited SNK in Torrance, CA twice a month, hung out with The Gamelord and the Techs in the warehouse
I remember seeing the box for the Neo Geo at Babbages for the first time. I'd read about it in EGM but somehow the enormous box really hit home that this was arcade equipment. Then I saw the price and thought "Oh, well I've never play that" lol
I miss Babbages so much!!
@@ghfjfghjasdfasdf oh, me too!
I used to go to Babbages all the time, I loved that store. However I don't ever recall seeing a Neo Geo there. I would have started at the box for at least 15 minutes. Longer than I used to stare at the Sega CD console box. This was was in Buffalo NY. I didn't know anyone that owned one and their arcade games were never that popular in my area.
@@PubeStache the one I went to was in the Summit Place Mall in Waterford Michigan. Thats where they had the giant box on display and a few of the game boxes on display too.
I have almost no interest in the Neo Geo but all of your other documentaries have been so amazing I just can't pass it up!
Have you ever played any Neo Geo games?
Astonishingly massive amount of work for this one I am sure. 100% worth the sub on just this one video alone. You have my respect good sir.
Thank you Sakharu for another incredible video, you're one of the best to ever do it! ❤️
This was an excellent video. Thank you for this.
Got my first Neogeo back in fall 1994 with Fatal Fury Special and League Bowling in mint condition for only 150$ (of the time).
I remember being blowed away by the graphics and the sound.
30 Years later, I own 4 of them, about 20 AES carts of the game I played / I cherish the most. That's the only gaming system I have. everything else is played on PC.
I got 1 as a kid from a friend for cheap as well (200 with 2 joysticks and 2 games). Had to return it in a week after I told my mother what the games cost.
This was in 92, I was 11 back then.
You sound like a bozo
@@bigshorty4855
real neogeo fans, I mean those who actually play with it or grew up with it, not the youtube retro-hipsters with 2000$ GAROU Cart in their shelf, were all 11 or 12 in 92 ;)
Always wanted the Neo Geo, and my dad said yes we could buy it but when we got to the shop and they said it was like $1,500 for console and over $500 (in Australia) he said no way. I would like to find one of those hand held ones from 2012 now if possible. Awesome video.
Around 37:10 it's mentioned that Neo-Geo AES games often had unlimited Continues, but I remember it being different; I'm pretty sure that the AES versions of games usually limited the player to a total of 4 credits. In many games, this could be worked around by using a memory card and simply loading a mid-game save with a fresh set of 4 credits. But the default behavior (thankfully) didn't simply allow credit-feeding every time.
Anyway, this video was very entertaining, so thank you very much for producing it =)
Another fantastic video! I especially liked how this was a story I never heard before-Neo Geo is a relatively obscure topic but vastly interesting, and it’s great to see someone like you bring it to attention like this. Always a pleasure to watch!
This video is another banger of a history lesson, it's a nice niche as there aren't a ton of videos about this topic, well at least not as many as other launches. Keep up the excellent work!
Perhaps the most focused and timeless 2D games/console. The combination of uniqueness, rarity and art style, driven by both the hardwares capabilities as well as its constraints, really created something special.
Neo Geo, Neo Geo. Four bright buttons and two joysticks.
Neo Geo, Neo Geo. Cool red cab and a name that sticks.
No one quite did 2D fighters like you did.
No one quite did runnin' and gunnin' like you did
No one quite did Puzzle Bobble like you did
I'll always love my four slot model cause I, I...
I played that cab for hours on end to the point where that thing was my only friend.
With a heavy machine gun in my hand I beat Metal Slug over and over again.
You're 32 bits of endless fun. You're a 1990 revolution.
You're ahead of the game. You are the best. You're the SNK king of MVS.
Neo Geo brought 2D arcade games of its time home for real.
The next system to do that was Dreamcast, which marked the decline of arcades as now even 3D games were identical at home.
Bought my neo geo in 94. I worked part-time at dunkin' Donuts, starting in 93 at age 13 to save up for the Neo Geo. Got the system and KOF 94 at the same time. I only had 2 games on it. Kof 94 and 95. After that, the imported JP Saturn ports were good enough with their included ram carts that I stopped buying KOF games for my neo geo.
Neo geo was something I wish for as a kid but the cost of one just a dream.
Nothing makes me happier than seeing a recommendation from this channel. These documentaries deserve a lot more views.
