In 1990 those of you who hadn’t adopted the Sega Genesis early were still using Nintendo’s venerable NES as your videogame console. The NES had a big library of games that appealed to a wider audience than games ever had, and marked the beginning of true mass market appeal for videogames. In retrospect the Genesis wasn’t a huge leap forward for videogame graphics, but back then it sure seemed like it. Games like Ghouls and Ghosts, Revenge of Shinobi and Altered Beast sure felt like you had an arcade in your home for the first time, instead of severely compromised home ports of familiar arcade games.

Enter SNK’s Neo Geo system. I remember seeing these in the arcades when the Neo Geo MVS first started hitting arcades back then. There is no way to describe to someone who wasn’t around back then just how phenomenal these games looked. There was no system that could produce the detail and color that you saw in Neo Geo games, arcade or home. It wasn’t long after the debut of Neo Geos in arcades worldwide that SNK gave us the home version of their arcade hardware. At $649 for the system and $200+ for the larger-than-VHS-cassette game cartridges, the system was out of the reach of most. I remember thinking how crazy $200 was for a game. That’s what you paid for a system back then. Like most, at that time I didn’t jump in because of the prohibitive buy-in price.

Fast forward to the last days of the Neo Geo. I was older, more financially secure, and I was treating myself to some of the things I had missed out on when I was younger with a slimmer bank account. I bought a Neo Geo MVS from NCS and called SNK USA and got the second to last Neo Geo CD they sold before going out of business.

Even years later, I was always impressed with what the aged 16 bit system could do.

The Neo Geo spawned several successful franchises, despite the fact that no game developer you ever heard of outside of SNK ever made a game for the system. Many ports of Neo Geo games appeared on systems ranging from the Sega Genesis to the Xbox over the years, with varying levels of success. Generally, even ports on technically superior hardware like the Sega Dreamcast and the Xbox didn’t quite measure up to the Neo Geo originals.

Here are some of the series and games from the Neo Geo that I feel deserve special mention:

1. Fatal Fury The Fatal Fury series didn’t quite make itself part of world pop culture the way that Capcom’s Street Fighter did, but it certainly put SNK on the map as one of the two best fighting game designers on the planet. While Joe Sixpack may not know who Terry Bogard or Mai Shiranui are, if you’re a gamer worth your salt you sure do. I always found the Fatal Fury series very playable. Fast, with beautiful hand drawn artwork, and specials that punished you to pull off, but delivered when you mastered them. And let’s not forget that Mai was the first videogame character with bouncing breasts, years before the Dead or Alive series debuted. The foundation for all future SNK fighters, and by the time the series had evolved into Real Bout Fatal Fury, it was as good as anything out there. Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves, the last in the series, is better than as good as any 2D fighter out there, with beautiful graphics and stellar fighting action. Dreamcast owners rejoice: Fatal Fury: MotW enjoys a near-perfect port on the system. Ports of various FF games are available on the Sega Saturn, but they aren’t as good as the Neo Geo originals. MAME offers gamers who missed out on Fatal Fury a chance to see why it was such an influential series.







2. Metal Slug Metal Slug is probably the most easily recognized franchise from the Neo Geo, as it has appeared recently on the Xbox, Playstation 2 and the Wii. Metal Slug capitalizes on the gamer’s love of the Contra series from Konami, and ups the ante with incredible hand drawn graphics and gameplay that delivers. If you played Metal Slug when it first came out, you know that this game represented the pinnacle of sprite-based graphics, and these games still look great as far as I’m concerned. A solid port of the first Metal Slug exists for Sega Saturn, but the colors seem a little washed out compared to the Neo Geo original. Avoid the Playstation ports. The Xbox ports deliver pretty solid emulation and are recommended. I haven’t opened my Wii Metal Slug Anthology yet, so I can’t comment on how good the ports are.
   





3. Samurai Spirits Also known as Samurai Shodown, this series added weapons to the 2D fighting formula. The art and music perfectly capture the feel of the feudal Japanese theme, and the fighting was top notch. Every game in this series is a keeper, with special nods to SS2 and SS3 for raising the bar for 2D fighters in general. No good ports, you’re stuck with MAME if you want to enjoy SS in all it’s glory.



4. Last Blade This series would appear to the uninitiated to be very derivative of Samurai Spirits. Last Blade and Last Blade 2 do provide frenetic 2D fighting in a feudal Japanese atmosphere, but that is where the similarities end. Last Blade and it’s sequel occur during the Bakumatsu, the Japanese civil war in the 1860s when the Tokugawa shogunate fell to Imperial forces, marking the end of centuries of feudalism in Japan and opening the door to the West and Western industrialism. It also marked the end of Bushido and centuries of the Samurai class structure that had defined Japan. It is a very intense period in Japanese history, one that still resonates within the Japanese, and I encourage anyone with an interest in Japan to read up on it. Last Blade is an evolution of the Samurai Spirits art and music style, and the fighting is as good as anything SNK ever did. The specials in the Last Blade series are punishing to pull off, but successful gamers are rewarded with crazy, screen filling moves that inspired all 2D fighters that followed the Last Blade series. There is a port of Last Blade 2 for Dreamcast that will suffice, but it is inferior to the Neo Geo original. Gamers patient enough to suffer through the Neo Geo CD’s 1x CD drive and load times that often seem to take 3-4 minutes will be rewarded with vibrant color and an incredible CD sound track that completely trumps the arcade original. I’m done gushing. This game isn’t as well known as some other SNK properties, but it should be. Go try it on MAME, now.





5. King of Fighters This is by far my all time favorite fighting game series, 2D or 3D. The 2D incarnation of King of Fighters ran from 1994 through 2004, even spawning a Capcom/SNK crossover series, Capcom Vs SNK from the good people at Capcom, and SNK’s own SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos. The game kept it’s steam up until about 2000, but after SNK folded and was subsequently reborn as a new company, never lived up to it’s heritage. 1995 through 1999 versions are all owners, and King of Fighters ‘97 is my ’stuck on a desert island with one game for the rest of my life’ fighting game. It’s that good. Great art, great characters, screen filling specials before anyone else had thought to use a screen filling special. Furious, furious, fast 2D fighting glory. The early games had ok ports on the Sega Saturn. KoF 98 and 99 had solid ports on the Dreamcast, but with 3D backgrounds instead of the original 2D. The PS2 and Xbox ports were lackluster.

The Neo Geo was the greatest 2D videogame console ever, despite the lack of titles and variety. Too bad the development community didn’t hop on the Neo Geo bandwagon, because there is no reason why the system couldn’t have delivered superiority in platform and role playing the way it dominated fighting. In addition to fantastic 2D fighters, there are also some superb shooters on the system, and I recommend Last Resort and Pulstar to those who like their horizontal scrollers punishingly challenging.

The Neo Geo influenced much of what followed. It’s astonishing 14 year life in both home and arcade will never be duplicated. If you consider yourself a student of videogames, I encourage you to dive in and appreciate SNK’s vision of what arcade games should be. Some of them seem dated now, but a surprising number of Neo Geo titles hold up and are still impressive. Thanks for the memories, Neo Geo.