The first time you heard/found out a system called Neo Geo existed

[Fox1]

When I first bought Metal Slug for the PSX after playing it in the arcade..... I searched "Metal Slug" on ebay and saw that the original AES cart was going for hundreds of $$ (sigh) and almost crapped my pants as I never heard of a consumer game costing so much.

 

[pulstar]

I remember seeing the AES in the UK gaming press around 91/92...either CVG or Mean Machines...great magazines back in the day.

 

[NGT]

Walked into TRU, saw it behind the glass...

Me: "Dad, can I have that?"
Dad: "lol".

 

[cr8zykuban0]

2008? Man, it seems pretty hard to have avoided mention of the console that long. Are you really young? On the plus side finding out about an awesome console like the AES in 2008 must have been an eye-opening experience.

i am 24 years old so i'm pretty young lol i was only about 8 years old when i play kof in the arcades, it was late 99 when they got rid of the machine but the thing that made me remember that game was specifically was the england stage on kof 94. i randomly was looking a video of different fighting games and when i saw that vid, that instantly made me remember about that game and i did some research and by 2009 i got my aes.

 

[Vigormortis]

It was 1991, and my dad and I went to Nobody Beats The Wiz to buy a Super Nintendo for Christmas. First, we saw a Philips CDI on display. It had pretty pictures, but it seemed slow. Then our attention turned to a Neo Geo on display running Baseball Stars. We were in awe of the all the colors, huge sprites, and the fast paced animation. My dad said "now that's an awesome game system". Then we saw the price tag. We bought a Super Nintendo.

Later on (but I don't remember exactly when), I was surprised to find out that the Neo Geo was also an arcade machine.

 

[LordCollector]

Nice to hear about people's stories. Keep it up. Love hearing how people first heard about the system.

 

[TheLizardKing]

I first found to about it back in 92 when I went to Electronic Boutique. I knew the system was legendary so I asked my mom to buy it for me. She went ahead and bought me 3 systems just in case it broke or something. And she also got me 5 games for them-- Sengoku, Nam 1975, Fatal Fury, Ninja Combat, and Magician Lord. It was considered my birthday gift for that year. For Christmas I got an SNES and Genesis as well as a Shinobi arcade machine which was a big deal back then since hardly anybody had an arcade cab at home back then.

 

[Jonmkl]

From the time I was very young I used to try and track down arcades wherever I went (we traveled a lot) and I would always see and play bust-a-move, had to be the most common game I saw, but I was really confused about the red cab, and what "Neo Geo" was for some time after. I remember actually seeing a used AES at a non-chain game store around 95 and not really realizing what it was, the guy told me the prices on the games and I was immediately not interested, thing is, I didn't catch the name, and I didn't realize it was connected to the Neo Geo arcade games at all, the black and gold made me think it was some kind of souped up genesis, and I had just gotten a Saturn. Then 96 rolled around and Metal Slug showed up at my arcade, and good LORD that game blew my mind! Neo Geo was immediately elevated to god-tier in my mind, and the Metal Slug series became my favorite games of all time!

I was familiar with and played a handful of Neo games after that, especially SamSho II, which my friends would murder me at constantly, and when emulation was introduced to me in the early 2000s I ate the Neo Geo library up. In 2006, just a few months after finding out what consolization was, I bought and consolized a big ol 4 slot Mobo, and I've been all over it ever since!

To be honest I never even realized what the AES was until a few years after I bought my NGPC. The Neo Geo was always an arcade system to me.

The Future is Now!

 

[MattamusPrime]

First time was seeing an MVS cabinet that housed King of Monsters in it when I was around 7-8. Being a fan of kaiju movies, I gravitated to it and was blown away by the big, detailed sprites and artwork. I loved it from that moment on. Any time I saw that red cabinet, it was the only machine I cared to drop quarters into. Found out about the AES some time later in high school when a friend of mine mentioned it. Always wanted one, but was too expensive for me, even now, as an adult collector. Recently, that same friend sold me a MVS 2-slot cabinet and my dream of having Neo Geo hardware has come true. Now I start collecting my favorite MVS carts.

 

[joe8]

I first found to about it back in 92 when I went to Electronic Boutique. I knew the system was legendary so I asked my mom to buy it for me. She went ahead and bought me 3 systems just in case it broke or something. And she also got me 5 games for them-- Sengoku, Nam 1975, Fatal Fury, Ninja Combat, and Magician Lord. It was considered my birthday gift for that year. For Christmas I got an SNES and Genesis as well as a Shinobi arcade machine which was a big deal back then since hardly anybody had an arcade cab at home back then.

I think maybe SNK was relying on some American parents going wild, and buying their kid a Neo Geo (even though they knew it was too expensive).
But wouldn't you eventually get sick of just playing the one game (Shinobi) all the time?
Why wasn't Shinobi released on the Genesis, if it was a Sega arcade game? The Genesis hardware was based on the Sega System 16, and there was a port to the Master System.

 

[aha2940]

I believe the first time I knew about anything called Neo Geo was in 94, at the arcade when we found KoF 94. Then we started digging and noticed that many of the games we liked had the same Neo Geo start screen (Samurai Shodown, Aero Fighters, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury), then we understood that was the name of the system. I never knew the AES existed until like 2003 or something, and that was only because of Internet. The AES never made it officially to South America, it wasn't even announced or displayed in Latin American Game Pro magazines or anything.

