Retro Gaming Australia

The infamous Neo Geo weenie ad tends to get brought up from time to time, especially when people reminisce about how the system was seriously expensive when compared to its contemporaries. Still, the system was much more powerful than the SNES and Mega Drive – you just had to sign over your first born or live off two minute noodles to be able to afford one.

The Tommo/Blaze developed and SNK-approved NEOGEO X Gold Limited Edition handheld is now available for purchase in North America and Europe.

For $US199.99 or £175/€199, you get the NEOGEO X handheld, a HDMI enabled docking station, an arcade stick modelled on the original AES sticks, 20 preloaded games an a Ninja Masters game card.

The jury is still out on whether the system is a worthwhile investment, however.

SNK Playmore has released the popular run and gun shooter Metal Slug 3 for iOS and Android devices.

The port of the classic Neo Geo game includes an Arcade Mode along with a Mission Mode, allowing players to choose which stages to play. A branching map system has been added, enabling play-throughs which take a different route though the game to the ending. Co-op has also been included.

Metal Slug 3 is available now and will set you back $7.49.

Neo Geo AES collectors are a different breed. It takes a certain something to part with thousands of dollars for the best games on the system, particularly when the MVS versions are virtually identical and cheaper (though more prone to being fake).

Now you can celebrate the craziness of AES collecting in NGCollector, a homebrew game for the Neo Geo Pocket Color. How meta!

NGCollector puts you in the shoes of a dedicated AES collector, looking to get a complete collection of games – through any means necessary. Including robbing convenience stores, gambling and flipping burgers.

You can get the game here.

Back in January, we reported a rumour from a Japanese site that SNK was preparing a Neo Geo handheld. That rumour has turned out to be partially true, with yesterday’s revelation that the Neo Geo portable is happening – but it’s being developed by Blaze in conjunction with SNK.

It’s called the NeoGeoX.

With the architecture of the Neo Geo, and the game selection previously revealed, it’s highly possible that this is another cheap system-on-a-chip job that’s going to cost bugger all and produce the kind of sound that’ll make your ears bleed.

The system will sport 20 built in games (World Heroes, Ultimate 11, Top Player’s Golf, Sengoku, NAM-1975, Mutation Nation, Last Resort, King of Monsters, Frenzy, Cyber-Lip, Fatal Furty Special, The Art of Fighting, Super Sidekicks, League Bowling, Metal Slug, Magical Lord, Baseball Stars Professional, Samurai Shodown, The King of Fighters ’94 and Fatal Fury) and SD card support.

No price of release date has been announced as yet.

I’m sure many of you are aware of the sheer cost of owning a Neo Geo AES collection. Sure, you can pick up a few early titles on the cheap, particularly if you just go for the Japanese releases, but if you’re looking for popular titles like Metal Slug, or later releases like Garou: Mark of the Wolves, your wallet is doomed.

The MVS, the arcade version of the Neo Geo, is much cheaper to acquire games for due to their abundance, but getting the games and console to run on a standard television can be a tricky task.

The Daedalus is here to fix all of that. A custom project from Neo Geo.com user DavidG, the Daedalus is an MVS to AES converter which supports just about every non-custom hardware Neo Geo release out there.

Being a custom production, the Daedalus is limited to a supply of only 100, and will set you back $CA395 ($AU367) + shipping. It might sound pricey, but this is the Neo Geo scene.

You’ve probably seen it all over the ‘net by now, but SNK has lent the official Neo Geo license to a new portable system.

The Neo Geo Ketai (portable) boasts a 4.3 inch LCD screen, 2GB of flash memory storage (expandable through the SD slot) and will come preloaded with 20 preloaded Neo Geo classics (and some not-so-classics) including World Heroes, Ultimate 11, Top Player’s Golf, Sengoku, NAM-1975, Mutation Nation, Last Resort, King of Monsters, Frenzy, Cyber-Lip, Fatal Furty Special, The Art of Fighting, Super Sidekicks, League Bowling, Metal Slug, Magical Lord, Baseball Stars Professional, Samurai Shodown, The King of Fighters ’94 and Fatal Fury.

SNK has not officially announced the device yet, but pictures of the system popped up on Japanese blog Famicom-Plaza.

The fine folks over at neo-geo.com have obtained a copy of the Neo Geo programmer’s guide and content guidelines.

The 220 page pdf file is a veritable holy grail of technical information about the system, but it also provides insight into how long a Neo Geo title should take to produce (around 14 months), SNK’s content guidelines (no spurting blood, alcohol or cigarettes, religious symbols, etc.) and research about how long a credit should last a player (2.5 to 3.5 minutes), for instance.

You can get the document here.

Via GameSetWatch

I was originally going to start this article off with a dirty joke about Neo Geo collectors, expensive items and erections, but I guess we should have some kind of standards.

Anyway, dirty jokes aside, high standards are exactly what led to the creation of this run of custom Neo Geos with wooden casing. A company called Analogue Interactive is making these new Neo Geos out of high quality materials, and packing in everything you’d want for SNK’s beloved beast.
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