How did the bug get you? Your Neo Geo history.

[LWK]

I remember for me it was a weird one. The thing is, it was peppered with a lot of purchases at different times. It actually started with the old gamefan advertisements. You could see them in the back of the magazine. First game for me I ever owned for a Neo was Fatal Fury Special. I got it on CD, and later it would become the first home cart I ever bought..FFS was just a loose disc, but who gave a damn at the time. I got it at this old place called 'gameland'. This was also the place I got my bare used CD unit. I got it on a whim because I was able to get it finally.

Quite a annoying place. They had this habit of photocopying manuals and such, it was just a pain. It also doesn't help me because I LOVE Shinkiro... Following that I got the first Real Bout from them. Also a loose copy, think it was 20-25$. Had a blast with that game.

It really just changed everything for me getting that CD system. FFS is still my favorite Neo-Geo game for so many reasons. It is just a classic! I knew I just had to get more CD titles. I think I was buying games like RBS and such when they were first released at home. I just remember being blown away by FFS on cd.

My place to go was this place called Japan Video Games. I remember talking to one of the workers who claimed to have a near complete home cart collection or something. This was a big thing for me, because the Neo Geo was largely seen as untouchable, the CD was the answer at the time.

I was a teenager at the time I was getting this stuff. I actually had a CD system with like 14 games, and I ended up selling it. I was so mad at myself for doing so. I actually later on bought another Neo Geo CD with KOF 96. Not only that. I got a CDZ from this forum as well as all the games I had sold originally. Piecing that together and the CDZ lot from Neolord, I learned a tough lesson on being stupid. I miss Neolord *Mike P* I used to write reviews or submit reviews I wrote here to his fanzine. It was cool to be a part of something like that. He was a nice dude and one of very few I spoke to on the phone from here.. It's funny looking at my reviews now, you can totally see the horrible spelling and teenage angst in a lot of them, heh.

At some point I ended up scoring a big MK 2 american cab that some place wanted to dump cheaply. Which I put a MVS 1 slot into. I got Real Bout 2 for it from a guy named Johnny I believe. The game tanked in the USA.. That guy, geez.. He used to run this underground arcade that was just loaded with candy cabs. I remember going in there and I experienced Last Blade for the first time.

I think I picked up my Real Bout 2 that day also. Such a cool day. I saw Last Blade in person for the very first time.. It just has the most kick ass SE's to hear from different perspectives.. I think it was being played on a huge 40/50 inch set up. Could have been a Megalo/Neo 50/Sauroid. I just had this really big feeling of excitement seeing that. I will always feel that series didn't get the credit it deserved in design.

I was also lucky enough to score a MVS-U4 from that same guy if memory serves me. Think that cabinet costed only 250$. I still have it thankfully.. He's long gone, as well as the arcade. Almost like it was just a dream or something. Like it never existed. It's just one of those cool stories you tell and hope the details are still legitimate..

At some point I spotted a Neo Geo home system for sale. This was odd, because it was just something that was available, and I loved the Neo so much at the time I picked it up. The guy wanted 200 for it. He ran a video rental store. I think it even had two controllers.(woot) It included a US spinmaster. Not a bad buy at the time, and it took me some time to actually get it. He also had a sealed Tengen Tetris he wanted like 40$ for. Just odd stuff you don't see. Hell, even then it was a rarity to see.

So I just sort of bought home system/cd/mvs titles randomly over time.Then I would check online stuff.. I might have submitted a sign for Neo-Alec's old site, or maybe I just read one. Hard to remember so I won't claim that, but then time moved forward and I ended up here as a late teen posting crazy shit on this message board. Just a series of good timed purchases and getting into new titles for it. The neo geo was largely in my history as the coolest system for a bunch of fighting games. Nearing a completion of my MVS carts with like 7 more fighters to have the complete set, to me it is just a very special thing and having options. I love the games. So when that is all settled where do I go? Well, I intend to keep going and buying when I can and not being stupid about the buying, IE; paying to much.. So shmups are my next thing =)

 

[GutsDozer]

