My Thoughts on the Neo Geo

I've been saving up some cash for a while with the intention of buying some cool retro gaming stuff. Maybe a console. A few months ago, I got myself a 3DO for $40, and it sucks, because it's a 3DO, but there are some other consoles I've been thinking about for a long time. A Turbografx 16, a special edition N64 (maybe the Pikachu one, or maybe one that's just a different color than the standard gray or black), or maybe something obscure like the Casio Loopy, that sucks, but is a fun little conversation piece.

My holy grail as a collector however, is a Neo Geo. I've wanted one since I was a kid. It's the elite console of gaming. It has all the hardware power of an arcade cabinet in one giant clunker of a console with giant cartridges more than twice the size of a Super Nintendo cart.

The thing is that I'd have a Neo Geo except for one simple thing. The price point is absurd. I don't even mean that it's high. It's ridiculous.

The consoles themselves are a bit pricey. About $250 and up is the price I've seen on eBay. That's not ridiculous admittedly, but it's out of my price range. But I understand it. It's a top of the line game console with a rabid cult following. You can demand that price and people will pay for it. Fine. That's not what I'm talking about with the price point, though.

How much do you think a complete in box copy of King of Fighters '95 would go for? Consider that it's an entry in one of SNK's flagship series. It's a game in demand among Neo Geo owners because of that. But it's not rare for a Neo Geo game, you wouldn't think.

At the moment, there's one on eBay going for $2300. No, not $230. You missed that last digit. This thing's going for around the price of a cheap used car, a semester at a community college, or a Gretsch Country Gentleman, the guitar George Harrison used. At least if you have a Country Gentleman, you can play the opening guitar part from Revolution, which is admittedly pretty awesome. With a copy of King of Fighters '95, you can tell people that you spent $2300 on a video game and have them look at you like you're an idiot, and know in your heart that it's true because you could just get the PS1 version for like, $15 or better yet, a compilation of the first several games on the Wii for like, $20.

Okay, maybe you can get another game cheaper. Samurai Shodown 4 goes for a mere $1860. Again, not a typo

At a more reasonable less insane price are copies of Fatal Fury 2 and Art of Fighting 2, where the seller's only asking for $160. I'll stick with my Sega Genesis version of Fatal Fury 2, thanks. If the only other version available was the Super Nintendo version, $160 wouldn't be that insane, because the Super Nintendo port was atrocious.

But still, the price is a little high. And by that, I mean that it's still way out of the price range for most collectors.

In fairness, there's a copy of Samurai Shodown 2, arguably the best game in that series, going for $30 with an extra $17 for shipping. The shipping seems like a lot, but the seller's in Italy, so it's actually fairly reasonable for an import, considering that the average price for shipping inside the US for a Neo Geo game is $10.



If I wanted to blow $50, I might consider buying Samurai Shodown 2 even if I can't play it. It's a pretty cool shelf piece, and if I ever do get the console, I'd have one of the best games on it already, and for a decent price too.

In any case, I know what I'm going to do if I ever hit the lottery. I'll own all of these games, put them in a glass case and bring my other game collecting friends over to my house just to rub their noses in the fact that I blew thousands of dollars on games that I can get near perfect ports of on the PS2 and the Wii for much, much less.

Video Game Review - Fatal Fury Special (Game Gear)

When I was a kid, I wanted a Sega Game Gear. It was like the Game Boy, but it had COLOR! Holy crap, so awesome! About a year ago, I bought a Game Gear at a flea market. It really isn’t that impressive. It’s bigger than the original Game Boy, it takes six AA batteries, and it drains them faster than the original Game Boy. The screen has to be tilted just right so you can see it. It’s worse than the original Game Boy Advance in that regard. And this might just be a problem with my particular unit, but I can’t turn the sound all the way off. The sound quality is also pretty awful. So, the Game Gear stinks.

But that’s not to say that it didn’t have some good games on it. The best game I’ve found for the Game Gear is Fatal Fury Special, which surprises me quite a bit. Handheld ports of fighting games are rarely very good, and it’s a very stripped down version of the game it’s a port of. It doesn’t have any endings, it’s missing characters, it doesn’t have the multi plane combat that made the Fatal Fury games famous, and it takes the

great soundtrack from the Neo Geo and Genesis games and butchers it. Though in fairness, it is a handheld game, so that’s to be expected. It’s also a lot better than the Super Nintendo version of the Fatal Fury games in that regard.

Terry Bogard's Burning Knuckle, or as Terry pronounces it in his trademark Engrish, Burr Nuckoo.

Seriously, the Genesis versions of the Fatal Fury games weren’t only better games in most regards, they sounded a lot better too. Wrap your head around that.

The game works very well on the Game Gear. The controls are very responsive, and even though it only has two buttons for attack, it makes due with what little it has.

If you’re a fan of fighting games and SNK games in particular, and you own a Game Gear, then this game is well worth checking out.

Score: 8/10