The History of Neo Geo

Neo Geo AES

Neo Geo MVS

The Neo Geo (also known as Neo Geo AES) was released in Japan in 1990. It is the console version of the Neo Geo MVS arcade game, also released in 1990 by SNK. SNK was founded in 1978, and entered the arcade world in 1979. The NeoGeo MVS and AES had the same hardware, which consisted of a MC68k central processor and a coprocessor, also used as an audio controller, Zilog Z80, with 64kb of RAM, 74kb of video and a YM2610 sound chip with 15 sound channels, 4 of which were FM. Its number of available colors was 65 thousand, with 4 thousand colors on the screen, not even close to competing with other consoles on the market.

Memory Cards

An unprecedented accessory for consoles was the 2kb memory card to record game progress. All of this had a high cost, more than three times the price of a regular console, in addition to each cartridge costing the same as the regular console. Initially, it was released only to be rented to video game stores. Later, it was released commercially due to its demand, despite its high cost. Consoles like the Mega Drive were called arcades at home, but their ports did not have the exact fidelity that NeoGeo games had. Their cartridges were larger than those used in the arcade version of the hardware, since they shared technical components with the console.

Neo Geo CD

In 1994, the NeoGeo CD was released, making the hardware and games cheaper and increasing the video memory by 4MB, the sound by 1MB and the RAM by 2MB, but lacking in the speed of 1x the CD-ROM, which made loading times very slow. Because of this, it was soon overtaken by the 5th generation consoles that had ports of their games that were also quite faithful to the arcade versions. The games were basically the same on the three versions of SNK's hardware, with the exception of the ports for NeoGeo CD that had the addition of the songs in digital CD quality. In addition, some MVS games that had not been released on the AES were released on the CD console, such as Puzzle Bobble and Neo Drift Out. Despite this, it received few ports of the MVS. The console also had exclusive games, such as Samurai Shodown RPG, KOF '96 Neo Collection, Ironclad and others.

Neo Geo Games

Among the successful Neo Geo game franchises are the fighting games Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury, The King of Fighters, World Heroes, The Last Blade, Samurai Shodown, Garou, Kizuna Encounter, Waku Waku 7, King of the Monsters, the run and gun Metal Slug, the shmup Aero Fighter, the puzzle game Magical Drop, Puzzle de Pon, Puzzle Bobble, the action game Neo Bomberman, the sports game Super Sidekicks, Baseball Stars, Stakes Winner, the beat'em up Sengoku, among others. Most of the games were from SNK itself. The others were mainly from Taito, Data East, Saurus and ADK. The consoles were released until 1997 and the games until 2004.