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The NEOGEO home system was available to purchase at USA retail outlets such as
The Electronics Boutique and Babagges Computer Stores in the summer of 1991. The
retail prices were $499.99 for the SILVER system and $649.99 for the GOLD system.
The GOLD system came with the unique option of choosing your pack-in game from
either NAM 1975 or Baseball Stars Professional. And there were over a dozen games
available for purchase at launch; the most available for any home console on day 1.
While both titles are two player games, if you were buying the console for yourself,
then NAM 1975 was the better choice, while if you were buying the console for a family,
then Baseball Stars Professional was the better choice.
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SNK secured home carts at these shows by encasing them within special plexi box shields!
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The dedicated NEOGEO 4-slot MVS arcade cabinets came bundled with the first 4 cartridges.
Nam 1975, Baseball Stars Professional, Top Player's Golf, and Magician Lord. In JAPAN. you
had 5 games to select from as they had a JAPAN exclusive Maqhjong game available there.
There were 13 games with 1990 copyrighted title screens and 5 games with 1991 copyrighted
title screens. Only 16 of the first 18 games were made available to US distributors and sold
to operators as 2 of them were Japan exclusive Mahjong games. In addition 1 of the 16 games,
Puzzled, was not advertised or marketed in the USA due to legal concerns with its similarity
to Tetris and the ongoing lawsuits which were surrounding it. The cartridge "could" be found
if an operator or home owner was persistent enough, but it was not easily availble.
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THE NEOGEO GOLD SYSTEM BOX!
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THE NEOGEO CATALOG ON LAUNCH DAY!
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NEOGEO SOFTWARE
The first MVS cabinets were 4-slot systems bundled with the first
four games. Nam 1975, Baseball Stars, Top Player's Golf, and Magician
Lord. The first JAPAN exclusive title was Mahjong Story. These made
up the first 5 games for the NEOGEO.
Later in 1990, the arcades received 8 more titles. Riding Hero,
Ninja Combat, Cyber Lip, Super Spy, League Bowling, Puzzled, Blue's
Journey, and Mahjong Minassano. The second Mahjong title was of course
also not released in the USA and Puzzled would only be released on MVS
in the USA. It was later released on home cart in English, but was
limited to sales in Europe; outside the USA.
In 1991 SNK would release Alpha Mission II, King of the Monsters,
Sengoku, Burning Fight, and Ghost Pilots. The total at the summer of
1991 was 18 games.
Several games did not get released in the originally intended order
as they got held up in development due to programming bugs and glitches.
Alpha Mission II was the first heavily delayed title. It was intended to
be released very early on in 1990 but sufferred several delays until 1991.
As an example, due to ASOII not being ready for display, Blue's Journey
was once given center stage at a Japan trade show. Technically, Rayguy
and Mahjong 2 were the first third party releases for the NEOGEO system.
The first 2 Alpha Denshi games (Magician Lord and Ninja Combat) were
sold by SNK. And so Alpha Denshi, Monolith, Wave, Aicom/Sammy, and Pallas
were the first and ONLY 3rd party developers of NEOGEO games until 1994.
Alpha began as an in-house developer as did Pallas. And the first
Aicom/Sammy developed game (Dunk Star) never saw release. It would not
be until 1992 that Aicom/Sammy would release their first game Viewpoint.
Wave only released 1 title, The Legend of Success Joe. Monolith released
2 mahjong games in 1990 and 1991 and remained out of sight until strangely
enough 1995 with what was intended to be a NEO-GEO home system exclusive
game named Last Odyssey Pinball Fantasy.
Third party support for the NEOGEO did not really increase until SNK
found it's niche with the versus fighting game genre. The success they
saw there would soon get them bigger and more impressive developers such
as TAITO and DATA EAST.
From 1990 to 1991 a total of 7 games developed for the NEOGEO would
go unreleased, with many of them still complete mysteries to this day!
As for the 1990 games, we only know of Sun Shine/Block Paradise. And
as for the 1991 games, we know about Fun Fun Brothers, Dunk Star, and
Mystic Wand. You might notice an interesting pattern here. 4 of the 5
were Alpha Denshi games. And the mystery titles that we know nothing of
are all very early numbered games; well before third party developers
existed. It is this evidence that proves that the unknown/mystery games
were first party SNK and/or Alpha Denshi games.
It is also important to note that a very strong possibility exists
that there are in fact no mystery games to be found whatsoever. This
is because SNK did not re-assign abandoned software product code numbers
in their first year or so of development. The numbers were simply abandoned
and went unused.
Hopefully one day in the future we will find the right person who
worked at SNK that can finally shed light on the mytsery of these early
unused and unknown software product code numbers
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