Neo Geo System(en.wikipedia.org)
en.wikipedia.org
Neo Geo System
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_Geo_%28system%29
8 comments
Go and play Metal Slug 3, and tell me that was done on a 12MHz processor with a straight face - what they did with this thing was magic.
The artwork is amazing, but I don't think it's computationally demanding.
Especially given the number of sprites supported by this console - you can basically cover the screen multiple times over with hardware sprites.
Right, for the paradigm of that era, it was a beast, numerous, large, full colors sprites, good audio.
But again, the art work is amazing, I'm more in love with this style than the latest GTA.
But again, the art work is amazing, I'm more in love with this style than the latest GTA.
Indeed. Even the backgrounds are made solely of hardware sprites.
Yeah. For my part I remember being completely blown away by games such as Art of Fighting with the real-time zoom on already huge sprites on screen. At the time it was just unseen on any other format. And sound-wise it was very impressive as games used tons of samples because of the large memory size, well before the CD-era. But cartridges were very, very expensive... :)
Art of Fighting is a good example. Something remarkable is also the more and more refined graphics throughout the iterations of a serie. If you compare fatal fury 1 & 3 it's the same resolution and same colors but there is a huge progress in the graphics. It's the same for most of the game systems, when programmers have to cope with the same hardware during 5 years or so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0aPKy8-qsE
had always read about it, never seen it in motion, quite good!
had always read about it, never seen it in motion, quite good!
Yet Metal Slug has a lot of slowdowns. So yes, the game is beautiful and very fun but not as amazing technologically as e.g. the first Doom was.
DOOM (and Wolf3D) included a window-size option which would put the screen in a small box to avoid slowdowns. Unless you had a 486, you were probably going to use it.
From a business perspective, the Neo Geo is a fascinating look at an attempt to segment the video-game market into "regular systems" and "upscale systems". The NG was in every way the BMW/Mercedes of the time. It was never going to replace the dominant systems, but it offered a high-end alternative for people so inclined.
It also hit at a very weird time in video-game history, the explosion of the fighting game. And SNK tried to completely monopolize and corner that market for years. In the beginning, the system offered much greater variety (and innovation) in gaming, but eventually it just got turned into a platform for yearly updates of one of the half-dozen fighting franchises SNK produced.
Once the main craze was over, some of that variety started to show up again, with a couple shooters and the famous Metal Slug series. By then, technology had moved beyond what the NG could do, and SNK didn't really succeed in making it in the fast-moving world of polygonal arcade games.
It also hit at a very weird time in video-game history, the explosion of the fighting game. And SNK tried to completely monopolize and corner that market for years. In the beginning, the system offered much greater variety (and innovation) in gaming, but eventually it just got turned into a platform for yearly updates of one of the half-dozen fighting franchises SNK produced.
Once the main craze was over, some of that variety started to show up again, with a couple shooters and the famous Metal Slug series. By then, technology had moved beyond what the NG could do, and SNK didn't really succeed in making it in the fast-moving world of polygonal arcade games.
A friend of mine has a Neo Geo cabinet, and he's got a few original cartridges, but he also got one with 100 or so games. He thinks his cabinet was originally a Contra cabinet. It's all really neat, but as someone who never spent too much time in arcades back in the day, I think a lot of it is lost on me. Give me an NES or SNES any day.
There are still shops in Akihabara, in Japan, selling Neo Geo cartridges and full systems, but they cost a fortune these days... :) It's still awesome to venture in such shops though.
My buddy with the Neo Geo is starting to get me hooked on retro gaming a little more seriously. He's got a couple hundred NES games, and he's even been picking up the more obscure/less popular systems like a Turbografix 16 and an Atari Jaguar. It was actually pretty cool to hold the Turbografix controller in my hand because I've only ever seen pictures of it in Gamepro or EGM back in the day. He's even got a modded top-loading NES with an RGB connection, and he plays it on a 27" CRT. He's pretty serious.
Meanwhile, I'm here thinking about getting a Raspberry Pi for on-the-go emulation.
Meanwhile, I'm here thinking about getting a Raspberry Pi for on-the-go emulation.
if you like on the go emulation I'd rather suggest an Open Pandora over a Raspberry Pi.
Well, when I say on the go, I mainly mean "take it to my parents' house and plug in at Christmas and Thanksgiving", or maybe to a hotel.
My retro-gamer friend also recently restored my 26-year-old NES, and it was a big hit over the holidays. I used to play a lot of emulators on my Nintendo DS, but that was mostly before iPhones and iPads became my distraction of choice on my daily commute. Open Pandora look pretty nice though. I'll keep an eye on it for sure.
