I was late to the game , i picked up an AES last fall. I got into retro gaming about a year ago (bad timing i know) and was mostly collecting Genesis and SNES until i started reading more into the Neo Geo. I remember hearing about it back in the day but didnt really know much about it because id never seen one. I mostly lumped it with failed system like the 3DO.
What sold me to pick up an AES vs emulating, was the controller and the massive cartridges. I thought it was an interesting piece of tech that i had to try in with the actual hardware. I figured the only place i could find one at a semi decent price was to import on from Japan which seemed like too much of a hassle. Most of the ones i saw for sale near me were US systems being sold at stupid prices. By a stroke of a luck i found one one on Kijiji (canadian craigslist basically) with Baseball Stars. He also had 12 other games being sold separately. Picked up the system then gradually picked up the rest of games over the course of a few months.
He had the games listed for months at decent prices but they werent moving at all, not much demand locally for Neo Geo i guess. Unfortunately if i want anymore games im looking at Ebay or the odd AES sales forum here. With the retro collecting phase pushing pushing prices to stupid levels and the Canadian dollar being crapola right now it could be awhile before i pick anymore AES games up. Ill most likely be picking up an Omega when money permits.