What stages are your favorite neogeo games?

Haohmaru in SS3
Bali in kof97

A lot of my favourite stages come from The King of Fighters games.

The Tokyo metropolitan stage inspired by Akira, The China stage and The Restaurant/Hall with the mariachi band from KoF 94

The Team Fatal Fury stage from KoF 95

Team Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting stages from KoF 96

The Monoco Stage from KoF 97

The Esaka, Temple with fire flies and the China boat stages in KoF 98

The factory stage of KoF 00

The deserted town and China stages of KoF 2002

The Rooftop stage of KoF 03

Stages of Cheng and Tung Fu Ru of Fatal Fury Special

l Also like a lot of the stages from SvC Chaos

I'm referring to only fighter's here: The building on fire stage in LB2, the airport tarmac (round 2) & park stage (round 3 onwards) in KOF 99, the water temple(?), Mexican(?) market & train yard stage in AOF 3, the stage with cherry blossom petals dropping to the ground in LB 1, beach stage in WW7, a stage in KOF 96 were there's an angled view of a grand Asian styled building with reflections of it in puddles on the ground and a number of stages in the Samurai Spirits series.

Failed to include above Double Dragon's wild river & final boss stage.

BlackaneseNiNjA said:

rain...stage

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THIS. I was about to post the same stage... it's just astonishing. Reminds me of Mark Ferrari's landscapes (the inventor of the "color cycling" palette trick, and background artist for Loom, Monkey Island and many other Lucasfilm games).

Just about every background in The Last Blade epitomizes the Neo Geo as a pinnacle of stage concept realization, design, and implementation.

Stefan said:

Just about every background in The Last Blade epitomizes the Neo Geo as a pinnacle of stage concept realization, design, and implementation.

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I totally agree with this. The backgrounds in LB 1/2 are a work of art, and they blend perfectly with the character sprites and the music/sound effects. I have to mention Samurai Shodown also. Especially SS4 with the castle that can be seen in all the backgrounds and tie the game together with the map in between every match in single player.

Once you can assume a decent roster depth, I'm genuinely more interested in the stages than characters .... I know that's kind of difficult for a team fighter like kof, but it probably remains the one shortfall for me of 2002, which wasn't really fixed in UM imho ...

Being that they're kind of the between years ones 95+97+99 I think are well worth a nod in this regard.

But yeah, discounting non fighters like metal slug, everything last blade is really just one of the finest productions at this kind of res ever (especially for it's time - hitting the right kind of anime feel), it's kind of boring to say, but you'd do it a disservice not to mention, and they all complement/contrast each other well... garou's nice too, but not quite as complementry, and for some reason lacking a bit of that ng ambition, though there's plenty of low key charm.

Joe Higashi's Muay Thai arena in RB2

The Kyokugenryu Team's KOF96 stage thanks to the GREATEST OST EVER

The South Korea outdoor dojang stage in RBSpecial

Neo Geo World in KOF 95

Nakoruru's snow stage in Sam Sho 1

Gairyu Isle in Sam Sho 1

The China Waterfall stage in KOF 95

So many beautiful backgrounds... all done with sprites?

I’m bumping this up again.

The 2d stages are the best, but
once in a while I play KOF MI RA on my PS3 and I think the Dotonbori stage at night is a pretty good 3D stage.

Didn't see Ninja Master's mentioned yet. Great backgrounds, most of them are on fgbg.art too. Really like Raiga's stage: