The SNK Neo Geo was ahead of its time | MVG

[Music] foreign so I have a confession to make I never owned a Neo Geo back when they launched in 1990 I simply couldn't afford one but that never stopped me from dreaming about owning one for years I first played a Neo Geo in a 7-Eleven in 1991. it was a four slot cabinet that had magician Lord 2020 baseball fatal Fury and NAMM 1975 on it I was absolutely blown away I followed the hardware closely and when SNK released the home system the AES it blew my mind the Home Hardware was identical to the arcade this was truly the first arcade Hardware that would come to the home without compromise and when Metal Slug was released I was convinced that nothing in video games would ever top it Metal Slug is a 2d Run and Gun Masterpiece and pushed the hardware to Heights that I never thought would be possible this of course was all due to the Neo Geo Hardware itself the Neo Geo is powered by a Motorola 68000 running at 12 megahertz the 68k was a very popular chip in both the arcades and the home at the time a secondary xylog z80 co-processor was used for the audio controller but it's the custom chipset found in the hardware that really pushed the hardware above and beyond anything else that was available in the homes the GPU chipset is made up of five different chips that perform various tasks but the end result is that the hardware is capable of 380 Sprites on screen at any given time which can be a maximum size of 16 by 512 pixels in size this is from a pallet of over 65 000 colors with 4096 available at once the 320x224 pixel display is managed by a powerful 24-bit data bus many advertisements for the Neo Geo claimed that this was the first 24-bit home system and this of course is due to the GPU technically the processor the Motorola 68000 is only 16 bits but this didn't matter although the Neo Geo is a 2d system it does not actually use scrolling tile map background layers like other Home systems such as the Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo scrolling backgrounds are simply managed by stitching Sprites together take for example these backgrounds in Metal Slug these are actually individual Sprites that we are re-adding to form the background itself in other words we're adding 16 by 224 pixel Sprites one at a time this is also done for each background layer including the main character sprites as well with an emulator we can individually turn on and off each of the Sprite data in the game and as you can see with all the Sprites we added we can reconstruct this scene in Metal Slug it goes without saying and one of the big features of the Neo Geo is that Sprites can also be scaled this of course is done via the hardware Sprite scaling of course can be seen in many games especially in fighting games such as Samurai Showdown where the camera appears to zoom in and out depending on the action let's take a look at this example this is Metal Slug one in this scene how many Sprites do you think are actually being used well the results may surprise you on first glance it may look like it's using almost the maximum amount of Sprites allowed which is 360 on screen at once but the reality is if we take a closer look and start deconstructing this scene it's using about 95 Sprites and even with this simple example we can quickly understand why the Neo Geo is a 2d Sprite monster of a console there are also three separate planes that Sprites can be drawn into and this is what gives the games their traditional classic Parallax scrolling effects it's also important to note that there is no bitmap mode or traditional tile modes Sprites is what makes the Neo Geo what it is there is however another layer known as fix the fixed layer is a non-scrollable tile based layer with transparency which has the most priority on the display its main use is to display text or things like heads-up displays or scores or health bars in fighting games it's very similar to the window layout that's found in the Nintendo Game Boy architecture in the arcades the MBS cabinet came in different configurations with one two four or even six lot variants games came on cartridges that remind you of something like a VHS tape each mvs cartridge comes with two individual pcbs known as cha and prog boards cha contains the C ROM that holds bright data the mrom contains the z80 data and the s-ram contains the fixed Graphics the second board known as prog contains a P Rom this contains the 68k program code and the v-rom which contains all audio samples so back in the day if you were an arcade operator and you wanted to purchase Neo Geo mvs cartridges you would receive it in something like this this is known as a kit and this is just a piece of cardboard and this is what all the nvs cartridges would have come in when you had purchased one now this is from Japan this is the Japanese version of King of Fighters 99 and if we open this up you can see that you get move strips that come with the game itself and these are obviously things that you can insert into your your cabinet you also receive the Marquee holder so in an mvs cabinet you probably are familiar with the Marquee areas where you can actually install this to let people know what game you've got running in the arcade now this obviously is is the star of the show this is the MBS cartridge that you would plug into your mvs motherboard whether you had a one slot two slot four or six slot and this is the Japanese version of King of the fighters 99. you can see that the label is printed in Japanese and it's made in Japan now a North American mvs cartridge looks exactly the same the only real differences is the label itself is printed in English and there is a unique kind of style about these cartridges as well as a serial number here to let you know what number of cartridge was printed off the assembly line as Neo Geo games became larger in size from the original limits SNK would introduce various additional chips into cartridges that would allow for Bank switching data such as the Neo CMC these chips would also be used to implement copy protection just like many arcade games at the time Neo Geo games were subject to bootlegging and duplication the addition of encryption of data would be import to mitigate this copy protection chips became quite important for the Neo Geo and there are three main types that were introduced in 1998. the first would be c-rom encryption or Sprite data the CMC 42 and CMC 50 protection chips would handle this King of Fighters 99 would be the first