What is it about the Neo Geo that makes it's games so hard to port to other consoles?

This was always a big concern of mine back in the 32-bit age as Neo Geo ports on the PSX and Saturn were simply awful. Even with the ram expansion carts for the Saturn, the ports were still horrible. Then, we have the 2D mega powerhouse; the Dreamcast. Arguably the most powerful 2D console of all time, wasn't even able to pull off arcade perfect ports of games like MOTW and Last Blade 2. Why is this so? I know that the Neo Geo is a 2D hoarse, but is it really that powerful that next-gen systems like the X-Box and GC couldn't even do perfect ports of The KOF 2000 or 2001? Any info on the subject would be greatly appreciated.

That is the easiest question to answer...

1) Neo Geo AES has no load times...all disc based systems have load times
2) All current systems are designed mainly for 3D games and may not have the same 2D power in games as the Neo Geo does

Well except for KOF, and a couple of the other fighters, and Metal Slug, the games really don't have enough mainstream appeal to turn a profit on a mainstream console.

If SNK thought they would be making so much money, you'd see all the Neo games on every console.

gameplay control, character designs, depth and attention to detail, and music that can complement all that.

It doesn't have to be on the NEO GEO, but you know what, it usually is. I'm usually quite confident that I'll be happy with my game purchases on this system, as opposed to the PS2, where I got DMC and realized that it just wasn't what I wanted.

I guess when you charge $300 for a game it better not let you down...

On a technical level, the NEO GEO was made to push sprites. The 16 bit systems were, but were designed to be cost effective (comparitively), so their power was not on the NEO GEOs level.

Once you got into the 32-bit systems, they had more power. The Saturn was a sprite-pusher, while the PSX was not. However, once you got to these systems, you were now on optical media. CD's are great, because you can store as much as you want on them, and use multiple disks. BUT now you get into the issue of RAM. The NEO GEO used very lage, very colorful sprites, with lots of frames of animation. By themselves, one fighter may not be alot. But when you get into 3-on-3, with super-high color backgrounds, you get a LOT of data. Whereas carts could load the data near-instantaously, CD based systems had to load bit at a time. To avoid data loading in mid round, or mid level, developers tried tricks like cutting out frames of animation, reducing color pallete, shrinking sprites, etc.

It is technically possible to make a perfect port right now. But it would load every 4 seconds, and be horribly unplayable.

If some developer had the cajones, the XboX would be the perfect system. System loving or hating aside, it has the technical prowess needed. With 64 megs of unified RAM,, and a HD for caching data, it might be able to do it.

Oh yea I forgot one point, that SNK is lazy as hell when it comes to ports, if capcom can do it, SNK could do it, but for some reason they choose not too.

Its understandable why the psx can't do perfect port.It has very little VRAM and RAM and also it ain't a 2d powerhouse.The saturn ports were good but still not arcade perfect.The DC is more than capable of handling perfect ports.99 evolution so far was some of the best home ports ever.SNK did not make all the DC KOFs to be original like the arcade version.Instead they went the extra mile and enhanced it.Kof DM 1999 on DC is a good port except for the small sprites and the resetting of the music between rounds.I feel that its the developer's sloopy programming that caused the DC port of 98 to be a little short of the arcade version.It does has cleaner and better looking backgrounds when compared to kof 98 in arcade.DC could do any kof perfectly minus the enhancements.MOTW could have beeen a perfect port if it weren't for the off-synch voices.Its caused by poor programming.The same goes with LB2.

Some of the reasons why the neo ports on other consoles were "inferior" is due to poor programming or a less powerful console(psx).

[ February 16, 2002: Message edited by: Devil_Gans ]</p>

Nuff said Caris, SNK's programing teams (for ports any way) were a bunch of lazy bastards.

Its basically down to the ram that the Neo deal with - its a little unknown fact that the neo had the ability to split the information into 4 and work that way - so imagine it this way.

The megadrive's biggest cart was 24 meg (Streetfighter) if that could do the same as the Neo the amount of stuff that could fit onto the 24 meg cart could easily be done on a 6 meg cart

Just split's the information into 4 and works altogether - i read about this online and hopefully Shawn or Bobak can back me up

If it wasn't for RAM, even Saturn and PSX could make "perfect" ports of neo games. But RAM limitations made this impossible.

Adctual systems are benchmarked with polygons, it doesn't mean they aren't very powerfull on 2D side (drawing a sprite is one of the basics). Say a system could pull out 150000 sprites, another one 170000... What would be the difference as no game use as much sprites ?

Ports aren't and will NEVER be perfect, because they are PORTS. CPU is different, coding methods are different, sound processor is different, etc etc... That's why a game would never feel exactly the same.

It works in both ways, a genesis game won't have the same feeling on a neo, because it's a PORT. Does it mean the genesis is more powerful than the neo ? No.

Aim of ports is to make "easy" money by porting a game to another system with minimal fee. What would be the interest if you spend huge amounts of money making the port perfect ?

As for DC garou, if it wasn't ininterlaced high resolution mode, it would be the most accruate port you could ask for.

Don't expect perfection, it doesn't exist.

Thanks for all the responses everyone as I learned quite a bit! It's great to see that the Neo Geo is still unmatched in terms of raw 2D power even by today's standards, but it's a great sentiment of SNK's sheer sense of quality. Doesn't it just make you proud to own a Neo?

I just rack it up to: the neo was built up to a standard, not to a price.