The Neo-Geo chronicles, the madness of an uncompromising console | A Complete Neo-Geo Documentary
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- čas přidán 11. 07. 2024
- In the 80s and 90s, there was a slogan that you could find everywhere in all advertisements for every gaming console-it was 'arcade at home.' Unfortunately, that was rarely the case, even though some companies like Sega came close from time to time, we were far from having the same quality in home console games as in arcade halls, and that's understandable because these were two different worlds that had little in common. However, one console managed to pull off this crazy idea of bringing the arcade experience home, something that seemed unthinkable at the time. Here is the the uncommon story of the Neo-Geo, a console so mind-blowing that, at its announcement, many thought it was a scam, yet it would go on to become one of the most unique consoles of its time.
Made by Sakharu, voiced over by Brad Ziffer.
0:00:00 • An obstinate company
0:00:57 • Part 1 A Strange birth
0:10:58 • Part 2 A Crazy Idea
0:22:04 • Part 3 A New Challenger
0:32:46 • Part 4 Rivalry for the belt
0:43:33 • Part 5 Against the ropes
0:55:39 • Part 6 Technical Knouckout
1:04:35 • An obstinate company
Musics used (in order), check out these incredible artists : • Pokémon X and Y- Laver...
• Pokémon X and Y - Sant...
• Pokémon Black and Whit...
• Pokémon Sun and Moon- ...
• Undertale - Heartache ...
• Mewmore // Midnight (P...
• Pokémon Gold and Silve...
• "Psychic Star" - Vanil...
• Pokemon Mystery Dungeo...
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeo...
• Pokémon Black and Whit...
[private video]
• Sonic Colors - Planet ...
[private video]
• Undertale: Battle Agai...
[private video]
• Chrono Trigger - "Unre...
[private video]
• Pokemon B/W Unwavering...
I sincerely hope you enjoy this video, I loved working on it even if it's really hard to find some reliable sources for such an uncommon console!
Sorry that my English is not perfect, it's not my native language.
Made by Sakharu, voiced over by Brad Ziffer.
We love it Sakharu! Your videos are amazing!
I love your videos, @sakaharubaguette. Can you do the chronicles of the SEGA Dreamcast?
The only retro console from this brand that I own is the Neo Geo Pocket Color, but I love it!
@@sakharubaguette you absolutely crushed it! Every video you have made has been amazing! Keep up the great work!
The only clue I heard that you are not a native speaker:
You switched between present tense language and past tense language. A few modern American and British books try to do all present tense, but the standard is to speak in complete past tense, even if you are imagining or representing things as they happened.
Examples:
Present tense: Sega creatES the Mega Drive, it SELLS well.
Past tense: Sega creatED the MD, it SOLD well.
It’s still a great video, but changing this in future videos will make it more pleasant/professional sounding to a larger English speaking audience.
Also, I grew up during this era, and you did a great job of capturing why we were enchanted by stories of this arcade-at-home system. Again, great job on this video.
I absolutely adore the Neo-Geo. I will always remember my high school graduation night. There was a truck stop a few miles outside of town that had a little cafe in it that sold nasty, greasy burgers and had a small arcade. They had a 4 game Neo cabinet. Me and some friends spent the entire night playing World Heroes 2 and eating those nasty burgers. Damn, damn good times man.
Wholesome
That was a legitimately interesting video! Thank a for posting. As a teenager in 1990, the neo geo was a world apart from anything we were playing back then. The thought of a $600 console and $200 games may as well have been a million dollars to us, but it was an amazing machine.
Me and my friends were in the same boat but at least we had the MVS arcade machines
In school there was one kid whose father bought him a neogeo. I asked my dad and when he found out how much the games cost he just laughed.
It’s so nice to see a part of our gaming proto history so well documented.
Greetings from a national champion of Sega Virtua Striker from Argentina 🇦🇷!
THE BEST IS BACK!!!! Can’t wait to watch ANOTHER awesome video game retrospective!! Thank you, Sakharu!
As a kid, I only knew NEO GEO arcade games were simply the best! That NEO GEO startup screen is ingrained in my mind. I never knew they actually made a home console, and by the price of it, I'm actually thankful I wasn't aware of it, I would never be able to afford it. They wanted to make the Rolls-Royce of 16-bit consoles, and they did just that.
