And here's some things that couldn't easily be condensed into the list, or were too lacking in complete information:
• In the NeoGeoCD version of SamShoII you can play as Kuroko (the referee-guy) by standing on some character, pressing up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, blablabla or something. His weapon are the flags he always uses and he has a big fireball as in Art of Fighting style.
• AOF 3 (i believe) has time release secrets/events. Something happens, I believe on Ryo's, Roberts, etc. birthdays. I'd find the thread, but the search is broken right now.
• The only reason I was able to beat Sengoku 1 on AES was because of a ridiculous exploit trick I accidentally found: jumping constantly. If you get a up a power up ball, the new sword won't form in your hands till you stop jumping! So you get the most time out of every power up in the game because you chose when to activate the next one.
• A BackGround Charecter in Metal Slug III is based on Ben Herman.
• In Metal Slug X, if you use a debug BIOS, you can access "secret" incomplete-looking levels that appear to be level areas used in Metal Slug 3! You can wander around these levels and use vehicles such as a submarine and gyrocopter just like in MS3. If you were wondering why the meg count increased by over 100 between Metal Slug 2 and X, then this is your answer. There are also other debugging features that you can toggle on and off while exploring the areas.
• in the King Of Fighters for the US Neo-Geo CD/home cart, Mai's boobies do not bouncy-bouncy. However, this "feature" was accessible with a code which was at the high score screen, press A and D on controller 1 simultaneously as you press B and C on controller 2, this code also made the blood appear.
• In Neo Turf Masters, if you select the long hitter Mandel, there are several short cuts to albatrosses and even hole in ones. One such adventure is the Island shot on the Austrailian course. By hitting a full hard shot at the (lowest point) highest trajectory, the ball will bounce off the island and roll across the green nearest the pin. Your next shot will be for Albatross.. Oh yeah, practice makes perfect. If done just right the graphics get really strange. This is kinda like an Easter Egg Neo style.
• In Pulstar, anyone ever notice how the default high scores are the chassis codes of Japanese cars?
-R32 (Nissan Skyline R32)
-Z32 (Nissan 300ZX Z32)
-FD3 (Mazda RX7 FD3S)
-JZA (Supra MkIII/IV JZA70/JZA80)
-NSX (Honda/Acura NSX)
• Did you know in Magical Drop 3 there are 6 secret characters that can be selected if you know the tarot card number of any of the characters? Just hit "C" 3 times while over the character whose number you know, when the timer reaches their number.
20 - Judgment
19 - Sun
17 - Star
15 - Devil
13 - Death
11 - Justice
8 - Strength
7 - Chariot
6 - Lovers
5 - Hierophant
4 - Emperor
3 - Empress
2 - High Priestess
1 - Magician
0 - Fool
Also Father Strength can be selected by selecting Strength by holding "C" and pressing "A & B" at the same time.
• older NGH units have wrong values for the video circuitry in disregard of the values recommended by sony at the video encoder datasheet, this results in a darker picture, snk fixed the mistake at the later units and so they have a much brighter picture.
The myth that the earlier units have better picture was caused by the latest and more common NGH revision the 3-6 which consists of half of the NGH systems ever made, it has a design problem at the video circuit that causes vertical lines when displaying RGB. It's easily fixed making it perform on par with board revision 3-5 which is the best stock unit as for RGB quality.
The original and inconclusive research done by nfg, he had no access to most of the systems revisions, made wrong assumptions and didn't knew how to fix the RGB video problem at the 3-6 unit which caused striping.
http://nfggames.com/games/neorgb2/
MKL research on the matter, with access to all board revisions a conclusive explanation is offered, since the picture links are broken I'll post another link to the fix below.
http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2401734&postcount=27
The 3-6 RGB fix link, half of the NGH owners have this board revision:
http://www.jamma-nation-x.com/jammax/tutorials.html?show=aesvideolines
edit: how to know your NGH revision number without opening the system:
http://www.jamma-nation-x.com/jammax/tutorials.html?show=aesrevision
Bits on Pre-Neo Geo
The Alpha68k (name from MAME) is more than likely an early version of the Neo Geo hardware. This can be verified by looking at the games in MAME. Alpha68k games are 256x224 using 2048 colors. The Neo Geo is 320x224 using 4096 colors.
The flip bit for the sprites is bit 0 and 1 for Neo Geo, and bits 15 and 16 for the Alpha68k system. (Taken right from the MAME source).
I've always wondered why they didn't have a tilemap like 99.99% of the other hardware of the time.
I'm not sure about making programming easier (more flexible maybe), but the circuit design make sense.
the Alpha68k, was used by Alpha Denshi as early at 1987, and SNK in 1988. SNK also started using the SNK68k system is 1988. The systems components and memory map are very close in design. Then there's the Beast Busters hardware, which isn't close to either, but does have the scaled sprites. Interesting is that the hardware components of the Neo Geo (12 Mhz 68000 4 Mhz Z80 YM2610 sound chip) more closely match the Beast Busters hardware than any other. There is almost no connection between this board and any of the others, though.
