As a child, the Neo Geo was the console that nobody I knew owned. With a launch price in the UK of £399 and then £200+ plus per game, you only owned one of these if the family car cost more than most peoples houses!
The original console was actually a cartridge-based console with absolutely huge slab-shaped cartridges. This console was named the Neo Geo AES (Advanced Entertainment System)
So why would anyone pay this crazy entry fee? Whilst us mere mortals had a wide selection of games to play on our 16 bits console, most of which were cut down ports of the arcade games we dreamed of owning at home. Well, the Neo Geo games were those arcade machines with no compromises. So you could expect exactly the same arcade experience playing at home, that your friends were having to pump coins into the machines to play down your local arcade.
The library of games is mainly a collection of scrolling shoot ’em ups and fighting games, so if that is your favourite genre then the Neo Geo could be the platform for you. So I guess you are assuming that everything has come down in price now so you could pick up a console with all its games for a couple of hundred pounds? Well unfortunately not! Some of the mass released games can be grabbed for a reasonable price but others will set you back thousands of pounds.
There is however a glimmer of hope, and this comes in the form of the Neo Geo CD (The one I own). This console was released towards the end of the Neo Geo’s life span. Around the same time as the Sony PlayStation came onto the scene. The obvious difference here was the games were loaded from the CD rather than a cartridge. This did have some drawbacks in that we were introduced to cd loading times! The previous cartridges would be instant loading, but from CD, some games would have significant loading times and would also occasionally load data for different levels etc.
But the main advantage of a CD-based system of this era is it had no copy protection. So burning backups to CDRs is a simple process and a great way of experiencing all the system has to offer.
My console did have a slight issue that some of my copied games were struggling to be read by the ageing laser in the console. So I swapped this out for a new laser and now everything is running perfectly.
So in my opinion this is a great console to have in your collection and has some really nice fast-paced shoot ’em ups which will have you coming back time after time to try and beat that high score.
Catalog Information
| Number in collection | 1 |
| Hardware Condition | Excellent |
| Box Condition | N/A |
| Modifications and Accessories | New laser fitted |
| Comments |