I was a kid and was actually going into the arcade to play Street Fighter II Champ and saw a Big Red running SamSho. I popped in a quarter and was instantly hooked. I went on to play Neo Geo obsessively anywhere a cab was. KOF, SamSho, Slug it did not matter. I also eye fucked issues of GameFan and other publications for ads pertaining to anything Neo but it was always way beyond anything I could afford. As an adult I was able to get a Big Red and it was on. I got my AES simply because I always wanted one and started to build up my collection. I still got a ways to go but every time I fire up the cab I feel like a kid again with infinite credits

 

[SNKorSWM]

I had room for one arcade cab. To get the most variety out of it (not just fighting games) I picked the neo cab because I remember playing quite a number of different genre of games on it while it was in the local arcade 20 years ago.

 

[Tron]

Playing the likes of magician lord,nam 1975 and samurai shodown in the arcades.Beside any port i could get a hold of for various consoles.Which did lead me to getting the system in the end.

 

[unofficialitguy]

Back in the late 90s, my father and I would go to the next town over to play pool over at Jim's Arcade (a small two room arcade in Southern Vermont) after a few games of 8 ball, he would give me the rest of the quarter roll and let me go at the rest of the games while he chatted with Jim. Jim had a 4 slot MVS (perfect for his small business) and I played the crap out of Puzzle Bobble and the Metal Slug games.

Years later after moving to Texas, I was talking to my wife about getting a machine and we were talking over the games that we played at Jim's, the bowling alley and the village pizza place and the Neo Geo kept popping up. We spent a few months checking local Craigslist postings until we found a 4 slot cab with a 1 slot board and a multicart. We drove it from an arcade storage unit in the Dallas Fort Worth are down to Austin with it in the back of our Subaru Forester. 3 hours with our knees on the dashboard. Totally worth it.

After replaying a number of titles off of the 111-in-1 cart, I decided that I wanted to get a 4 slot mobo back into it and shelf the multicart.

I did some extra freelance work that gave be an extra chunk of change to get my collection started and get my 4 slot back to its original glory.

 

[Opethian]

When I lived in Hawaii toys 'n joys had all those systems up to play ( neo, tg, genny, snes). All so the Marukai outlet near ala moana would sometimes let you play the neogeo. Got my arcade fix at Tilt, Fun Factory and Carnival Carnival. I think even the TRU near Pearlridge had AES games for sale. Would love to return someday to see how its all changed since 1991

 

[hyper]

the bowling alley by my folks place had an arcade room & MVS-2-25 w metal slug & puzzle bobble

10 years later while searching for a console copy of metal slug to play, I discovered the MVS cartridge format

 

[greedostick]

Growing up me and my mother would stay with my aunt and my cousins every weekend. My aunt who is super nice I admit spoiled me because my parents did not have much money. Or maybe all the kids were driving her crazy. Either way it worked in my favor. Every Saturday she would drop me and my cousin off at putt putt golf n games for super Saturday while my mom, her, and my girl cousin went shopping. Super Saturday was awesome. for $10.00 you got 2 rounds of putt putt, and most importantly 100 tokens. Which was a lot back then when every single game was a quarter. They had a really good arcade. They had final fight, which had the fire industrial level left out of the snes version, street fighter II which was amazing of course, and nestled in the back was a single slot cab always left unattended that had magician lord in it. Street Fighter competition was fierce back then and when I was tired of waiting I would play Magician Lord. I wasn't very good back then, but I loved the game and knew one day I would own one of those machines.

Then shortly after a Krogers grocery store in Xenia OH actually had a neo cab. Unheard of these days to have anything other than a crane machine in a grocery store. At least here anyway. That machine had Ninja combat which I played religiously, and good ol Nam-1975. Also at the bowling alley there was a neo cab with league bowling which I played a lot.

Although I really liked neo geo I truly fell in love with SNK in the least likely of places. The Sega CD. My friend owned a JVC X'eye in jr high and I bough samurai shodown to play on it. We played it all the way through high school. Had some great times with that port. Back then babbages sold neo geo AES games for $200.00 a pop if I remember right, so the sega cd port was the only option for a young teenager.

