I've been sitting back watching, with interest, at the back and forth opinions concerning NeoGeo games.

It seems to me that we have arrived at the inevitable crossroad. That crossroad is the dividing line between the "old line golden age" players and the "post-golden age" players. Not to say that all old line players are old or that the post-golden players are youngsters, but most likely this would probably be the case.

I guess I consider myself one of the "old liners", I'm 39 and the games that came out in the '70s up until roughly '84-'85 are the games that I played. It was around the '84-'85 that a change came about the arcade scene. Fighting games became all the rage and the old days of having high scores being a focal point of a player became passe.

I'm not saying that the newer games were terrible, but they certainly were a deviation from what us "old liners" were used to and a lot of us just simply didn't care for this style of game. Granted there were games released that echoed the "golden age", it just seemed that a majority of the games became "fighting", "driving", or "basketball" games with not a lot of new gameplay ideas (although the graphics on some of these games are just incredible). Thus, we "old liners" cling to the golden age games and reject the newer ones.

That brings us to the current crossroad. I, for one, am not the biggest fan of most of the NeoGeo games. This also, unfortunately, brings up another aspect of the current deluge of NeoGeo games. Some of us just don't have the horsepower to run these games properly (read that as "fast enough"). And that's a shame. It means no chance for the CPU-deprived to participate in NeoGeo arena, so to speak. It's kind of a class division at this time, but I'm sure that eventually this will resolve itself by either everyone moving on to a bigger, better machine or the MAME dev team finding a way to get even the most demanding games to run properly on at least a P200. I don't know how feasible this is, but there's always hope.

I'm in agreement with some of the others, I'm not that interested in most of these games anyway, so it's no big deal to me...just waiting for more of those obscure B&W roms from 1977 to show up so that we can have more fun battles on these cheesy games! ;)

Thanks for bearing with this long post,

JoustGod

-- JoustGod (pinballwiz1@msn.com), November 08, 1998

Answers

I think you've hit the nail on the head.

I too am one of the "old liners" - 32 years old, married with 3 kids, 1 cat, 2 cars and a house (well a mortgage actually ;-)).

I guess for me the time investment required to get all the moves learned for the fighting games is just not warranted as these games seem a complete waste of time to me. Especially when there is no urge to get a new high score or a new PB.

That's not to say I don't like some fighting games. I did spend ages playing Karate Champ when it first came out but again that was probably because it was a new style of game.

I also like vertically scrolling shootem-ups but I'm not quite so keen on horizontal scrollers.

I'm dead keen on the cheesy old games and I love simple platformers - but you probably guessed that from my Wonderboy and Pitfall scores. I'm not so keen on the platformers that have such busy backgrounds its hard to tell where you're supposed to be going next. Wonderboy3 almost falls into this category but I'm going to take a serious look at it soon to see if its only 1st impressions and maybe I will like it once I start to learn it.

What used to worry me with Mame was how few of the games it emulated I didn't play heaps as a youngster.... but now with the advent of Neo-Geo emulation I no longer feel this way so I guess there is 1 bright point to the emulation of neo-geo for me.... and of course some of the shootem-ups/puzzle/platformers are fun to play as well !! ;-))

Cheers, BeeJay.

PS: 1 hour and 15 minutes until Monday's work is done and I can head home for another evening of Mame.... :-))))

-- BeeJay (bjohnstone@cardinal.co.nz), November 08, 1998.

I like Neo-Geo games...

Well, I'm willing to wager that I'm the "baby" of the MARP bunch... I'm only 19 years old! A lot of MY childhood arcade memories were from the mid-1980's, and I loved games like Time Soldiers, Rygar, Black Tiger, Willow, etc. And I've always had an interest in high scores, and feel that any game without a scoring system loses a good deal of its replayability.

When SF2 hit the arcades back in 1991, I was hooked. Unfortunately, everyone wiped the floor with me. It took me about a year to finally learn what I was doing, learn general strategy and combos, etc... just in time for Champion Edition. I loved the head-to-head competition... competing against high scores in 1P games was fun, but this was so addicting. I fondly remember the first time I got around a 40-game winning streak... being able to hold the machine for hours was a great feeling. I'd learn something new every time I went to play, I always wished I was old enough to drive back then. ;)

But for some reason or another, I've also always held a strong interest in Neo-Geo games. I don't know what it is about them, but I like a lot of the games on the system, and even own a Neo CD. Yes, some of the fighting games SUCK... but there's a lot of good ones. And almost every game has some sort of scoring system, thankfully. I still haven't gotten to break 19 million on Shock Troopers yet, but I will keep trying. :)

So it's strange... even though I still play recent games, I also have a great deal of respect for a lot of the classics. Although there's only a few old games that I'm actually really good at. :P

-BBH

-- BBH (lordbbh@aol.com), November 09, 1998.

