Was the Neo Geo CD Really That Bad?!?

[Music] thank you in September of 1994 SNK released its Neo Geo CD to the Japanese Marketplace on paper it had been a brilliant idea with cd-based software they would be able to bring home arcade titles at a much more reasonable price than what it had offered before most games were Now 50 and 60 dollars a far cry from the 200 cartridges for the AES this unit used a motorized front loading tray for the CD-ROM and retailed for a bit less than five hundred dollars SNK also completely rethought its controller for the Neo Geo CD instead of including the classic arcade stick we had seen for years they made a more console oriented pad complete with four action buttons a select and a start as well as a directional nub that used micro switches while all this was seemingly a Surefire home run for SNK to get more neogeo machines and software into people's homes the bad press began almost immediately gaming magazines brought up its slow load times before the hardware even launched and when the reviews came in they were further critical of the device and its aging two-dimensional Sprite based technology SNK was quick to release a cheaper top loading unit shortly after launch to help alleviate the negativity but it too had the same issues with slow load times this led to an absolute cratering of consumer interest and ultimately the platform's demise less than three years later as time went on it was remembered as the red-headed stepchild of the Neo Geo family and the harsh criticism never really let up back in those days I had my hands full with the Saturn PlayStation and Nintendo 64. so my only exposure to the neogeo CD was through a friend and his limited library in this episode join me as I take a closer look at the Neo Geo CD some of its games and see if that talk of Intolerable load times has any real Merit I hope you guys enjoy was the Neo Geo CD really that bad [Music] when the Neo Geo City launched in September of 1994 it had an impressive 21 titles that accompanied it SNK did a great job of mixing up the available genres as well there were Fighters like fatal Fury special and Samurai Showdown shoot-em-ups like Aero Fighters 2 and Last Resort action games like magician Lord and Blue's journey and the games kept on coming as each month hit a new batch of titles were released leading to dozens of options in a pretty short amount of time but I quickly learned that the quality of these experiences varied quite a bit for instance throw in a game like league bowling there are literally no load times after the initial boot up it wasn't much different from the cartridge version honestly and I found this to be the case for a number of other games as well load times just didn't factor in very heavily whether it was a sports offering like Baseball Stars 2 or even beat em ups like burning fight the load times were nothing close to being unbearable horrible I mean what the heck was everyone talking about well I soon found out the answer to that question with a little bit of testing as I mentioned before league bowling here has no issues at all when it comes to low times after it loads initially that's all you'll see of that little monkey the cartridge version of this was a tiny 26 megabits so the Neo Geo CD can literally load the entire thing in one go I always like this game despite its simple premise and the Neo CD plays it just fine magician Lord is another early game that seems to load up all at once f-46 Megs it doesn't have any trouble fitting into the Neo geocs massive pool of memory the resulting action on the Neo Geo city does not suffer any debilitating load times and plays fantastic this game was a showpiece title back in its release and it's still a looker all these years later ghost Pilots was 55 megabits and again no problematic load times past the opening it seemingly moves from stage to Boston onto the next area without much of a hitch at all the player mode is intact and how this one should be played the Megs of Baseball Stars professional looks sounds and plays perfectly after the startup load you play the entire game without interruptions no matter if it's when switching sides getting a home run cinematic or celebrating a victory the Neo Geo city has no issues with this one at all foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] moving up in size the 74 megabits in Goku 2 introduces our first real noticeable gameplay hitch though it's nothing alarming the game has a tolerable opening load screen though you will notice when you switch scenes there is a slight pause as the soundtrack changes and the new background comes in it isn't something that I'd call a negative but more of something you are aware of each time it happens great game this one and the Neo CD plays it just fine [Music] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] moving along we try out Samurai Showdown and its 118 Megs of explosive one-on-one action this loads at the start and in between each round but these low times are not egregious in the slightest they are really no longer than the load times you experienced on the Saturn and Playstation this classic is spot on incredible and one of the few Fighters back then I considered to be just as good as Street Fighter 2. if you have a Neo CD fear not it's a great purchase there as well [Music] foreign [Applause] our first test batch ends with Galaxy fight this AI is so aggressive and difficult even on the lowest setting it's unbelievable that anyone could ever get any good at it low times here start out pretty long and you even need a load screen to see the attract mode I still wouldn't call those low times unacceptable however they're there and noticeable but easily dealt with after doing some testing it was clear that the original size of the cartridge made a huge difference in the Neo Geo CD experience smaller games released in the first few years of the Neo Geo's life tended to play great with low times that really didn't interfere much with the overall experience as the games got bigger there seemed to be some pretty significant load times associated with it it was also