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.

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.

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.

I used to work for a mom'n pop's brick and mortar videogame store in the 90's. One day after work I visited a competing toy store to check their pricing. The owner recognized me and we had a chat, he points to an unsold Neogeo box on a shelf collecting dust and asks if I can take it off his hands for a mere 3000kr (roughly 300$/€). Even if we adjust for inflation it was still dirt cheap, so I rushed to the bank and got the money. Returned home with a Neogeo + Cyberlip, Magician Lord, League Bowling, Blue's Journey, Top Player's Golf & Puzzled. I paid less for all that than I paid for King of Fighters 94. Good times.

Neo-Geo will be always a Rolls-Royce of the video consoles. Ahh tthe 80-90s i miss them so much.

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.

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.

THE BEST IS BACK!!!! Can’t wait to watch ANOTHER awesome video game retrospective!! Thank you, Sakharu!

I am a veteran of the 16 bit Wars and I remember how I longingly stared at Neo Geo ads in video game magazines. The thing and especially the single game cartridges were just crazy expensive. If I remember correctly, a single game cost like 300 to 400 Deutschmarks (150 to 200 US Dollars), which was about as much as a SEGA Mega Drive (Genesis) bundled with 4 games cost back then.

Thank you Sakharu for another incredible video, you're one of the best to ever do it! ❤️

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!

Neo Geo the holy Grail of my childhood. I always loved their cabinets because most often they were never more than a quarter.

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!

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.

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 amount of footage and information you found is the best I’ve seen about this console. Excellent work. I’ve subscribed!

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

Amazing video, top notch production. A very enjoyable watch. Thank you.

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!

Great video bro, this really helped pass the time at work, I think I might break out the old neo geo cd when I get home 😊

What an incredible documentary!! It's very well made and kept my attention for the entire time. Great work!

Got my first Neogeo back in fall 1994 with Fatal Fury Special and League Bowling in mint condition for only 150$ (of the time). I remember being blowed away by the graphics and the sound. 30 Years later, I own 4 of them, about 20 AES carts of the game I played / I cherish the most. That's the only gaming system I have. everything else is played on PC.

Wow, this is a very high-quality documentary. Thank you for your hard work.

Let’s goooooooooo I love this channel Can’t wait to see more stuff get translated

Back in the early 90s Neo Geo was a myth, a creature of legend; the holy "32" gb grail that some kids in the neighborhood claimed to have played when they went to visit their family who just happened to live on the other side of the country. Like claiming to have found a Shaq rookie card in a random Upper Deck pack, or claiming to be able to hack the cable box so that the Spice Channel would come through perfectly clear, claiming to have played with the Neo Geo was a bragging right for us. A way to let all of the other good for nothings in the neighborhood know that you were top dog.

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.

The Neo-Geo may have had a short few years at the top - but my god, when some kid told you they had one, it was like dropping an atom bomb on the conversation. It's hard to put it into words today, because the difference between the best console today, and the best PC doesnt feel that vast. But a Neo-Geo felt like a quantum computer from the future by comparison.

Brilliantly crafted documentary! This was an absolute treat to listen to. Thank you!

Dude.. Absolutely love these videos!! Please keep up the awesome work.. Looking forward to the next ones!

Great documentary! Very well put together and narrated. I've always enjoyed when the less mainstream gaming consoles are given a fair shake. Looking forward to seeing what's next!

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 =)

What a great video. Always been a SNK fan. Love all the work you put into this. Thank you. 😁😁

Subscribed. Thank you. I think this is the best NeoGeo history video uploaded to youtube. Keep up the research.

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.

Excellent work! I really enjoyed this one, and learned a lot more of this console. Cheers!

A truly excellent retrospective - well done!

Awesome video !!! One of the best I have seen !!!

This was an excellently put together documentary of a key piece of video game history. Well done!

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

A most excellent video. Congrats on the quality of documentary.

Even knowing all of this and having lived through it, I still watch these vids. Nowadays, it's hard to grasp just how much the evolution of gaming has been in the past. From huge paper floppy disks and atari to 8 bit, to 16 bit, and 3d with 16 and 32, to actually good looking 3d in the ps2/xb era. The pa3/360 era was the last era where console upgrades were huge. Everything from ps360 onwards is only marginally better looking ganes. The innovation and huge difference from previous generations is gone.

Excellent video of NEO-GEO's history! Thank you for 1 hour of enjoyment :D

Another 5-star console documentary like the Nintendo 64 chronicles. Thanks for the excellent content!!