My retro-gamer friend also recently restored my 26-year-old NES, and it was a big hit over the holidays. I used to play a lot of emulators on my Nintendo DS, but that was mostly before iPhones and iPads became my distraction of choice on my daily commute. Open Pandora look pretty nice though. I'll keep an eye on it for sure.
Huh? I don't understand how this is news... Someone just discovered NeoGeo right now?
I don't know how to break this to you. You'll probably want to sit down before you read any further.
Someone born when the Neo Geo came out is 25 years old today. They've probably graduated college. They might be married. They might have kids. Around here, they might even be CEO of a company.
It was weird for me to realize there were people who practically had an NES in the cradle and have never seen an Atari 2600.
For those youngsters, the Neo Geo is probably a fascinating piece of history. It's a system as old as they are, with capabilities beyond anything else out at the time. But, it's relegated to a footnote in history.
Just wait until they discover the Atari Lynx.
Someone born when the Neo Geo came out is 25 years old today. They've probably graduated college. They might be married. They might have kids. Around here, they might even be CEO of a company.
It was weird for me to realize there were people who practically had an NES in the cradle and have never seen an Atari 2600.
For those youngsters, the Neo Geo is probably a fascinating piece of history. It's a system as old as they are, with capabilities beyond anything else out at the time. But, it's relegated to a footnote in history.
Just wait until they discover the Atari Lynx.
The Lynx is crap like everything Atari did since the VCS 2600 :)
But surely this is "Hacker News" - the whole point of news is that it has to be new to _everyone_. Otherwise it's just facts, not news.
It definitely bugs me that the entire submission was a link to Wikipedia and...that's it. No "Ask HN" about this historic console, and not a link to a blog post about how cool it was to finally play this mythical home system or on the technical challenges it overcame. Just..."here's a wikipedia article".
When I was a kid, a friend of mine had the Neo Geo home console from Japan. It used the same huge cartridges as the arcade machines. After school we'd sit in his basement playing Samurai Showdown on the TV, and we didn't even need any quarters. Ahh, the good ol' days.
What i found interesting about this article is that scrolling did not work with tilemaps (it was actually a hybrid system) but actually used sprites instead, which was very unusual for the time.
Why are people putting this on the front page of Hacker News? I haven't seen anything linked to the console today.
Historical posts are more than welcome on HN. They're often some of the most interesting material that appears here.
I'm not sure that Wikipedia should really be considered a historical post.
I mean, of course, posts about historical material, such as an early 90s game console.
It's true that original sources, when they can be found, are preferable to Wikipedia articles. But that applies to all kinds of posts.
The date (1990) shouldn't have been in the title for the Wikipedia page, though, since obviously it doesn't date from then. We missed that before. I took it out.
It's true that original sources, when they can be found, are preferable to Wikipedia articles. But that applies to all kinds of posts.
The date (1990) shouldn't have been in the title for the Wikipedia page, though, since obviously it doesn't date from then. We missed that before. I took it out.
No worries. I think it belongs here, just that "historical post" seems to imply posts which have historical context (as opposed to modern pages that refer to something historical).
I think a lot of people vaguely remember the Neo Geo from the early 90s - it was this mythical beast of a home console that actually looked like read arcade games rather than the obvious down-ports we had at home. The article adds a lot of background that we might not have remembered (since we were 9 the first time round).
This is very slippery-slopey towards the "DAE" nostalgia-pandering that dominates /r/gaming. It's unfortunate that HN seems to be rapidly sliding away from being /r/techstartups and towards becoming /r/mildlyinterestingfortechies
That's been happening since the site went from having no name (but generally being called Startup News) to 'Hacker News' a few years ago.
Randomly, I found the announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html
You must be relatively new to HN I assume, because HN re-runs a lot of non-new content as well (quite often from Wikipedia). Depending on what people find interesting and that may not be "news" at the moment.
I remember having a Super Nintendo and playing a Neo Geo system at Epcot and being blown away by the graphics and apparent processing power. This thing had arcade quality graphics on a television set! I remember wanting one, but even at the age of 12, I realized that $650 was a hard sell to my mom, and also the system had mostly fighting games.
> This thing had arcade quality graphics on a television set!
To be fair it was actually the very same thing as Arcade, since at the time most arcade games ran on the MVS system which had the very same hardware as the Neo Geo :)
To be fair it was actually the very same thing as Arcade, since at the time most arcade games ran on the MVS system which had the very same hardware as the Neo Geo :)
You can use an adapter to run MVS games on the home console as well: http://www.jamma-nation-x.com/jammax/supermvsconverter2.html