This 24-bit powerhouse has always been for only the most financially-blessed gamers with both the system and games retailing for hundreds of dollars each. With a hardcore following and a very limited supply of games, many game prices are still much more than most retro gamers are used to paying for a single title. When you buy Neo-Geo games, you are essentially paying for the right to play them on the original Neo-Geo hardware and the collectability of these hard-to-find cartridges and CDs. It is also worth nothing that while you may save a lot of money by going with Neo-Geo CDs instead of AES carts, you will be greatly sacrificing load time due to the slow CD speeds of the Neo-Geo CD drive. Because of this, you are losing much of the appeal of the arcade-like experience. If you want to play the games legally without spending as much, you are better off acquiring quality ports of the games on the Saturn, Dreamcast, or PS2. When most early fighting game were just a slight adaptation of Street Fighter 2, Samurai Shodown slowed down the pace a bit and brought weapons-based Samurai fighting to the brawler genre. To this day, Samurai Showdown 2 is still regarded as the best of the series as SNK messed with the fighting system a bit in part 3 and 4. What can best be described as a wrestling game featuring a variety of Godzilla-sized monsters duking it out in futuristic Japanese cityscapes, King of Monsters is a riot in terms of gameplay and visually engaging as well. The original game, in my opinion, is more satisfying than its sequel, in addition to being cheaper as well. It is one of the better Operation Wolf clones that made it to home systems and since its an older, common game, it can be had for a reasonable price. The Baseball Stars series is still beloved by many old-school sports fans. Combining nice 2D graphics with simple, fast gameplay, Baseball Stars Professional is pure arcade fun. Being able to upgrade both your human and robotic players with the money you earn along the way adds a lot of depth to this very affordable gem. To me, it seems like Kid Chameleon, but not quite as interesting. However CD versions are a bit more realistically priced. But if you really want to go cheap, this option is available. They are very well-rounded fighters that will give you something different from standard Street Fighter 2 clones. Aero Fighters 2 is defiantly the best value as far as shooters go. So if you want to show off what your Neo can do, AOF3 is an inexpensive solution. I pity myself, honestly… I had a friend who was into NeoGeo, and told him that Wal-mart, one day, had a whole bin filled with the titles going for five bucks. He came in and bought them all. Neogeo is just too expensive to be on a cheap list. Samurai Shodown 2 is regarded as the very best in the series and I think King of Monsters and Super Baseball 2020 are some of my favorite Neo games all together. Collecting NEO GEO cartridges is so damn expensive I started collecting NEO GEO CD games. I buy all of them from a reliable Ebay seller which has never failed me. All of them J and VERY CHEAP. That said, I strongly recommend Samurai Spirits Shodown II as this id to me the most balanced fighter ever released. Ports of games are never the same as the originals. MAME has problems with flicker and slowdown. I had a Neo geo aes with a collection of 20 games. Ok, some were better than others. There were some good games; I had some King of fighters, couple of the Fatal fury series, as well as many of the games mentioned in the guide. My point to all this! I am recovering from a rather nasty back injury; as a result I needed to raise some cash. Due to some smart buying of the games I got more back than I paid for them. I do have to disagree regarding your pick of Art Of Fighting 3. AofF3 totally blew of what made ArtofF series so attention grabbing in the first place. Just a grain of thought regrding my neo geo experience. This article is now pretty out of date. Most games listed now sell for about half what is listed here. But at the same time, the rarer more expensive games have become much more expensive than they were three years ago. Also CD games have plummeted, the neo cd is now very cheap to collect for with the exception of about 8 games or so.