I eventually bought a neo geo AES my high school senior year in 1999 for a mere $168.00 with money made from selling games on ebay for a guy at a flea market. This was the boxed gold system, 2 real old style controllers, all paperwork, with fatal fury special, samurai shodown, samurai shodown 2, ninja combat, fatal fury, and good ol magician lord. This was before I had internet and I listed everything from the local library. I seriously worked to get that damn neo geo. After I saw my winning bid I literally sat at the computer at the library in a jaw wide open position amazed I would actually have a neo geo AES. This was back when I wanted one because I thought Double Dragon was a port of the original arcade version. I was a neo dumb ass back then.

I didn't even know what the neo had to offer back then. It wasn't until I met 2 members here, and now good friends Terry330 and Jon that I learned what the neo really had to offer. Jon turned me onto MOTW, and Terry330 turned me onto The Last Blade. After seeing The Last Blade I knew I would forever be a neo collector. It is one of my favorite games of all time. I eventually sold my aes after getting a decent collection, and bought a supergun from D-Lite, sold that years later and got that old red I always loved. Recently sold that sadly due to space constraints, but got a Xian Xi super gun. I am pretty happy now. Have almost everything neo related I could ever want. But I do miss my cab from time to time. Maybe one day I will get a candy cab.

 

[novabomb]

I was first introduced to Neo in the arcades, back then there only a few arcades here in Holland. But you could frequently find one cab in a coffeeshop or snackbar.

We played alot on one cab in the coffeshop, a 4 slot cab, with games puzzle de pon, double dragon, baseball stars 2 and my all time fav Aerofighters 2.

We played every day and I mastered Double Dragon and could finish the game with only one token. Since then I knew I wanted these games to play at home.

Back then I didn't have much money being a student and such, so much later I could afford this hobby and now i am a proud owner of a cab and a cmvs with about 60 games.

 

[Samuray]

For me it were German video game mags in which I first glimpsed screenshots of Neo Geo games. It was love at first sight.

I vivdly remember my disbelief that Terry Bogard was clearly wearing blue jeans in "Fatal Fury", and that you could really make out the faces of the characters this well. I mean, sure, there was "Final Fight" which had somewhat detailed sprites itself on the SNES/SFC, but damn...this was something else!

The other games looked gorgeous, too...."NAM 1975" had so many details, "Blue's Journey" seemed sooo colorful and kinda hi-res (the backgrounds), and the design of "Magician Lord" pulled me in as well.

Then there came pics of "Burning Fight", which I instantly loved, as well as "World Heroes". I dug the concept of the different time eras, the characters seemed very interesting, and I really liked the floors, especially in Hanzo's stage. Don't laugh.
Well, and then there were screens of "Art of Fighting". I couldn't believe what I was seeing there.

I needed that machine no matter what, and I was lucky enough to have parents that supported that kind of past time rather than to frown upon it. Suffice it to say, that Christmas was very, very magical, and will be with me forever, I think.


(I have to admit, though, that I lost track of the Neo Geo when the next wave of consoles hit, and I returned to it only several years ago. But I never sold anything so instead of having to re-start my collection I could simply continue it)

 

[cr8zykuban0]

to keep it short and sweet, I first encountered a neo geo machine back in 97 or 98. I was only 7 when I first played it and the game in it was kof 94. man, I used to love going to the local indoor swap meet where the neo machine was at. the family annd I would go to visit my uncle and aunt who owned a store there. I loved everything about the game from the visuals/music to the fact that you were able to play as 3 characters instead of one. 8 years after I found out about the aes and when I discovered that kof 94 was avaliable on that system, I knew I had to get that system. I was finally about to get one in 2009 a few months before I turned 19 and ive loved it since

 

[bloodhokuto]

Nice write up LWK!

As for me, I really can't remember coming across Neo Geo games much in my youth.

I think I 'heard' about the crazy expensive console that only the rich kid in the area had, but I never got to play one back then, and I have no memories of playing on a Neo cab in the arcades either.