They were mythical in the '90s. A lot of us wondered if they even existed. One day I was invited to a classmate's birthday party in '96. Her dad was a rich prop provider and had an little mini casino, with a Neo Geo and small library sitting in the corner.
I spent a few hours playing Metal Slug and when I asked her dad where he got it, he simply said "don't bother, your parents will kill you if you ask for one".
Nowadays you can just buy the console and flash cart or play on a MiSTer FPGA, both of which are pricey options. We really weren't missing out in that much, but it's cool to finally play it again.
I remember drooling over screenshots of Metal Slug in Babbages catalogs way back in the day. I lived in a very low income area, and never knew anyone with a Neo Geo, but I knew from those screenshots that it had to be something amazing. I didn't actually come across an MVS unit until maybe 2002, and I dumped 5 or 6 bucks into Metal Slug 3.
This is a very well researched and informative video, and I appreciate the effort that you put into it. Cheers, Sir!
The Neo Geo graphics hardware was very weird everything is made up of sprites that are 16 pixels wide and up to 512 pixels high. The hardware is not tile based it uses 16 bit color (5 bits each for RGB + a "dark" bit so the leftover 1 bit doesn't go to waste) with 12 bits per pixel. Basically it works like VGA 256 color mode but on steroids i.e. there are 4096 16-bit pallet entries and the 12-bit pixel values point to a specific entry and will be displayed using the 16-bit color value stored there. There are no graphics tile layers at all only a non scrolling text layer to be used for the HUD. There are 380 sprites with a maximum of 96 per scanline or 1536 sprite pixels per line. The Sega Genesis by comparison had 80 sprites and a maximum of 320 sprite pixels per scanline) Basically the Genesis could display an entire screen width worth of sprite pixels and the Neo Geo could display just shy of five times that (4.8 screen widths). Though that's not as insanely high as it sounds because you had to build your background sets out of sprites too where other contemporary hardware would use multiple tile layers for that purpose. But there were far less restrictions on parallax scrolling for example you could have a cityscape in the background where every building scrolls by at a different rate and overlap with each other.
When working with sprites only, there's usually less repetition in scenery and it's easier to make evironments look more active and alive with animations. Also, the Neo Geo's total color palette is 65536. Creating a game for this console requires some serious artistic effort, if the goal is to make it look like a Neo Geo game at least.
Why do Jump’n’Runs and RPGs always use tiles? Neither Amiga, ST, PC ( Keen and Tux ) have tiles.
The genesis is genius. It renders sprites in the border back to front. Then on the screen it renders on tile background and on top of this one tile foreground. So a single buffer is enough to keep the renderer occupied. But it needs kinda z values of the sprites. Pure z order as in NeoGeo and Jaguar allows translucency.
@@DancesRainyStreets 65536 is 16-bit color, each pallet entry used 5 bits for red green and blue which is only 15 bit, the leftover 1 bit is used as a "dark" bit. Unlike 16-bit color in the PC world where it was 5-6-5 color with green channel having an extra bit of resolution (green was used for the extra bit because the human eye is most sensitive to green)
Neo Geo the holy Grail of my childhood. I always loved their cabinets because most often they were never more than a quarter.
This video is another banger of a history lesson, it's a nice niche as there aren't a ton of videos about this topic, well at least not as many as other launches. Keep up the excellent work!
I remember seeing the box for the Neo Geo at Babbages for the first time. I'd read about it in EGM but somehow the enormous box really hit home that this was arcade equipment. Then I saw the price and thought "Oh, well I've never play that" lol
Thank you Sakharu for another incredible video, you're one of the best to ever do it! ❤️
I loved my Neo Geo Pocket. Saved and bought it from an import store, and used to take it to secondary school.
Let’s goooooooooo I love this channel
Can’t wait to see more stuff get translated
Awesome video !!! One of the best I have seen !!!
Neo Geo AES is still a grail for a lot of people, and for us who grew in the 90s, it has a main spot in our gaming memories, even if most didn't even touch one. Great video!
Another 5-star console documentary like the Nintendo 64 chronicles. Thanks for the excellent content!!