An absolutely wonderful video. Thanks.

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.

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

Subscribed. I love these types of content. Thank you for a great video.

Such a great video about this console! Top stuff.

Thank you profusely for the info. We LOVE you SNK and NEO-GEO!!!!!

I was surprised with the added overall video game history. Subscribed!

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

Awesome video. Thoroughly enjoyed it

Outstanding documentary about one of my favourite video game systems of all time. Marvellous job! I own both (MVS and AES) because Neo Geo is too good not to own one and play its legendary master pieces.

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.

This is an extremely well made doc. Thanks.

Just discovered your channel and watched all the videos, amazing videos with lots of details on the history of the consoles, great work! Totally subscribed

Enjoyed that trip down memory lane. I never knew anyone who actually owned a Neo-Geo... there were rumours, but mostly urban legend. Great video. Subbed & shared.

Man… growing up this console had like mythical unicorn Sasquatch vibes. You’d hear about someone who had it but never saw it yourself. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I had the chance to play one. Felt good man.

Fascinating and thorough piece of history!

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!

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!!

This was a great video, thanks a lot!

Thanks a lot for this Video. Getting to know the NEO GEO deeper. 🙂👍

Nice video dude

I loved my Neo Geo Pocket. Saved and bought it from an import store, and used to take it to secondary school.

[An exceptionally magnificent presentation.]

Perhaps the most focused and timeless 2D games/console. The combination of uniqueness, rarity and art style, driven by both the hardwares capabilities as well as its constraints, really created something special.

When I was a kid the Neo-Geo was the holy grail of consoles, most only dreamt of the console, luckily we had an amusement arcade on the block fully stocked with the same games

Great video ...well researched !

Fantastic documentary!!

Excellent video!

Great video, thanks.

Samurai Showdown was my favorite game at the Pizza restaurant. They had an arcade room with a Neo Geo cabinet.

My favorite fighting game is Samurai Shodown 4. Thanks for making this video. 👍

This channel is brilliant narrated really well. I grew up in this era i was never interested in SNK i was always a sega fan and my brother was a nintendo fan. It's very interesting history about SNK. I subbed to the channel! 👍

Baseball Starts was fricken fantastic. Wow I loved that game.

Very nice video btw watched the whole way through :)

Yes, sir! Another baguette sandwich of retro gaming goodness. 😎

amazing video its AWESOME

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!

I'm 40 and the Neo Geo has been #1 on my most wanted console list since I was like 10. It was just so insanely expensive back then. Not to mention a lot of stores didn't even carry it.

One of the holy grails. I just took the plunge, have an AES coming in from Japan, can`t wait.

I love the production quality of the Neo Geo AES and CD. I also skipped several science classes in University, while I played Samurai Showdown with a buddy during the early 90s ...what a capable piece of hardware.

Great video mate

I didn't quite realize this came out around the same time as the SNES, thought it was mid to late 90s. Must've been mindblowing.

thx, that was a ride and a half!

Neo Geo, Neo Geo. Four bright buttons and two joysticks. Neo Geo, Neo Geo. Cool red cab and a name that sticks. No one quite did 2D fighters like you did. No one quite did runnin' and gunnin' like you did No one quite did Puzzle Bobble like you did I'll always love my four slot model cause I, I... I played that cab for hours on end to the point where that thing was my only friend. With a heavy machine gun in my hand I beat Metal Slug over and over again. You're 32 bits of endless fun. You're a 1990 revolution. You're ahead of the game. You are the best. You're the SNK king of MVS.

As Steve Bania says to Seinfeld, ‘That’s gold, Jerry!!’ Great preso OP

Great vid. I’m still waiting on those Neo-Geo RPGs they promised. 😆

The neo geo aes is a must add to my collection. Such a masterpiece.

Keep it up. Quality videos. You will get to 100k subs in no time. I wouldn't be surprised if you get to a million soon after...

ever excellent, thanks!

Brilliant video..

I remember my brother and I in the early 90s heading to the mall straight to Software Etc with months of money saved up. When brought home we were literally blown away from the difference in graphics and sound for the time. We were also the most popular kids in the neighborhood for some reason! 😁

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.

The Neo Geo was so awesome. It was essentially a "Switch" idea for arcade. Whereas Switch was a home/portable hybrid, Neo Geo was a home/arcade hybrid. It was genius, and honestly only held back by the sheer expensiveness of the realities of bringing this concept home at the time.

Excellent !

Gros soutien mr sakahru.

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.

Great video