Xtreme Pickups - SNK Neo Geo CD Console (Review/Gameplay)
4Back in November I won an auction for an untested Neo Geo CD. I unbox the console, talk a bit about the console itself, then I test it out. I got a couple of games for the console as well.
The Neo Geo CD was a console by SNK, originally released in 1994 in Japan and PAL regions and 1996 in the US. SNK was well known at the time for their Arcade games and they even had a console that had all their arcade hardware in it called the Neo Geo AES that was released in 1991. Due to the high end hardware for the time, the AES retailed for over $600, super expensive compared to other consoles on the market at that time such as the Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo which were retailing for less than $200. Even some of the Neo Geo AES game cartridges alone could cost up to several hundred dollars each.
The Neo Geo CD though was a way for SNK to be able to release their catalog of games at a much more affordable cost due to CD's being so much cheaper to produce. The console wasn't too bad of a bad price either considering the hardware (nearly identical to the AES), launching at around $400. While it had good games for it, the console did not succeed for a few reasons. Most notably, the 1x speed CD-ROM drive caused long load times. The console was delayed and saw a limited release in the US as a result of SNK wanting to correct that issue, which they ended up not doing anyway. The console was also released a bit too late as the next generation of game consoles such as the Sony PlayStation or Sega Saturn was upon us. As a result, there were only around 100 games released for the Neo Geo CD total in it's short lifespan which ended in 1997.
With all that aside, it was a console I was interested in picking up as I never experienced much of SNK's games but have often heard good things. If you want this console, I recommend getting the Japanese version as I did since the US version is super rare.
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