By the way, I just wanted to say "hey Bryce!"
I had to check my vision when I saw you posting.
I have mixed feelings about my purchase. The sticks are cool and responsive, I'm glad they did them accurately. The docking station looks cosmetically cool, and the games play perfectly with no lag. But then there are things that really bother me. Out of the box, I had to mess with the composite wire to get a picture. That's brand fucking new, the cable already has problems. Running composite on a tube television looked really good, just like when I had an AES. But that was on a friend's TV. I tried both outputs on my own LED TV, and they looked god awful no matter which output I ran. HDMI was blurry and had horrible color bleeding. Composite was the same but ridiculously dark for some reason.
As far as the handheld itself, it's not very comfortable to use. It's bulky and is like playing with a plank. I would have liked it to at least not be so wide and maybe in closer proportions to the NGP. The length of it limits how many places I'd really want to travel with the system, and that;s already hampered by the fact you have to bring the whole dock with you to charge it. The fact that you can't remap the buttons is stupid. That takes away from the playability of some games, like in Real Bout Special when you want to do your S special. I had to shift my hand in some weird way to be able to hit both C and B with my thumb and index finger.
The screen looks alright, but not very good either. Still at least better than when outputted through HDMI, but the colors look a little washed out.
So I'm pretty bitter about the systems short comings. So far it's showed most of it's potential when I was able to bring it to a friends place and accurately play the games on his television. But as far as use on newer HD televisions, it's so fucking bad to look at. I'll just be back on my cabinets for exclusively until either the video quality is remedied, or this system gets hacked. The fan boy part of me thinks this whole thing was pretty cool, but the reasonable part of me keeps saying "What the fuck did I just do with $200?"
Hey aria
, thanks for the shout out. Your new forum name threw me for a loop at first, but I figured out who you used to be pretty quick, LOL. And thanks to Bonuskun, Rot, and others here for the greetings! Been gone for a LONG time, but you know the Neo Geo just never leaves your heart once its there, the games are just so timeless and beautiful no matter how technology advances. Though I must admit I wish I still had a nice 27" CRT TV to play these games through, a much better option given how they were originally designed. My 37" LCD doesn't really do them justice.
The NGX rekindled my interest; I do still have a huge AES and MVS collection and several homecart systems (none modded yet, who still does good mods here, is Jeff still around?), but no CMVS right now (I'm really thinking seriously of getting a decent CMVS, any suggestions are appreciated, though thats another topic). Really cool to hear about NG
ev.team's new releases for Neo and DC, I ordered Gunlord for DC and may preorder Neo XYX for DC as well (MVS and AES versions are just too much $$ for me right now sadly).
As for FairlanePhantom's post above, one of your concerns was about charging the NGX, you can just charge it with a cellpone AC charger or through USB on a PC. I used the charger for my Droid X cellphone and it charges with a big green battery indicator, and shows when fully charged (solid green battery indicator instead of "filling"). Your other concerns are legit, but don't forget the arcade joystick which is a great repro of the original AES stick, but with USB connection and workable on PC and PS3 as well. And also the stick on the NGX handheld itself is fantastic, makes pulling off moves really easy, though I agree they could have improved the screen quality on the handheld. For travel with the NGX, just get a Sony Vita case, I have mine in a Sony Traveler Pouch which is obviously too wide, but the whole system fits in there well, with a bit too much air space to spare (but you could always add some padding).