What the Neo Geo CD SHOULD have been....

Mouse_Master

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OK, what do people think the Neo CD should have been like?

My opinions.....

When it was released, it should have had a double or a quad speed drive, should have come with 64 megabytes of RAM (Maybe more) and everything else could be cool...

Why the RAM? So it could emulate the Neo Cart system... Have identical copies of the cart games on CD, and load them into RAM to play the game. Instant Neo Geo compatibility, no lost frames, no load times between stages....

Keith
 

Dolphin

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Were the NGCD to have shipped with 64 MB of RAM, the system would've carried an ungodly price tag, even by SNK's standards. RAM was considerably more expensive at the time of the NGCDs release, and most PCs didn't even have 64 MB of ram at that time due to the prohibitive cost of RAM. I think the whole point of the NGCD was cost cutting, therefore SNK probably didn't even consider packing their console with 64 MB of RAM. The paltry 58 Megabits of RAM the NGCD shipped with, at the time, added quite a bit to the system's price tag, and I can only imagine what 64 MB of RAM went for back in 1994... Perhaps SNK should've held off producing the CD console until it became more technologically feasible (more RAM at an affordable price, faster CD-ROM drive, etc).
 
C

charles

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Good point. They should have thought ahead a little and included an expansion cartridge port like with the Sega Saturn.

At a later date they could've released a RAM cart to speed load times. That way, as the meg count got higher and RAM got cheaper they could release a new cart every year or two.
 

Master Terry Bogard

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I agree w/ you guys. If I remember correctly, Neo Geo Cd (and later CDZ) was released as a single speed, because they had so much single drives at their storage and wnated to get rid of it . They certainly had the option to make it a double drive, but they wanted to save $$$. I still play the CDZ, though, now that I got a home system, I am playing fewer and fewer times on the cd system. I only play non-fighting games that loads faster.
 

Mouse_Master

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Well, for the price of the unit new, it was not worth the cost. 8 Megs of RAM (OK, 7) was not expensive in 1994, and Single Speed CD Roms were already dated. The chips used to build the CD were already much cheaper to manufactor.

Thinking back to 94, PC CD (1x) $75
RAM was anywhere from $9 to $25 a meg depending on speed... And that is SiMMs, not just the chips...

32 megs of RAM would not have upped the price too much, me thinks...

Keith
 

Dion

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When people say "home" system, it doesn't sound right. All of thse "systems in your home" are home systems.
There is the Neo AES, Neo MVS, Neo CD, and Neo CDZ.
This makes it a lot more correct in terms of systems descriptions.

The "NeoGeo" for home use was always called and marketted as the....
"NeoGeo Advanced Entertainment System."

Which is the "Neo AES."

Dion
www.neogeofreak.com


[This message has been edited by Dion (edited August 29, 2000).]
 

Viewpoint

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Who cares? I mean afterall everyone here gets the general idea. It's not like you're talking to a bunch of Scrubs.

Overall I agree with DL also. The NeoCD system would have been very VERY costly with that much Ram. I would have guessed in the $800.00 range if anything. Overall I would have done it personally seeing as you could market the system with games that cost only a fraction of the carts and having your Neo games on CD perfectly ported. Ah well them's the breaks.

BonusKun
 
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