Amazing video, top notch production. A very enjoyable watch. Thank you.
This is the first video of yours that I've seen. I just want to tell you what an amazing job you've done. Can't wait to see more.
Thank you profusely for the info. We LOVE you SNK and NEO-GEO!!!!!
Excellent video of NEO-GEO's history!
Thank you for 1 hour of enjoyment :D
What an incredible documentary!! It's very well made and kept my attention for the entire time. Great work!
Making a small supposition to convey emotion or importance instead of just doing it to fill time is a trap many documentarians fall in into, and you don't at all. This is an excellent job, the source graphics gathered & scaling work to make 'em look good is on point, and I'm going to go and watch the others. Killer stuff.
What a great video. Always been a SNK fan. Love all the work you put into this. Thank you. 😁😁
amazing video its AWESOME
Excellent video!
Another fantastic video! I especially liked how this was a story I never heard before-Neo Geo is a relatively obscure topic but vastly interesting, and it’s great to see someone like you bring it to attention like this. Always a pleasure to watch!
Subscribed. Thank you. I think this is the best NeoGeo history video uploaded to youtube. Keep up the research.
Excellent work! I really enjoyed this one, and learned a lot more of this console. Cheers!
I have almost no interest in the Neo Geo but all of your other documentaries have been so amazing I just can't pass it up!
Have you ever played any Neo Geo games?
Great video, Neo Geo was an amazing machine, love most of their games like Blues Jouney, 8 Man, King of Monsters 2, Metal Sug, Fatal fury series and The King of Fighters series
A most excellent video. Congrats on the quality of documentary.
Man idk how you compile this all but this is some great stuff. If I ran a class of videogame history we'd be watching your videos as precursors
I loved this video!
Great video
Excellent!
Gros soutien mr sakahru.
Top tier man. GJ
This 100 yen coin shortage reminds me of a urban legend in 1970s Germany. The most popular nationwide newspaper ("Bild") cost 20 Pfennig. Apparently the German government and the central Bank were seriously thinking about releasing/minting a 20 Pfennig coin because tens of millions of 10 Pfennig coins were used daily by the Germans to buy the "Bild" newspaper on their way to work.
This is an extremely well made doc. Thanks.
What is it with the Japanese and Mahjong. I’ve emulated whole library’s of games from many systems and the amount of the games that end up being mahjong or variation on mahjong or mahjong with anime boobies is astoundingly high. lol so again my question is why so much mahjong
Idk, but man, is mahjong fun, so I can't say I totally blame them
I find their obsession with horse racing gambling games even more strange.
Anime boobs.......( . )( . )......... next question
Fascinating and thorough piece of history!
This was an absolutely phenomenal video. I want to sincerely thank you for the effort and dedication to excellence you put in to making this.
It wasn't labeled the rolls royce of consoles for no reason.
Nice video
Around 37:10 it's mentioned that Neo-Geo AES games often had unlimited Continues, but I remember it being different; I'm pretty sure that the AES versions of games usually limited the player to a total of 4 credits. In many games, this could be worked around by using a memory card and simply loading a mid-game save with a fresh set of 4 credits. But the default behavior (thankfully) didn't simply allow credit-feeding every time.
Anyway, this video was very entertaining, so thank you very much for producing it =)
The neo geo aes is a must add to my collection. Such a masterpiece.
This was a fantastic video.
Having a Neo-Geo back in the day was the ultimate flex.
I've always wanted one and they are just as expensive today as they were brand new.
An MVS (not sure if thats the right acronym) version was the hardware in the actual arcade machine. It also used carts, if im not mistaken i think it can play the home console carts as well? In any regard its the same exact game, for a fraction of the price, i mean like lmao a fraction its the diff between 500+ usd.
Im not sure about these days, my buddy had one when i lived in Australia back in 9th 10th grade in 2004-2005. The mvs carts at the time were 50 bucks average for 900 dollar home versions. I cant imagine the prices now, im not even going to google it bcuz my wife would kill me cuz id buy it.
If you just want to play and aren't so deep into collecting, a consolized MVS is a cost effective solution. You could get the 161in1 cart, which has most of the games. If you have extra money to spend, you could get a Neo SD Flash cart or Darksoft flash cart.
