1st neo geo game that got you hooked?

For me, it was Samurai Shodown II and Art of Fighting 3 on vacation with my family in Tunisia. Spent the most time in the local arcade. I guess it was 1996.

Samurai Shodown II fascinated me -- loved watching people play it from over their shoulders -- it was so much more different (the play style, pace, etc..) than what I used to at the time, SF2. Wouldn't dare to play it because it was just too foreign to me. Playing Metal Slug was what got me hooked.

SamSho II for me. I played it on my friends AES back in the day. Blew my mind.

That experience always stuck with me and was what led to me picking up a big red as my first cab.

King of Fighters '98.

for me, it was playing kof 94 at a local indoor swap meet. this was around 2000 when I was about 9 years old. But the games graphics, music and characters stayed in my memory for so long and that made me get a neo geo system 5 years ago. Im about 61 aes titles in and been loving the neo ever since!

Samurai Showdown iv and Metal Slug 2 at a bowling alley around my way in an mvs 2 slot. After playing them in the arcade it made me want a Neo but there was no way I could convince my parents to buy me one with the price of the games.

Freakin Magician Lord, lots and lots of quarters! Then it was Ninja Combat and Samurai Shodown 1 All at a Barros Pizza place here in Mesa AZ

Can't say it was just one. More of a progression. It started some time around '92 with Magician Lord, Baseball Stars 2 and NAM 1975.
Then a new arcade opened about 3/4 a mile from the house. It had a couple of Big Reds inside. Fatal Fury2 was the first to grab hold. World Heroes samsho and their sequels, FFS, Spinmasters, KOF94 etc. This place seemed to have had about every title released between 92-94

The when I got to Okinawa in '95 RealBout sunk its claws in and I was Hooked ever since.

Samurai Shodown followed by an addiction to Windjammers.

Have to say Art of Fighting. It had huge sprites and that amazing scaling effect. I didn't have enough money to find out it wasn't the best fighter in the world, but it was good enough!

Looking back at the very early days of Neo Geo, pre-AOF, SNK really experiemented a lot, before they got locked-in more to money-making from the big franchises. I like a lot of those early games just for that reason. But you probably wouldn't have bought a Neo Geo for most of those games.

Fatal Fury 1. What was so groundbreaking about that game was that 2 players could battle an opponent in a 1 on 1 fighting game. That added so much replay value. It really wasn't a street fighter clone because it felt so different.

Agree, same here. That intro with Terry on top of the cliff.

kris79 said:

Fatal Fury 1. What was so groundbreaking about that game was that 2 players could battle an opponent in a 1 on 1 fighting game. That added so much replay value. It really wasn't a street fighter clone because it felt so different.

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Metal Slug was the first game I ever played in the arcade at a local store... I would say that's when my love for Neo Geo started.. I then got a hold of Samurai Shodown and my life changed forever.....

for me it was kof 94 and after few years RBFF Special, then i got my own AES.

For me it was Metal Slug at Pizza Hut!!

Real Bout Fatal Fury Special is what officially hooked me. Played it first on Saturn, now I have the AES and CD ones.

Art of fighting and fatal fury series drew me in originally. Kof got fun. And the first metal slug just broke me... played arcades and only had a few ports until I got my grubby mits on a supergun in 2002

kof95 on my saturn. And double dragon in the arcade. Still 2 of the games I play most now.

mrjiggs said:

Freakin Magician Lord, lots and lots of quarters! Then it was Ninja Combat and Samurai Shodown 1 All at a Barros Pizza place here in Mesa AZ

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I've been here since Magician Lord myself. Game swallowed so many quarters it's insane lol. Have been hooked ever since

I loved me some Magician Lord in the arcades. Never put in enough quarters to beat it then.

One more here for Fatal Fury. I appreciated the fact that the game was way different to Street Fighter 2, not saying Street Fighter 2 is horrible, and was easily more accessible to play at Aladdin's Castle in the mall near me. It was great to play a game and not have to wait 20 minutes just to have one match and wait 20 more minutes if you lost. Fatal Fury 2 was even better, but King of Fighters really sealed the need to own one of these systems.

Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Sengoku, NAM1975, World Heroes, the early games at a local video store definitely got a lot of play... but once Samurai Shodown appeared one day in the old 4 slot big red, that just floored everyone! I've been wanting real Neo hardware for the longest time, and I'll finally have my own JNX CMVS soon. Can't wait!

King of Fighters '95 on PS1 was the first. I was young, and had no idea the PS1 had any Neo Geo ports. I liked the art style and level of detail. I had played Art of Fighting once in the arcade earlier and decided that it generally seemed worth the hype I saw in the magazines, but that ps1 game was the first time I started thinking that I needed to have a Neo. It got me hooked enough that I jumped on the first NGCD I saw in a shop. $100 with Fatal Fury 3 ~1998-1999. Outside of the extra load time, it really blew my mind. I was happy for a good while and picked up half a dozen or so games for it.

But what really hooked me wasn't a game, it was a TV pilot. I was in Las Vegas, and doing the MGM Grand focus group stuff is one of the things the wife likes to do. The show was about couples setting budgets to live within their means or meet certain goals. One of the couples wanted a Prius because it would let her commute in the carpool lane--whatever, these people weren't very likable. One of the boyfriends/husbands/whatever was supposed to help a friend move for a couple hundred bucks to make money on the side. Instead he chose payment in the form of a big red MVS. The experts told him to sell it, but I didn't see it happen. Actually they stopped mentioning the subject entirely. At the time I had been very excited about the upcoming Tapwave Zodiac system, which cost a couple hundred bucks too as I recall, but a couple months later I had an MVS instead. I don't think the show ever aired. It was pretty crap, so you'll just have to take my word on it.

Personally for me, it was Windjammers. When I started to see Giant Bomb talking about it, it really got me interested in the world of Neo Geo. Now I own a 4-slot with a copy of windjammers as well

The first Neo-Geo game I remember playing was Sengoku at a small arcade, in an old strip-mall in town. It happened to be next to a barbers that my mom used to take me to. So if there was a decent wait we'd go next door to the arcade and play some games. I remember me and her playing Sengoku several times. She didn't like playing games too often, but she did enjoy beat 'em ups for some reason.