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!