Yes, sir! Another baguette sandwich of retro gaming goodness. 😎
SNK: We promise that this year that we will make other games too besides fighting games.
Also SNK: Fingers crossed behind their backs.
Very good video, for a very good system 👍
Thank you 😊
Great vid. I’m still waiting on those Neo-Geo RPGs they promised. 😆
NEOGEO LET'S GO
I have rewritten this post now 3 times. As a lifelong SNK fan who started playing their games long before the MVS...this was very good. I especially liked hearing how different the Japanese market was to our own (US). However, I would be remiss if I didn't say there are a number of things wrong here as well. Some of it I can understand as it comes from a different perspective and region...
However, there are some technical things here that I can't just say....different region, different opinion. For example, he talks about the Snes being able to do things the Neo Geo can't. This is just plain wrong and I'll tell you why. The Sega Genesis can (and has) emulated every single effect the Snes can do (software scaling, rotation, warping, ect). You better believe if the Genesis can do it, it's hyped up mega version can as well.
Addendum- When Mode 7 first hit SNK was still trying to find itself. I don't believe they were overly concerned with scaling a background. No, when SNK needed a sprite scaled they either used clever tricks to make it happen or brute forced it. Mode 7 was a gimmick in all but a handful of games. I just don't see SNK as seeing it as so important to work games around it. Besides, they didn't need it to show up an Snes.
My favorite fighting game is Samurai Shodown 4.
Thanks for making this video.
👍
OMG HE'S BACK! We've missed you! ❤❤❤
I Love the Neo Geo and my fondness and appreciation for SNK and the quality of it's games and consoles has only grown over the years.
I've gone from picking up a £20 Neo Geo CD system in 2016, to owning an AES cartridge system, Neo Geo Pocket color, MVS MV-1C motherboard and even Hyper Neo Geo 64 Motherboard rev 2 (another bargain at £14 back in 2017!!).
Honestly, I cannot begin to explain how much pleasure SNK and their games have given me across so many systems and formats over the years - especially the SEGA Saturn, which had some incredible neo geo ports.
Thanks for such an entertaining Video - Great to see Vanguard too, as I absolutely loved that in arcades back in the day!!
Thank you
Bought my neo geo in 94. I worked part-time at dunkin' Donuts, starting in 93 at age 13 to save up for the Neo Geo. Got the system and KOF 94 at the same time. I only had 2 games on it. Kof 94 and 95. After that, the imported JP Saturn ports were good enough with their included ram carts that I stopped buying KOF games for my neo geo.
The story of SNK as a company and the creation of their Neo Geo system is a good one. There are those that only look at sales numbers to determine if something is a succes or failure, and while that holds some truth, it's never the whole story and certainly doesn't guarantee quality. The Neo Geo's library of games is of good quality overall, with only a few really bad ones and a dozen or so that are average. The rest varies from pretty good to excellent. Biggest downsides are that it's library of games is less varied when compared to it's contemporaries, even when compared to the NES, and most offer only arcade style play, which is logical, but can make some sports games less fun in single player mode for example. Still, it's a great system and i really like how every game explains the basics of the controls before starting, and how people kept supporting it with the unibios for example. Feels like a very clean system to use overall.
The NES was still the biggest thing going when the Neo Geo was released. If Nintendo never went into the console market to release the famicom/NES, consoles would probably have been a bit more niche for at least a few more years, with Sega probably slowly moving forward with it's SG-1000 and compatible home computers. Consoles overall would probably have lagged behind more in terms of graphics and sound, when compared to home computers and arcades at the time. Not sure if this scenario would have impacted SNK to release the AES console though.
The SNES, Mega Drive and PC Engine were all less powerful when compared to the Neo Geo, by a wide margin. Between the first three mentioned, they all had their strengths and weaknesses and one wasn't necessarily more powerful than the other. The SNES had the biggest color palette and all the background/layer modes (including mode 7) to play with, plus was the first console, (along with the Neo Geo), to have a fully dedicated sample-based sound chip. The Mega Drive is the faster console in terms of processing power and can do a lot of the tricks the SNES (and Neo Geo) can do with their hardware through clever software programming. Also, it was the most capable of running primitive 3D games without the help of any extra chips. The Turbo was the first and can be considered less powerful, having an 8-bit cpu, but can display the most colors at the same time and it's cpu is very fast for an 8-bit. Also the first console to introduce CD's. Still, none of them came close to an AES. Even the PS1 and Saturn struggled with the amount of RAM needed to run the games. It remained the best at it's own game for many years.