My brother and I was ages 14 and 15 and both made extra money from running newspaper routes. We combined out money to buy every video game console that we wanted and games. I recall both of us badly wanting the Neo Geo and we had the money to buy one. We started doing the math about how many games we could get and the cheapest USED games were $100 and games we actually wanted cost $200+ each we decided to just get a Sega CD instead and later a Jaguar. Even though Sega CD was somewhat disappointing I still think we made the right choice. We loved fighting games though and I can imagine we'd have probably sunk countless hours playing them seeing as how many hours we sunk into SFII and Killer Instinct on SNES and Mortal Kombat on Genesis. Later on we bought a PSX and Nintendo Virtual Boy and N64. PSX and Saturn made Neo Geo pretty much obsolete.
Very comprehensive documentary! At that time SNK and NeoGeo had a divine aura, both in performance and price. I didn’t believe it could run games like in the arcades. Had the opportunity to play it for the first time only in 97 and was really impressed, even already having a good PC and emulators. My favorite fighting game to this day is Garou: Mark of the Wolves, I still play this game and it’s still fun and challenging
Price was astronomical at the time but dedicated gamers were happy to pay it. The Neo Geo was on another level to anything else.
I am 42 .... to this day and ever since the 90s , I would looooove to have a neo group.... best controller ever and some of the best beat m ups in history
I loved my Neo Geo Pocket. Saved and bought it from an import store, and used to take it to secondary school.
Nothing will ever beat the NGPC for sheer charm.
Neo Geo successfully brought arcade machine quality into the home tv screens. Sadly the age of arcades died out and was replaced with a totally new home console culture.... they couldnt keep up with the new world. like arcade games, Neo Geo has its place in gaming history and I respect them for keeping to their original values. I grew up playing arcade games at every chance i could get, and i always have nostalgia for those happy days❤ I give a salute to Neo Geo - thanks for the memories!
I was a huge NeoGeo fan but i did not know Neogeo AES existed until I was 10 busy spending all my money daily at the arcades.
Then I saw the holy grail in the nearby videogame store in 95. The storeowner had left it out for hours for local kids to play. He didn’t cheap out on the game either as it had Samurai Showdown 2 in it.
Fast forward to 2018, knowing my love affair with Neogeo, my best friends bought me the AES with KOF95. Cost them a truckload of money just as it would’ve in 1995. Every now and then when Ive had a few drinks, I love playing it, thinking about the middle 90s and that nice storeowner who left it out for us kids to play on.
Great job, dude! Very interesting and entertaining stuff!
That was an absolutely fantastic video. I remember as a kid the mystique that the Neo Geo console held. It's strange that the console was so expensive that many of us never got a chance to play it yet the arcade cabinet being so cheap meant that we played a lot of the arcade games because shops etc could afford to have a cabinet on site.
I grew up in the 80's and went to arcades often. Neo Geo games cost more to play, and looked great, but weren't so much better than other games that I would spend the money on them.
I know this was focused on the Neo Geo, but I think the entire piece was a great review of the golden age of console gaming and arcade gaming. Enjoyed this one a lot.
Wait I just watched this video and it's fantastic from research to production. How has this channel only got 16k subscribers??
I am really thankful for your massive effort in your videos. Thanks, man.
Glad I found this channel, very impressed with the work and effort. Definitely the best documentary on video games I've seen and I learned a lot about SNK/The Neo-Geo.
I didn't quite realize this came out around the same time as the SNES, thought it was mid to late 90s. Must've been mindblowing.
A friend of mine had a NeoGeo with Samurai Shodown and this huge controller. I loved the game and the zooming.
Back in the early 90s Neo Geo was a myth, a creature of legend; the holy "32" gb grail that some kids in the neighborhood claimed to have played when they went to visit their family who just happened to live on the other side of the country.
Like claiming to have found a Shaq rookie card in a random Upper Deck pack, or claiming to be able to hack the cable box so that the Spice Channel would come through perfectly clear, claiming to have played with the Neo Geo was a bragging right for us. A way to let all of the other good for nothings in the neighborhood know that you were top dog.
i think it was 32 bit
The Spice Channel! 😆 Now there's a fuzzy, distorted blast to the past...
This channel is going to be one of the next all-time greats
Making a small supposition to convey emotion or importance instead of just doing it to fill time is a trap many documentarians fall in into, and you don't at all. This is an excellent job, the source graphics gathered & scaling work to make 'em look good is on point, and I'm going to go and watch the others. Killer stuff.
