Hello Crow and welcome - I'm sure you'll enjoy this board as I. There is a pool of info and peeps in here, good and bad, that you'll encounter soon enough and I hope you make the best of it.
The Neo AES "silver" was a package that SNK sold on market which included the AES base unit, the hookups and one old style controller joystick, The "Gold" package consists of two controllers and a game if I remember correctly as I purchased mine way back in 1992, hence the "silver" and the "gold" depiction on those Neo unit boxes. All the AES carts US or JPN versions will play on the a US AES Neo or JPN just fine, the diff between the two is the US Neo AES bios boots default in English language and censors the software (white blood instaed of red in Samurai Shodown 2 or Mai Shiranui's Bouncy twin peeks in King of Fighters series looses the bouncy effect due to censorship) but the Japan version Neo AES bios boots in Nipongo and the no censorship on software, hence Mai's bouncy cleve's are back. On the "DEBUG" note, there is a Developer DEBUG bios out there you can have installed on an AES system that supposed to unlock lots of software goodies and cheats that are locked away by the default BIOS the AES system usually comes with. The name Jeff M Kurtz (jmkurtz@macola.com) comes to mind when it comes to proffesionally modding an AES system with the Developer DEBUG BIOS for a price of course just ask him bout it.
The Phantom converter of course is a converter cart that you can use to enable you to play MVS carts to yur Neo Home system. Peeps purchase the Phantom so they can purchase and play MVS carts (which are generally much cheaper than the AES carts of late), plug-n-play away...
Well there you go. I gave you some gist to your questions and I hope other Neo Gurus in here community will give you some more. Just remember - do lots of research first before decision making on buying Neo stuff, OK???
Welcome Bud and PEACE... <IMG SRC="smilies/eek2.gif" border="0"> <IMG SRC="smilies/smile.gif" border="0"> <IMG SRC="smilies/biggrin.gif" border="0"> <IMG SRC="smilies/wink.gif" border="0"> <IMG SRC="smilies/glee.gif" border="0">