There's one statement you're made that i have to disagree with though. Before Mario 64 only fighting and racing games used 3D space effectively? Well, how about space exploration and combat sims, or flight sims? First-person shooter were doing fine too, or maybe you meant the third-person perspective of Mario? Not sure if it was the first, but sure, it did make it a succes.
Still, a nice video overall!
These are some of the best games ever. Im a huge neo geo fan. I havent owned an AES, but would like to get one soon. I currently have the mvsX arcade cabinet from Unico, the arcade stick pro, and the mini arcade edition. And many of the ACA individual neo geo titles. Im living how i only dreamed when i was a kid. 👍
I owned an MVS 1 slot back in 97-00. Great system and still is. Had quite a few games but Windjammers, Bust-a-Move, Metal Slug 2 and Windjammers were played all the time. Sure, with emulation you can play them but wish I would of kept it, just for Neo Turf Masters alone.
My buddy had one, in 03-04 when I lived in Australia we would frequently play metal slug 2, and X. Fun times. I dont want to google it, id buy it and im sure my wife wouldn't be happy as...lets say I have five 4090s and primarily its for work and my biz. However i got a prob 😂.
SNK, NEOGEO........ FOREVER!!!!!
I got the mini last year with 2 controllers. I picked up a HDMI to S-video adapter so I can play on my old Sony Trinitron. Looks awesome.
What really bothers me about all this is that its not about how power any console actually is, but rather how captivating the games are .
When Donkey Kong Country was released, people thought it was on Nintendo's new console, the N64, but it wasn't. It was running on the 16 bit Super Nintendo.
So its all about the software for the console. You can even make a new Neo Geo game right now and nail it out of the park in terms of how amazing the game is.
Follow up to my original post-
Red Zone is the Sega Genesis on software sprite scaling, rotation, warping, polygonal graphics, and Mode 7 like background rotation all at once. It did this without the need for a helper chip. It was done with...clever programming, a little software magic, knowing the hardware, and utilizing it to its maximum potential. That is all. As I said, excellent video with a few technical mistakes. A+.
awsome video...i was a proud owner of a neo geo when it was hot to have one..trully an arcade machine
Another thing about neo geo was they were way ahead of every game in terms of ideas and uniqueness unfounded else were in video games I played all neo geo games on emulators many yrs ago
Back when an overpowered console didnt require a 200+ watt power supply and excessive heat sinks and fans.
smartphone.
Single-speed CD-drive is actually insane. My first CD-ROM-Drive for my 486 PC was a 2x Mitsumi (to play Rebel Assault).
Neo Geo had a sort of mythical status among my friend group back then as none of our parents could afford to buy us one.
About the CD ROM tech this wasn't the expensive part, the RAM chips was.
Been saving for one since its announcement.....nearly there 😂
I didn't own a Neo Geo but I got all the collections I could in the PS2/Xbox era. KOF is my go to fighting series these days. Street Fighter was really good up through III but after that it just wasn't the same for me.
I remember when my dad saw the price of one game.........that was it, the Neo Geo was null and void. Back then the console with🕹️🕹️and 3 games was the price of a used🚗. It was a bachelor with no kids that worked at UPS as a CDL driver, and I remember he would show up to this video game store called HITECH in NC and pick on us because all we could afford was used games. He was buying 2/4 games a month for his neo, driving off in hid 300zxTT.......BALLIN 💩ing on the kids. What's funny is that store would let you rent to play in their store any systems and any game for 30 min blocks. I never jumped to rent the NeoGeo because if i liked the game I could never buy it. I stuck to a modest wish list i could actually afford, TG16, Jag, NES, GENESIS, SNES, and Master system........but if my parents would have hit the lottery I would have grabbed a NEO NO HESITATION
the first time i saw the neo geo was at e.b electronics. what shocked me was the price. the games were $200 & the system was almost $1000. i couldn't afford that
The Sharp X68000 had pixel perfect arcade conversions before the Neo Geo did due to several japanese companies (including Capcom) using it as an arcade development system. But it was also even more expensive than the Neo Geo.