SNK never designed the Neo Geo hardware system. Eiji Fukatsu himself designed it as an improved version of his 68K system. It features the essential sprite tiling system compressed into 3 chips, a scalar table in ROM function and a redone sound system as well as cartridge interface.
Bits on the corporate Neo
By Nightmare Tony:
Kernow, Forever did remmeber right. If you have a schematic to any Neo geo system, it will have Alpha Denshi on it, along with their head wildman, Eiji Fukatsu. The system he actually did as a full board previously, first starting with a game called Battlefield (renamed to Time Soldiers). Romstar had the board redone also as Sky Soldiers and Gold Medalist. Sky Adventure also used the same system.
As a general rule, graphic systems of the time used a background graphics, text and sprite graphics. Eiji instead used the sprites as tiles for the background, making programming and circuit design a tad simpler.
The US president Marty was also an accomplished musician, magician and movie actor. Kept that to himself, though. Amazing talents.
John Barone ended up marrying Susan Jarocki, who's dad Stan Jarocki ran this company called Bally-Midway. Games ran in that family, I guess.
The tech department was an absolute blast. Between big band music, Rush Limbaugh, death metal and some absolutely wierd music, it was noisy and fun. For the entire US branch, though as Chad mentions, us being a broken arm, we did the best we could and had a lot of fun doing it.
One competition which was a full tradition was a daily tech depamrtment competition of Thrash rally set up in 4 cabinets. I had my own cabinet modified with a steering wheel (showed at a trade show but no interest) which helped out immensely. The competition was quite insane and we all had a real good time.
Romstar had been tied in with SNK back and forth, from being originally SNK USA to employees trading back and forth. At least 5 employees of Romstar (including yours truly) ended up at SNK at various times.
Late night shipping runs included major pizza party action. We all worked like bulldogs and got the product out the door. When shipping time came round, RUSH was the order of the day.
The Samurai Shodown trade advertisement with several people worshipping a cabinet with the "we're not worthy" included Game Lord, his sidekick George, some of the warehouse crew and the two sons of our graphics artist.
The funniest program bomb I ever ran across personally was from a curious invention I was doing, to make a Neo Geo into a redemption game, giving out tickets. It had some good interest at the show and it earned like mad at the local test arcade. Then one morning, a bit of forgotten programming showed itself when the ticket photocell got dirty and gave out over 7,000 tickets. Whoops! (the program rewrite didnt finish as that is when the closure announcement came in).
I had worked at Romstar previously, we had connectes with SNK. Back when the SNK home division was first started, Mr. Yasuki had sent me over to help solve some video output issues with the TV interface which was causing FCC failure problems. The solve was slightly detuning the crystal and the extra grounding wires to the crystal and area.
Romstar had moved up North as Capcom was part owner and had it decided, and it was so. I was born and grew up in the LA area and did not want to move. It was a sad time, there were many tears. I wrote a sad poem about it all in rememberance. I will post it.
Mr. Yasuki pulled strings and got me into SNK which was in a bigger building doing arcade. At Romstar, we had licensed the 1 slot system for sale as a conversion kit. I still remember the first 10,000 boards came in, a HUGE stack of boxes, maybe 40 feet deep, 10 feet tall, 10-20 feet wide. Took up a LOT of the warehouse.
Romstar was quite mellow and an adventure. Had it stayed, I would have had my first inhouse 100% programmed game within a year, I was helping develop the Terra 2 arcade system there. It was 286 based with CPLD graphic chip systems to allow the graphicvs path to be revised. I do have the board layout somewhere, I will have to post it someday. The main board was designed by Doug Hughes, who designed the hardware system used by Taito for the game Qix (an entirely American game with no Japanes programming or design whatsoever).
SNK seemed tougher at first but I got the rhythmn. We all had a lot of fun and creativity ran well. For breaks, we all competed in darts and Thrash Rally 2 times a day. I had designed a steering wheel control panel and pedal and it kept me int he race since I usually suck at games, and I Was able to keep up. The Thrash contests were on 4 cabinets, and we were SAVAGE players. Plenty of smack talk aqnd competition.
I did the arcade repairs, answered phones and tech department things. I also did design work and odd things.
SNK went up north due to the Neo Print, I got a job as a distributor. Ended up hating that job since it became a Dilbert cartoon come to life. Ironically, the home division guy at SNK is working there at that same distributor right now.
My present job is engineering, doing circuit board design of phone and security system entry ways. VERY fun job.
Anyhoo, that is why I still remember my neo tech stuph. But yup, it was a job that stood out. Lots of fun. The only reason I give it a 2-3% less than Romstar and present job, it seemed a tiny bit stiff at first, but once I got the hang and rhythmn, it all worked out. Personal wise, we were great, did Christmas walks together, partied together. Was very much a family.