game to use c-rom encryption and each came after King of Fighters 99 would contain encrypted Graphics a second form of encryption known as P Rom encryption would simply be responsible for decrypting previously encrypted 68 000 program data the third was vram encryption this would encrypt all audio sample data and the decryption method was used in later games such as metal stock 5 SNK versus Capcom and Samurai Showdown 5 just to name a few now all of these encryption methods work simply by applying a table of 256 values known as an exclusive or table to a decryption algorithm while initially very challenging to defeat there were weaknesses found that would expose it to a known plain text attack many games would contain the exact same decryption tables but later games would also include their own encryption methods but it wouldn't be long before Bootleggers were able to discover the decryption methods in Neo Geo Sprite sound and program data to replicate their own games and they would even go as far as including their own encryption with their own unique 256 byte tables on the audio side the Neo Geo uses a Yamaha ym 206010 that provides 15 channels for sound with 4 FM 3 SSG one noise and seven PCM channels better [Applause] [Music] [Music] so what did SNK change when they brought the envious Hardware to the home well very little in fact we're getting a little ahead of ourselves here the original plan for the AES was that it would only be used in hotels and bars as a rental system but demand for the product ultimately led to SNK releasing the consoles in stores in North America the specification of the AES then is 99.98 identical to the MBS and this is one of the biggest selling points of the Neo Geo the Home console was priced at 649 in the US in 1990 and games would retail for over two hundred dollars in price this wasn't a kid's toy the AES was meant for the hardcore arcade Enthusiast that had disposable income or Rich parents and it would bring the exact experience home without limitations this of course was a risky move for SNK but they would note that there was a gap in the market and they took advantage of it in an interview with Eurogamer in 2021 SNK game developer nobuyuki karoki said the following we had this idea that we were going to make these arcade cabinets but it was about bringing that entertainment home we were in the same Market as other competitors but we had two ways of getting Capital it wasn't about going directly to beat the other competitors and more about seeing if there was room for us here the AES would launch at a high price but everything about the system was premium the joystick was brilliantly crafted with satisfying micro switches on the controller and also has very responsive buttons and the layout is perfect capturing that classic four button mvs layout the AES is also the very first Home console to feature a memory card slot for saving games too this was years before Sony would introduce it with the PlayStation 1. in the arcades some Neo Geo mvs cabinets would also contain memory slots this mean that you could play at home save your position in game then load up the game as you played in the arcades this concept would become more mainstream during the Sega Dreamcast ERA with Marvel vs Capcom 2 on the Dreamcast it would be possible to swap playable characters between the Dreamcast and the Sega Naomi using the vmu SNK would make the decision to not allow envious games to run on home AES systems and vice versa they want to keep both markets separate the pin layouts between MBS and AES are different but an AES cartridge contains the same cha and prog dual boards that's found on the hardware originally AES cartridges cost around 200 and they were much cheaper than mvs titles however that has not been the case for many years in fact most collectors get into Neo Geo by starting out with mvs cartridges because they are much cheaper these days in general the high cost of AES cartridges and collectors has turned many people away from ever purchasing an AES system now the good news is you don't need to resort to purchasing original hardware and original games to play Neo Geo in 2022 emulators such as Mame and FB Neo have been emulating Neo Geo for many many years and the emulation quality is of the highest caliber there's also the Mr Project there's a really great fpga call for the Neo Geo that you could try out and really get you fixed that way and there's also other options on the switch you can individually purchase specific Neo Geo games off the eShop and SNK themselves have also released a SNK in the ogeo mini which has a curated selection of Neo Geo games I don't have this device but I've heard it's pretty good so yeah there's really no reason why you can't play Neo Geo games in 2022 now of course if you're wanting to get original Hardware that's going to be a different conversation unfortunately you're going to be paying a lot of money to get Neo Geo AES games there is a small selection of games that are pretty cheap but once you start move moving away from those you're going to start paying over 500 and all of a sudden your thousands of dollars in so it's not really something that I can recommend in fact I don't have anywhere near of a big AES collection I've only got a handful of games myself because the collecting Market is just absolutely ludicrous if you do want original Hardware though I would say pick up an AES and maybe take a look at some of the multi-carts that are out there that have basically the entire set of games on one cartridge that you can play I think that is the best value for money if you are looking for original Hardware but of course you don't really need to these days like I said there are many different options out there and you know Raspberry Pi as well is a great one load up a Raspberry Pi with emulators and your Neo Geo ROMs and you'll have an absolute blast on that I guarantee you but guys we are going to leave it here for this episode thank you so much for watching if you like this episode please leave me a thumbs up and I'll catch you guys in the next video bye for now foreign [Music]

Channel: Modern Vintage Gamer

Views: 556,284

Keywords: snk, neo geo, retro gaming, the king of fighters, kof, neogeo, aes, mvs, advanced entertainment system, mvg, modern vintage gamer, ahead of its time, snk neo geo, retro, 68000, 2d, sprites, metal slug, garou, arcades, arcade games, gaming, video games

Id: XPAAvXrHE8Y

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 26 2022