I think the image that sticks in my head the most about my first exposure, was when I read a gaming magazine in the early / mid 90's and they had an article on a Neo Geo game.

They had some screenshots and I am sure that it was a Sam Sho game, the article was gushing (and rightly so) over the detailed sprites. Of course they had to come back down to earth with the price of the game which seemed crazy to shell out virtually the cost of a console for every game. I remember thinking how awesome it would be to see, never mind play such a console.

Many years later, I got into gaming a lot more and started to buy import systems, with the Neo Geo and PC Engine being my eventual much wanted targets.

Even though it was the time of the Dreamcast with it's great ports, I still thought that the PC Engine and the Neo Geo were great machines, with the Neo Geo being particularly outstanding.

Over the years from then I have had a great time getting games on the Home Cart system and now have a nice little collection. I got to appreciate the Neo Geo (and PCE) more and more over the years, come what may of the consoles that came out and gone since then.

I also picked up a Sigma supergun in the early 000's, when I started to (slowly) pick up a few PCB's.

I sort of stopped playing newer games pretty much from after the PS3 came out.

I don't have any of the new Gen of consoles and pretty much just play Neo / PCE and, of course on my Cabs.

I only just got a Neo Cab this year, and at first I was a little gutted that I would have to get an adapter to play Jamma games, but having re-familiarised myself with the Neo again, I have found that I am perfectly content with the MVS U4 just playing Neo stuff.

I tend to go in and out of phases with my consoles, but whilst the Neo virus can be subdued for a while, it cannot be eradicated!

 

[statix138]

My dad was a pilot in the Navy for many years and in one of his squadrons there was a young LTJG, I distinctly remember his call sign being Skank, who was big into video games. My dad personally hated them but knew I liked them so whenever I would get stuck with my dad at work after school he tell me to go bother Skank and talk to him about whatever video game I was into at the time. I remember after the Christmas I got my SNES I was stuck with my dad after school and I was looking for Skank to tell him about how awesome the SNES was and stuff but he told me he had something better. I argued with him that nothing was better than the SNES and what not and he just kind of said, "Okay."

Some time had passed and my parents went to a party over at Skank's apartment and brought me with them and when I was there Skank showed me this new console that he said I may not have heard of, the Neo-Geo. At a time when me and other kids would argue over bits and graphics this thing knocked me on my figurative ass. I couldn't tell you what games we played but I am pretty sure they were NAM and Magician Lord. I remember begging my parents for a Neo-Geo after that but the price alone made sure I would never get one as a child. I spent hours growing up in arcades playing Metal Slug, Aero Fighters, 2020 Super Baseball, and wanting those games but my parents would never drop the money on a consoles that was $600+.

Now I am an adult with disposable income and so my Neo-Geo infatuation has returned.

 

[LWK]

Awesome story static.

 

[2D_mastur]

Played FF2 at a Circle K as a kid. Typical 90's kid playing on the cab while drinking an ICEE and eating Cheetos. No, I didn't get the controls dirty, I used to pour the Cheetos directly from to bag to my mouth.

Played SS2 at a pizza place near my childhood home. Loved that game. I don't remember what other game they had in the cab.

 

[Danthor]

Played Samurai Shodown 1 when I was a young teen, and it changed my life forever. Nobody in my area stocked the AES (Like it would have mattered, there was no way I could afford that at the time) So I got my fix at my local arcade. They had a 4 slot big red, and I jammed on it every day until the arcade eventually shut down. For the longest time, my only fix I could get was of ports (mainly the SNES ones) and my NGPC, that I was lucky to get before it disappeared just as suddenly. It was my mission to one day own a proper version of that game. In '03, I was given an NGCD with KoF '95, but I could never find a copy of Samsho 1. Granted, I was only looking locally, because I was still VERY new to buying games over ebay, I was able to get it on my NGCD, but that wasn't till about '08. Awesome as it was, it still wasn't the version my heart truly desired. I got it on Nintendo's Virtual Console for my Wii, and the SNK arcade classics collection, in spite of the emulation being perfect, it -still- wasn't my dream. Wasn't until last year I finally made that dream come true, getting an AES, and my precious Samurai Shodown. Easily one of the most satisfying things I tracked down.