Regards.

 

[JeffyD]

I cannot recall specifically when I first learned of the AES, but I know that I was vaguely aware of its existence by the mid nineties. I wasn't aware of any details of the system, beyond it being financially out of bounds, until around '02 - '03 timeframe. Becoming familiar with the details lead to bouts of excitement lover the chance to play all of my favorite arcade games at home without sacrificing any sort of performance.

That lead to disappointment as I discovered all of the games I was most excited to play were priced well beyond my means or ability to justify such costs. The idiot that I am, I only discovered that fact after buying the console. Silly me.

 

[neo_mao]

The first time I learned about the Neo...

Whenever my mom would go to the mall I would go to a bookstore called Walden's Books.

This was before the internet of course, so I used to have to get my nudie girl fix at the local bookstore (we didn't have cable growing up, so I had to make do with what was available).

Anyway, I used to go there and read Playboy/Hustler etc, but of course I was just a kid and didn't want anyone to see me reading that smut, so I would always hide it in some other magazine...usually some sports or videogame magazine - and that was the first time I learned about the Neo.

Of course, the neo was cool and all, but it wasn't interesting enough to divert my attention from all the boobies back then...and it still isn't...

 

[SNK416]

Chinese video game store "video connections" saw NAM 1975 running... starred at it for sometime, was hooked then.

 

[Ramad]

I first found to about it back in 92 when I went to Electronic Boutique. I knew the system was legendary so I asked my mom to buy it for me. She went ahead and bought me 3 systems just in case it broke or something. And she also got me 5 games for them-- Sengoku, Nam 1975, Fatal Fury, Ninja Combat, and Magician Lord. It was considered my birthday gift for that year. For Christmas I got an SNES and Genesis as well as a Shinobi arcade machine which was a big deal back then since hardly anybody had an arcade cab at home back then.

Holy. Shit.

 

[jdotaku]

My family received a JCPenney christmas catalogue that I always used to figure out my wishlist and it had the NGPC and I recall once trying out a Neo Geo Pocket at a cousins house just prior to that.

 

[s. k. technique]

It was around 1991/92 My school friend used to invite me along on trips with his parents to a social club they used to go to. They had a playchoice NES machine with Mario 3 amongst other NES games, where you put money in for play time, rather than credits. One day we went they had an MVS with NAM 1975. We were blown away with how great the graphics were (the level where you are on a carrier and you have to shoot the plane and can pepper the body with bullet holes seemed amazing), the cinematic intro and cut scenes, and how hard it was. Strangely I only picked up the MVS cart last year. Still find it quite tough

 

[Caseh]

I first found to about it back in 92 when I went to Electronic Boutique. I knew the system was legendary so I asked my mom to buy it for me. She went ahead and bought me 3 systems just in case it broke or something. And she also got me 5 games for them-- Sengoku, Nam 1975, Fatal Fury, Ninja Combat, and Magician Lord. It was considered my birthday gift for that year. For Christmas I got an SNES and Genesis as well as a Shinobi arcade machine which was a big deal back then since hardly anybody had an arcade cab at home back then.

Yeah totally, my mom bought me 7. One for each day of the week. Why would your mom buy you a Shinobi cabinet? Considering the game would have been common around 1986 yet by 1992 it would have been considered shite tech and collecting dust in a lot of places.

On topic, not entirely sure. Possibly around 1993, the neighbour of a friend had one with Burning Fight and one or two other games. I never actually saw it but remember comparing the price of a single game to the cost of multiple Megadrives.

 

[N30_G30_speed]

I can't believe I was the only one who reacted like this

 

[escarioth]

I played neo-geo once when i was a kid in a store

i tryed a game very fun that i wanted to buy.
but back then, i thought it was a game on sega genesis... and never found it.
... until recently, it was cyberlip

the face i made when i tryed this at my friend's home last month was priceless...
so my next goal will be to get that game 25 years later

 

[Liquid Snake]

Received a brochure from gamefan

 

[Archdesigner03]

The first time I saw an AES is at my cousin's house when I was around 10 years old. I saw the box with the system inside and asked him if I can play. He actually said no because his parents just got it for him and it's very very expensive. He's afraid that i'm going to break it. What an @$$Hole!

 

[madman]

The first time I saw an AES is at my cousin's house when I was around 10 years old. I saw the box with the system inside and asked him if I can play. He actually said no because his parents just got it for him and it's very very expensive. He's afraid that i'm going to break it. What an @$$Hole!

Sounds like a typical AES collector to me.

 

[Yoshi]

As I recall there was a rumor in the Quarterman section of EGM that spoke of SNK working on a 16-bit system. I remember thinking how odd it was that the Ikari Warriors guys were going to have their own hardware.

 

[TheSegaDude]

Ah! Small world. That's the exact same place, and the same game when I saw the Neo Geo for the first time.
They had the AES on display. I checked the prices on the games and I was totally crushed. Bought a Genesis game and went home.

I remember I had this store (Video Connections) mod my Genesis so I could play Japanese Mega Drive games. They told me they had to widen the plastic cart slot and (as he pointed inside my Genesis) had to do some "technical work here and there". That last part was a lie... they were scammers. But I was still happy with my $30 Genesis mod.

Chinese video game store "video connections" saw NAM 1975 running... starred at it for sometime, was hooked then.