From what i've read it seems true that it was used to develop arcade games, even if the (more advanced) games ran better on the dedicated pcb they were designed for.
SNK created my favorite game ever with Crystalis in '93 for the NES
I just went ahead and ordered my Neo Geo controllers CD controllers just to just get them one of the greatest controllers ever made. I didn’t even open them yet.
Nothing makes me happier than seeing a recommendation from this channel. These documentaries deserve a lot more views.
The Neogeo is fantastic bet and it worked! Nowadays nobody will try to do the same with a console over 1000€ for example and games that are above 200€ each. The Neogeo was exactly at the right time with the right choices of beautiful 2d games. I am old enough to have seen a Neogeo in a friend house ( around 1993).
Man back in the 90s i dreamed of having one of these. Still don't got one lol
The CDZ does have a 2X dual speed CD drive. You mentioned caching, so I'm guessing you were reading outdated information, because there used to be a lot of incorrect information online about this.
Absolutely despised the NeoGeo adverts and claims back in the early 90’s and simply felt the SNES & Genesis had AAA titles in superior quality and numbers vs NeoGeo. It’s remains my opinion to this very day and I own multiple NeoGeo consoles with many games.
A story,
It was 1993, I had my 1991 teal green CRX Si & I went into my local Electronics Boutique which had the Neo Geo.
Well you can't have everything. I couldn't afford the Neo Geo & car payments...
The best time to be alive ever
I had heard of neo-geo as an NES kid, but never knew what it really was
Always loved neo geo aes bought me first 1 in 1995 brilliant games ❤
I was alive at the time: @23:52 the only launch title anyone was impressed by in the United States and Canada was the Baseball game -Magician Lord was regarded with utter scorn. Elsewhere, in cultures that didnt appreciate baseball... ?
@5:00 Warner X Atari
Hey, good point
We forget these things, but still works
SNK the way to play!
The AVS was a doomed design from the start, it was so damn expensive and each cartridge just futher pushed that expense so much that is was economically unfeasible.
The MVS was a brilliant choice, because it significantly reduced overall cost for arcade operators and they could pick and choose what games they wanted to run on the system at any time. My 4 slot MVS cabinet is by far one of my favorite gaming items because of its ease of use and relatively inexpensive library which I can just swap into the system whenever I want to.
24 bits? now your playing with power!
it was soo awesome I wanted one but it was soo expensive
i was a teen when it came out and yeah, this system wasnt even in the universe of what my parents were willing to spend. getting a $200 sega genesis was a huge ordeal and i felt priviledged to get just one game with it that christmas: Decapattack. besides borrowing friends games, that was the only game i had until that next christmas
It was considered 24 bit due to the 24 bit graphics data bus, not because it had a 16 bit and 8 bit processors. Also, the cartridges didn’t hold anywhere near the amount of data as CD. 90 vs. 650 MiB.
Disgusting how expensive they were and how much they expected for one game.
No one could afford one of these in the UK unless their parents were stupid or were rich as fkc spoilt.
The Video Game Crash was USA only, the rest of the world including Japan was thriving. Its well document, just Americans keep on saying a global crash when it was limited to USA
That E.T. game. They invested Millions of dollars into a game that only took 3 weeks and then made millions of copies of it for sale at Christmas only to have it all backfire.
And only 1 guy made the game in 3 weeks. Are they fucking out of their minds????
Neo geo was my fave of all the retro consoles playing any neo geo game and everyone will remember alot of them at the arcades I never had a official neo geo because the console was over 1000+ dollars here in New Zealand back then and that was only for the console without a game or a controller or stick the controller was 300+ dollars the stick was 500+ dollars and the carts were 200+ dollars so in my country we didn't support snk because the prices were horribly unaffordable for our likeings so we supported Nintendo and Sega as those console were affordable for the time but when PayStation came out prices went from affordable to horrible thank Sony for that