Neo Geo
SNK's answer to a dream: the arcade in your home. The Neo Geo's home console ran hardware identical to its arcade cabinets, so you got arcade-perfect games with zero compromises — for $649.99, plus cartridges that cost upward of $200. The rich kid down the street had one. You didn't.
SNK launched the Neo Geo in Japan in 1990 with a radical premise: unified arcade and home hardware. The AES home console used identical hardware to the MVS arcade board, meaning home players got the exact arcade experience — no compromises, no cut-down ports. "The arcade in your home" was, for once, literally true.
The price reflected the ambition. The US "Gold System" launched at $649.99, the most expensive home console of its day, with a "Silver System" package at $399.99 — and cartridges cost upward of $200, relegating the system to a very select market. SNK's signature series gave the faithful reasons to pay: Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, The King of Fighters, and Metal Slug all called the Neo Geo home.
The arcade side carried the business — one million MVS units had shipped worldwide by April 1997. The hardware was discontinued in 1997, but SNK kept releasing Neo Geo games until 2004, an astonishing fourteen-year software run. Today the system is a prized collectible, its reputation burnished by the very exclusivity that once limited its audience.
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