The technical reasons for the NeoGeo's longevity are quite straightforward: it was ridiculously overpowered from the start. Its architecture covered almost every possible use case and lent itself well to most every type of 2D game. The NeoGeo packed a total of seven processors and co-processors, and a GPU with a 24-bit bus, capable of 3840 simultaneous colors across 380 sprites. The graphics chip also had hardware scaling and used an unconventional but effective vertical-strip sprite mechanism, unlike tile maps of the era.
The expandable storage also played a big part in longevity, with late-day cartridges storing as much as 716 Mb, or 89.5 MB. The only notable omission is the lack of a direct-to-screen drawing mechanism (aka framebuffer), precluding Doom ports — but as always, people are finding a way regardless.
If you're looking to order a NeoGeo AES+, the base model with the console and one stick will set you back $249.99 (or 199.99€), an affordable amount considering a decent joystick can cost $75-100 on its own. The Anniversary Edition comes in a white finish, with Metal Slug , a wireless joystick, and a memory card, for $349.99 (or 299.99€). Finally, the Ultimate Edition comes with all ten re-released games, two joysticks (one wired, one wireless), and a gamepad, for $999.99 (or 899.99€).
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Bruno Ferreira Social Links Navigation Contributor Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals.
thesyndrome They're having trouble getting RAM….for a hardware-accurate NEO-GEO? Even if we take the cartridge's memory into account, that's still only around 90mb of SRAM (not even DDR) for the system + a large game. Reply
Alastor01 thesyndrome said: They're having trouble getting RAM….for a hardware-accurate NEO-GEO? Even if we take the cartridge's memory into account, that's still only around 90mb of SRAM (not even DDR) for the system + a large game. Agreed, this make no sense whatsoever, what does RAM shortage have to do with that? It's not like they will be using DDR5 or DDR4. Or even DDR3 which is cheap. Reply
hwertz As an FYI, this system has 64KB RAM, 84KB VRAM and 2KB audio RAM (since things are read straight from the ROM.). The CD upgrade adds 7MB RAM. So yeah. Reply
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- https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/neogeo-aes-console-remake-delayed-for-nearly-a-year-decision-driven-by-ram-shortage-and-unexpected-popularity#main
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