Naturally there were/are plenty of other Neo games I enjoyed, but SamSho1 was what gave me the bug, and I pursued the most, accepting no substitute.

 

[tacoguy]

My story isn't as cool as some of you guy's.

When I was a kid growing up in the 90s, there were always neo geo games everywhere I went. The mini marts, laundromats, restaurants, and arcades all had neo geo cabs. I would always try to play when I could but my mom was always stingy with the money. Especially if that money was being spent on video games. But sometimes I did manage to somehow not spend my money other stupid stuff and actually save some quarters.

After those times, Neo sorta faded away for quite a while. I mean I still played video games and stuff but where I moved to I started seeing less arcades. Fast forward a bunch of years to late last year and early this year and I get the urge to start collecting old video games again. One day I was looking at an ebay auction out of all places and managed to score an AES that was being sold with two controllers but without a power cable and untested for $150 shipped. I figured to test out my luck and I was quite nervous at first. Especially the way how everything looked so used and beat up but to my surprised the thing worked! The one game I bought for it was Magician Lord, I never heard of it before but it was cheap in comparison to all the other AES games. Once I started playing I remember how fun all those games used to be and that I wanted to play them again.

And now I sit here with 4 AES games, and I'm trying to get a CMVS to collect both in conjunction.

 

[Caplet]

First off, hello all. Long-time lurker.

Metal Slug 3 got me into the Neo Geo, around 2001 or so. I played it in an arcade and just had to have it. I think I bought an AES and a copy of Slug 3 from the NeoStore the very next day. I kept picking up new releases as they came out as well as grabbing older stuff for a few years, and I enjoyed the system immensely.

I had some circumstances come up in 2005 that made me sell everything off. While it was what had to be done at the time, I kind of kick myself over it now because of what some of those later releases sell for.

The announcement of the Neo Geo X a few years ago rekindled my interest, and I picked up an AES for pretty cheap along with Crossed Swords (one of my favorites). I buy a new game every six months or so. Just got a copy of Last Blade that I'm playing the heck out of.

 

[Heinz]

I played the GameBoy versions of KOF from Takara on an emulator probably in 1999/2000. I remember being obsessed with it and then I thought hmm lets search this title on the internet and to my enlightenment I saw it was a port. It all went from there. As soon as I started reading reviews and seeing pictures of the Neo Geo versions of not only the two ported GameBoy titles but the vast library of other fighters, I pretty much had a fit.
It was emulators like NeoRageX and eventually Kawaks/Nebula that really heightened my interest in owning the real deal. To cut a long story short I owned an NGH and then sold it for a cab I then sold that cab, 7 years later I bought back into MVS and now I've got both MVS and NGH.

Round and round we go...

 

[Larrs888]

When I was a kid in the 90s my family moved from the UK to Singapore and it was the first time I saw all the weird and wonderful game consoles that you just didn't see alongside the NES/SNES/MegaDrive in the UK. They had them all there, AES, Neo CD, PC Engine, PC Engine GT, Sega Nomads, Multi-Megas/CDX, all the cool stuff - I just didn't know how cool until more recently I remember going into an electronics store and saw an AES for the first time in 1992, the gargantuan sticks and massive cartridge made my NES look so weak and pitiful. I think it was hooked up with a Fatal Fury game being played by the store owners. Sadly I wasn't lucky enough at the time to own one but did play some KoF 94 in the arcades a couple years later and then Metal Slug 1 on a cruise ship sometime after.

I know this is a taboo but I always had Neo games on MAME and played them loads over the years, I started to get back into retro games a few years ago by dusting off my Dreamcast and started picking up more games on eBay including Garou Mark of the Wolves and the King of Fighters 2000-02. I really wanted to get the real deal at this stage and ended up pulling the trigger on the Omega CMVS last year. I'm now having a blast playing KoF, Slug X and 3 on real hardware which is such an amazing experience!