becoming apparent that fighting games were at the heart of the worst load times I had encountered so far that gave me the motivation to break out some of the Neo Geo's largest games in terms of cartridge size that had been converted to CD let's go ahead and take a look at some of those we are gonna start with the modest 202 megabits of Samurai Showdown 2. one of the very best games for the entire platform and just like the first the Neo Geo CD seems to handle things here quite well you do get the opening load screen that's fairly long but the in-between rounds loading seems about on par with other CD-ROM based platforms plus a couple of extra seconds here and there I was able to play through the game without much problems though so let's move up a bit and see what changes the 539 megabits of real about fatal Fury 2 was an eye-opener this sucker had a sizable loaded start and needed to load the opening animations the opening a track screen and a huge load time in between fights the low times were not game breaking but they certainly got tiresome really fast I can see the fatigue of trying to play the entire game with these types of Weights just being unbearable I wanted to see more however so let's keep On Truckin the original Metal Slug was a mere 193 Megs and you only needed to worry about the loading in between levels those load times are tolerable and not really any worse than what we saw in the Saturn Port of the game it's here that I'm really starting to see that the type of game makes a tremendous difference when talking a game of levels like run and guns or beat em ups the gameplay in between the loading makes a massive difference it made things infinitely more tolerable because you got to play much longer in between the low ties so let's move on and see if that continues to be the case while we were on this kick let's go ahead and take a look at the Neo Geo CD exclusive cross swords too this third person action RPG uses real-time battles different classes of warriors with different abilities and an upgrade system to improve your stats I imagine that being designed around the Neo CD really helped with this one because after the initial load you really only see loading when you move to a new area a scant amount of time that really isn't long at all this one is great with two players and a must-have if you plan on supporting a Neo CD the King of Fighters 98 May well be the best game in that series it looks incredible and the gameplay is top tier stuff no matter the platform it's also 683 megabits and while I expected the Neo Geo CD load times to be Hefty nothing could have prepared me for just how bad it was if you play the traditional team-based mode it loads in between every single round that's right round beat someone loading lose loading a single match can go on for what seems like 10 minutes as the game takes forever to load the assets round around to make this worse sometimes these loading screens come just after a few seconds let's say a round was one but your life bar was down to nothing it loads then you get waylaid with a quick combo and lose you are right back to looking at a long load screen again immediately there is a single mode that helps alleviate some of this but as far as the additional experience this one is about as bad as it gets on the Neo Geo CD when it comes to Unique games it doesn't get much different than twinkle star Sprites this is a versus Shoot Em Up puzzle hybrid where the entire game is all about trying to blow your opponent out of the sky the cart was only 146 megabits and the Neo Geo City handles it well matches tend to be fast but loading never goes overboard and keeps you waiting for very long it was quite refreshing after my brutal session with the King of Fighters 98. after the second batch of titles it became absolutely clear to me that fighting games the Neo Geo's bread and butter were at the heart of the issues with the loading times it's true that non-fighting games had some fairly long load times as well but those tended to be much more tolerable as the play times were so much longer in between them for example in something like sengoku 2 the in-between loading was fairly long but because the levels themselves were long it didn't really bog down the action to any meaningful degree fighting games on the other hand would have matches in the 30 to 60 second range and then you were looking at a long load time in between every fight and sometimes in between every round this impacted the experience far more heavily the later released Fighters were the worst offenders thanks to their original cartridge sizes being so massive in our last round of testing here we will take a look at a completely random sample of titles to see how each to one of them fares NAMM 1975's 46 megabits is no issue for the neogeo CD after your initial loading screen you get pretty much the entire game uninterrupted even the storyboards are fully loaded in between the stages good two-player action on this one and it does just fine on the old Neo CD I threw in king of the monsters 2 and gave it a run as well the 74 megabits of the original cartridge proved no match for the Neo CD there is some loading in between each area but this comes fairly quick and the stages are long enough to where you only really see it a handful of times the entire game the AI here is really unfair so this is a much better experience with two players like the other fighting games I've looked at the 178 megabit aggressors of dark combat has a big loading time in the start and then a more manageable one in between matches unfortunately it also carries a few smaller load times in between things like the win quotes and showing you the next fighter not unreasonable but it does start to wear thin after a handful of matches the first art of fighting was 102 megabits in the Neo Geo city does an admirable job with it there is a hefty opening load screen you need to contend with but after that the fight transitions are relatively quick fortunately it doesn't need to load for the cinematics so you don't see the loading nearly as much as you may have initially been led