Well, here's my take on it. If SNK had never released the Neo Geo, that is an arcade (and later home) system that uses easy to use, tough, durable cartridges to contain the PCBs, far fewer people would ever have pursued playing/collecting the games to the extent they did. The ease (but unfortunately not cost!) of getting the cartridges, and their exact correspondence (arcade to home) was a big selling point for me. The first few games really impressed me, way back in the beginning (Magician Lord, NAM75 being the two big ones), but later games REALLY blew me away (the entire Samurai series, some of the shooters, and of course the Metal Slug and Last Blade series).
The Neo hardware is so well designed, so far ahead of its time, that here we are over 10 years later and a few new games are still coming out for it. Thats utterly AMAZING, a tribute to the design of the system.
But of course, all this could also never have occurred if SNK itself hadn't bought the rights to this hardware over 10 years ago. On that point, I heard that SNK didn't actually develop the Neo hardware, but that they bought the design from another company. Anyone else heard this?
Anyway, its hard for me, ultimately, to separate the two any more. Without the Neo hardware (which is phenomenal!), SNK would not have reached its status among fans here, but without SNK, the Neo hardware would likely have been severely underutilized.
Oh, and on that point, has anyone ever wondered what it would be like if a DIFFERENT company had bought the design of the Neo Geo arcade hardware and developed for it instead? Such as Konami, Namco, Sega, or other big arcade manufacturers? Now THAT is pretty weird to think about . . .
Anyway, for me the convergence of the Neo Geo with SNK was a kind of perfect union, and both together are an amazing combination. I can't really separate them, because neither one alone would have been remotely as incredible as they both are together . . .