 

[Azra113]

My first SNK game was Fatal Fury Special on SNES, I always thought it was a TAKARA game though. Me, my brothers and my cousin would play the fuck out of that game. I liked it more than street fighter 2 because I was better at this game, but my big bro would hate on it calling it a street fighter knockoff.

It wasn't until I played CAPCOM VS SNK on Dreamcast that I learned about SNK. I was happy to recognize the Fatal Fury chars, but there so many I did not recognize, through that game I found out about KOF. I found out about Last Blade and Samurai Showdown through Mugen. I would play most of the games with emulators until I found out about superguns and this wonderful forum

 

[crow]

I'm into arcade fighting games and I know that home port to other consoles are never 100% accurate. I learned that Neo-Geo is exactly the same as the arcade, so I'm taking the plunge.

 

[LOV2XLR8 94Z28]

There was a DelRancho near the house, my Grandma would always give me a enough to play a game. It was Super Baseball 2020, King of The Monsters... It was a four slot and I can't remember the rest.
It was emulation that really got me into NeoGeo so much I had to have the hardware. Specifically MetalSlug, I remember playing it with NeoRageX on my antiquated PII233, took me a few years to get one. Got an Aes, modded it out with a converter. Then found a 4 slot on Craigslist for $250 or so.

 

[gtdoering]

I was 8 years old and a buddy of mine had an AES with Aero Fighters 2. Hooked from an early age. just couldn't afford it until much later in life. Super stoked to finally be enjoying all the SNK goodness. Just wish I had started collecting sooner!

 

[[OCEAN]]

Love this thread full of nostalgia. Here's how I got into the Neo:

First time I ever played the NeoGeo was during elementary school in the early 90's, I was around 10. On our way home after school, me and a friend stopped by a bar to get some potato chips and spotted a cab running Fatal Fury 2. Needless to say, our pocket money went directly to the game. I remember being too slow selecting characters and I got Cheng when time run out... I was so pissed off to have selected the fat guy! My friend picked up Andy, which looked so much cooler... but I beat the shit out of him and even won a couple of rounds more against the CPU. I became addicted to that game after school but, unfortunately, the cab didn't last for too long in that place.

Next memory I have is paying to play Samurai Shodown on AES in a local game shop. They charged you 100Pts (around half a dollar back then) to play for 15 minutes, which wasn't such a bad deal considering you could play with a friend. As with Fatal Futy 2 I loved that game to death too and became a huge fan of the NeoGeo. Whenever I saw that logo in an arcade, there went my cents. Besides the aforementioned, I was particularly fond of Spinmaster, Neo Drift Out and Art of Fighting, which were all over the arcades and bars in Spain back then.

I always wished for an AES, but my parents told me I was mad if I thought they would spend that kind of money on videogames. Got a SNES instead. Around late 95 and early 96 however, everybody was mad about the PlayStation. I had just entered highschool and had worked helping in a shop during my holidays, so I had some money. Went to a second hand market on a Sunday morning, where everybody was trying to get a PlayStation for cheap, and there it was: a guy was selling a complete AES with Fatal Fury and Andro Dunos for only 10.000 Pta (around 60 bucks back then). I had only 9000 on my pocket, but the guy agreed to sell it to me for that price.

Best purchase ever. My childhood dream of having a NeoGeo became true. Next title I got was, of course, Fatal Fury 2 and, since then, I've been slowly building my collection of Neo games.

Fast forward to 2003 I got a job as an intern in Tokyo for 3 months. Of course I became a regular visitor of Akihabara and learned about superguns, MVS and this site, which I joined a fine day after work to ask about differences between MVS versions. With the money I got from work I bought a really nice pack in an already defunct arcade shop, consisting of a Sigma Raijin supergun, a brand new MVS-1C and Fatal Fury 3 for 30.000Yen. From then I also started collecting MVS carts, which allowed me to buy all those games which I just couldn't afford in AES (days later I got Metal Slug 2, Mark of the Wolves, Last Blade and Puzzle Boble).

And, that's the story until today