to believe ninja Masters 330 Megs of power means there's some loading times here that are fairly off-putting it's not King of Fighters bad but it's longer than what you may be used to from this arrows of CD-ROM technology there's a big one in the beginning too fighting games were without a doubt the most glaring offenders when it came to the neo-cities low times and this one was no exception the nature of Windjammers gameplay and its relatively smaller cart size of just 74 megabits means that the load times here are no problem at all after the initial boot up it's smooth sailing from there on out matches themselves have no additional loading at all it's a great two-player title and a winner on the Neo Geo CD at a manageable 55 megabits the super spy loads at the start and then pretty much is good to go from there you think there would be some loading between floors and cinematics but not so this is just as playable here as it was on the other neogeo form factors give it a try there's nothing quite like it on the platform good old cyber lip is 50 megabits of pure arcade goodness and because of that the Neo CD loads it pretty much in a single go and you'll worry no more about the interruptions as far as running guns go it's quite simple and quaint but I still enjoyed its boss encounters and two-player action you absolutely cannot have a Neo Geo episode and not show Neo Turf Masters easily my favorite game on the platform it weighed in at 133 Megs in its cartridge form that means that it should have been an easy one to handle for the Neo Geo CD unfortunately we get a ton of loading here in between what seems like every cinematic announcement stage change and everything else you can think of there is a load screen to contend with just to see the course records there's a damn loading screen it's still playable because none of this loading lasts very long there's just way too much of it great game but not necessarily the best way to experience it [Music] foreign foreign 46 megabits accounted for all the action in ninja combat and as you would have guessed the Neo Geo CD loads this one with no problem and then you're off to the races it's a run and Gun side-scrolling beat em Up Adventure that while simple is still a fun ride while it lasts on the Neo Geo CD not even the story elements present much in the way of issues as far as loading goes after it boots up it's basically the cartridge experience from that point forward we end our test run with the Magnificent slow down latent Metal Slug 2. this was quite a bit larger in size than the first entry coming in at 362 megabits that means it taxes the Neo Geo CDs memory quite a bit more and you'll see those load screens far more often stages that have multiple scenes will stop and load though those load times are not what I'd call unacceptable with this being the last of the metal slugs on the Neo CD we never got to see the excellent follow-up that fixes the massive slowdowns that absolutely pounded the gameplay still this is a great game though sugar [Music] [Music] [Music] with sales of the Neo Geo CD basically in the toilet the entire time it was on the market it only sold a bit over 500 000 units before SNK pulled the plug in 1997 and ended the Run not even a faster loading version of the hardware released in late 1995 dubbed the cdz could alter its fate Word of Mouth bad press and a market that was in love with polygon games had spelled Doom for SNK CD-ROM based Neo Geo this of course meant that there are many AES and MBS releases that never saw the light of day on the neogeo CD should you invest in one be aware that its missing hits like waku waku 7 shock troopers blazing star gun Ryu every Metal Slug after part two Marco the Wolves most of the King of Fighters Samurai Showdown 5 SNK versus Capcom and a few other big names that could impact your opinion of it in the plus column many CD versions of these games have red book audio that sounds quite a bit different from their cartridge counterparts some games also have built-in saving and loading options for progress and high score saves but the overall experience of the Neo Geo CD is definitely one up for discussion after testing a large portion of the available releases it became clear that the Neo Geo city was very much a viable option should you prefer its earlier releases and the non-fighting game library in general it was mainly the constant loading in between the matches of the fighting genre that really made the Neo Geo City a tough sell they came so often in the later releases you never could Escape them sometimes adding a minute or more in between every single fight the King of Fighters series was by far the worst offender in this regard with the three on three teams essentially meaning long loading in between every single round the cdz does improve upon some of this but on the most egregious low times still see significant weights that impact your playability for those curious there is a mod out there that you can do called the Neo Geo CD SD loader that allows you to bypass the slow one-time CD-ROM drive and load games directly from an SD card at four times the original speed this is significantly faster and works with both the front loader and top loader versions of the hardware this is in effect the great equalizer correcting the slow loading issue completely should you decide to give the Neo Geo CD a chance keep in mind what we found out in this episode and you just may come away with a better opinion of one of Gaming's most infamous consoles I'm single Lord X thank you guys for watching and I will catch you next time [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Sega Lord X

Views: 143,927

Keywords: neo geo, snk, neo geo cd, segalordx, sega lord x, sega saturn, sega genesis, sega dreamcast, mega drive, megadrive, game gear, 32x, mega cd, genesis, saturn, master system, sega, sega cd, gameplay, review, movies, retro games, retro gaming, video games, ps4, xbox, wii, nintendo, gamecube, n64, ps1, ps2, ps3, psp, vita, switch, atari

Id: 82bU6Dexifw

Length: 22min 47sec (1367 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 03 2023