Neo Geo AES Review

The Neo Geo AES is the only console that ever delivered on the arcade perfect promise, because nothing is being converted. SNK sells the same board that sits inside the cabinet, in a different plastic shell, so the game running in the living room is the game running downtown, frame for frame and sprite for sprite. Nothing else in 1990 comes close. The sprite counts, the animation and the sound leave the Genesis and the Super Nintendo looking a generation behind, and the catalog that follows is a specialist's dream: Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Samurai Shodown, the King of Fighters series year upon year, Metal Slug, Magician Lord and Windjammers.

SNK kept releasing for it into the following century, which no rival managed. The price is the whole reason it never reached more houses, and it is why the value grade sits three steps under the overall rather than one: six hundred and fifty dollars for the console in 1990, and roughly two hundred for a single cartridge, at a moment when a Genesis game cost fifty.

That is a design decision, not an accident, because SNK built the hardware for arcade operators first and rented it to the wealthy second. As engineering it is untouchable. As a purchase it was never rational.