Compiling Neo-Geo 101 Information

[racketboy]

Some of you may remember some of the "Retro Gaming 101" posts we've done in the past. The basic idea is to have a basic run-down of the historical impact of a given console and the information a newbie would want/need to know when shopping around for the console in question and things to make the best use of the machine.

Instead of long paragraphs of information, I prefer to have concise, but useful sentences arranged in bullet points. You can find examples of this in our previous posts:
http://www.racketboy.com/guide/retro-gaming-101

I'm going to post this same info for different consoles, so forgive me if some of the questions are obvious for this given console.

To help out, just write up sentences (or paragraphs, I guess) of useful information. I'll compile them up here and we can keep going until we get a useful guide. Sound good?



Points of interest include:

Background Info: This stuff is what you would typically find in Wikipedia, but if you have anything interesting to add, that would be great

Historical Impact: What innovations did the console bring to the table? what makes it relevant today?

Different Variations of the Hardware

Accessories: What are the essential and unique accessories that didn't come standard with the machine?

Video Connections: What connections are availible for the machine?

Strengths and Weaknesses: This can be for both at the time of its release and in regards to its current relevancy (current perspective preferred)

Emulation: What are the best emulators for PC, Mac, Linux, other, if availible... If there are two good ones, does one have advantages over the other?

Playing Imports: How do you play imports

What other unique things should people know about the machine, what to look for when shopping for one, etc....

[fastbilly1]

AES or MVS?

[racketboy]

AES or MVS?

AES for now.

[fastbilly1]

Then I am of no help until later.

[Niode]

The AES system has no region lock out (as long as you have the Universe BIOS installed). Neither does the CD or the CDZ systems. However the difference is the EU systems play games 17% slower than their Japanese/US counterparts. Another notable difference between the Japanese and EU/US games is that blood is red in the Japanese versions and green on the EU/US Versions. Also female's body parts move realistically on the Japanese games. (if you get what I mean )

[racketboy]

Then I am of no help until later.

Well, wouldn't some of the strengths & weaknesses, emulation, and some of the history be the same?
A brief outline of how the two are similar and different might be nice.

[Niode]

The AES and MVS systems are practically the same, the motherboards for the vertical slot MV-1C is almost identical to the standard AES apart from (bizarrely) the fact that the AES has a socketed BIOS not a soldered maze like the vertical MV-1C 1 slotter. The cartridges are identical as far as the pcb and roms are concerned, the only thing thats different is the slightly different shape to the cartridges. If you have a MVS with Uni-bios you can switch from arcade mode to home mode to unlock the different settings in the cartridges, such as training/practice modes that you wouldn't have access to in the arcades. It goes the same way for AES systems with Uni-Bios so you can unlock arcade-vs modes in home AES carts etc.

[racketboy]

We could put in info about the Neo-Geo CD in here I guess if anyone wants to chime in about that....

[Niode]

We could put in info about the Neo-Geo CD in here I guess if anyone wants to chime in about that....

Runs on essentially the same hardware as the AES but instead of using a more expensive cartridge system, they attached a 1x speed cd-rom drive to the motherboard and the games are loaded from CDs. SNK had noticed that home adoption for the cartridge based system was only really with hardcore gamers. This was due to the high cost in manufacturing the cartridges for the games. CD's were cheap to produce and this saving was passed on to the consumer with games costing a fraction of the price of their AES counterparts. However severe loading times hindered performance of the Neo-Geo with some games taking 30 seconds to load each level. The loading times weren't so bad for games like Metal Slug etc but when the system had to load between each match in fighting games it became quite a drag (especially when compared to instant loading of the AES' cartridges).

SNK released the CDZ to improve on the load time issue of the original NeoGeo CD. They improved the CD-rom hardware increasing the cache, however contrary to popular belief they did not upgrade the cd-rom unit's read speed. It remained at 1x speed like it's predecesor. The increased cache improved loading times slightly but only by a little and it varied wildely from game to game.

The NEO-Geo CD failed to keep up with the current 3D capable consoles of the fifth generation and was finally discontinued in 2000. However SNK did continue to support their hardware for another 7 years after halting console manufacture, support ended on 31st August 2007.

[racketboy]

Are there more controllers than just the joystick and the gamepad?
Accessories?

What emulators are the best for various platforms?