Another fantastic history video. Thanks for sharing, this definitely belongs in my “gaming history” playlist 😁
As Steve Bania says to Seinfeld, ‘That’s gold, Jerry!!’
Great preso OP
That nam 1975 graphics is above the standards by that time. DAMN!
I didn't own a Neo Geo but I got all the collections I could in the PS2/Xbox era. KOF is my go to fighting series these days. Street Fighter was really good up through III but after that it just wasn't the same for me.
Neo Geo AES is still a grail for a lot of people, and for us who grew in the 90s, it has a main spot in our gaming memories, even if most didn't even touch one. Great video!
It was really cheap in the early 2000 and until the COVID farce and the retro hype cancer happened.
At least in Japan.
Now prices are thru the roof.
Always wanted one as a kid. I would play Neo Geo arcade games all day long at local arcade shops. Fatal Fury was one of my all time favourite games! Auch a cool game. And the line up of cool fighting games they had was the best!
Spectacular documentary! I only knew one kid who owned a Neo Geo when it first came out.
This is the first video of yours that I've seen. I just want to tell you what an amazing job you've done. Can't wait to see more.
The amount of footage and information you found is the best I’ve seen about this console. Excellent work. I’ve subscribed!
Great video. Really enjoyed watching this, thank you.
Man I remember seeing this console at Toys R Us and the cartridge was like $100 a pop or more. The system was expensive as well. When I played at the arcades I was at awe by the NEO GEO graphics and the unique type of games. I even like the fact they had a memory type credit card that you could use it for both home and arcade.
Just an amazing system. If they had made the price more affordable, it would’ve crushed both the NES, SNES and Genesis system period.
It was a true 32 bit arcade home gaming system. It was way far ahead of its time. Farther than the Jaguar and Nintendo 64.
Yes, sir! Another baguette sandwich of retro gaming goodness. 😎
Another 5-star console documentary like the Nintendo 64 chronicles. Thanks for the excellent content!!
Ive been growing up and getting into games at the time of the NES and SNES so when i discoverd the NEo-GEO there at my local games retailer i was shocked how the graphics looked. It was really an arcade cabinet like experience. Alos since there are so many YT videos now around these day that have historic or a "doc-style" to them, i can only say that this one is the best i have every seen. Very well made. Great historic accuracy. Great narration. Althouhg i noticed a "King of Fighting" instead of "King of Fighters"... but i wont tell anyone :D Joking aside it only stood out because the rest was so very well made. Great video.
It took 41 minutes to mention Samurai Shodown my favorite NeoGeo game. I have a NeoGeo mini sitting on my desk at work
I remember my brother and I in the early 90s heading to the mall straight to Software Etc with months of money saved up. When brought home we were literally blown away from the difference in graphics and sound for the time. We were also the most popular kids in the neighborhood for some reason! 😁
Excellent video documenting the history of the Neo-Geo. Thanks for putting this together!
This was an excellent, well produced documentary.
What an incredible documentary!! It's very well made and kept my attention for the entire time. Great work!
Always love those neo geo games. Any where i play my emulators I keep my full set of neo geo games on there. As a kid I would of never imagined having an entire neo geo arcade set on a micro sd card among thousands of other arcade games and other retro systems. Gotta love technology.
I just discovered your channel tonight. I've spent most of my 12 hr. work shift watching your videos! Great work; I can't wait to see more!
It was considered 24 bit due to the 24 bit graphics data bus, not because it had a 16 bit and 8 bit processors. Also, the cartridges didn’t hold anywhere near the amount of data as CD. 90 vs. 650 MiB.
What a well rounded documentary! It’s great 👍
I remember hearing about the neo geo as a kid, likely from the sega magazines, but it was a mysterious sort of console, no1 iknew owned one, we just marvelled at it from the magazine pictures lol good times.
This was an excellently put together documentary of a key piece of video game history. Well done!
the first time i saw the neo geo was at e.b electronics. what shocked me was the price. the games were $200 & the system was almost $1000. i couldn't afford that
Amazing video, top notch production. A very enjoyable watch. Thank you.
Great documentary! Very well put together and narrated. I've always enjoyed when the less mainstream gaming consoles are given a fair shake. Looking forward to seeing what's next!
I wish I could have had a neo geo console growing up. It had my favourite games that I always went for in the arcade.