I guess I'm a "Late-golden age/pre-post golden age" player

Since this thread has turned into a mini-bio section for MARP players, as well as an arcade history lesson, I thought I'd continue the theme.

I'm 29 and didn't really arrive on the video game scene until late 1981 or so. I recall playing some games before this, but hadn't really grasped the concept of becoming good at a game. I probably learned more games during the '83-'88 period.

I agree that there was a shift in the arcade scene around '84/'85, but the shift had not yet entered the fighting game era. In '84, the entire video game industry imploded (both arcade and home), which left many companies and arcades scrambling for a way to turn a profit. This is when the bulk of all new arcade games were cheap conversion kits, and in general, many games began clone one another. (Romstar comes to mind as the king of importing many of these from Japan - I'm not knocking Romstar, they were just the kings of the import)

The original Street Fighter was released in 1987, but was not nearly as popular as its successor. You may remember this game as being in a very large cabinet, with two pressure sensitive buttons for attacking (which ruined the game). Street Fighter 2 (in 1989?)started the final emergence of fighting games in the arcades today - which is when I began to lose interest.

There have been a few decent games released in recent years, but I agree that most of the Neo-Geo games just aren't all that great. Outside of a few puzzle games, they just never did it for me.

As for the great Neo-Geo debate, I could really care less about it. I think it's great that MAME emulates over 900 games, regardless if they ran on Neo-Geo, Capcom's CPS-1, Atari's System 1 or 2 - it just doesn't matter. Of the games emulated, there are so many good fun games that I find that I've never heard of that are sort of fun to learn. MARP has introduced me to some really good games like Mr. TNT, Amidar (which I knew from before, but never played until MAME), Bandido, Gypsy Juggler, Fast Freddie, and Jumping Jack.

I'm really looking forward to the upcoming addition of the Williams/Midway titles from '89 forward. NARC, Smash TV, Total Carnage, Trog, and Strike Force were all great games.

Well, I suppose I've rambled on enough. Happy scoring everyone. =)

=Angry=

-- Angry (greggg@ix.netcom.com), November 09, 1998.

Just adding my two-cents in on this rather old forum but here I go none the less. I myself am an "Old Line" gamer, having owned very system from excluding the FM Towns Marty, PCFX, and the Vextrex that has come out. I too see the division however, or at least the crossroads between gamers. Today's gamers (the kids from the Megadrive/Super Famicom era to present day) are all into Online gaming and anything done in sprites is yesterday's garbage, with only the most open minded even playing arcade games on MAME or any other emulator. And that's where I come into this forum with the NEO:GEO slant. I'm currently NEO:GEO mad. When I play the XBOX or PS2 and GameCube I see the nice 3DFX, but just don't get the fun out of them that I did back in the day. It is for this reason that I came back to my passion for arcade games, and despite what many feel is a 'hack' system, I'd stand to say that the NEO:GEO, next to the PC- Engine (Turbo Duo/Turbo Grafx 16) is probably the greatest system ever developed. While underpowered by today's ballyhoo, it is still the most powerfull 16-Bit hardware and continues to have a thriving interest/community online on a global scale. Though I do see the systems faults. The problem with the NEO is that instead of continuing to push the system to its technical limits and innovate off of it's earlier titles, like The Super Spy which pre-dated iD software's DOOM game for First.Person.Shooters. Instead SNK and the NEO stagnated with either really second rate fighting games from it's small 3rd party licensees, or it simply churned out a new title of a particular fighting franchise year after year after year. On this note, the NEO does suck... and going back to "The Super Spy" example, I still wonder why might have happened had SNK decided to innovate the FPS idea into gold. For this reason I can understand why ppl couldn't care less about the NEO, however, if you look at the games that have come out since 1996 [Metal Slug 1-3, Shock Troopers 1 & 2 Sengoku 3, Blazing Star] and just this year "Metal Slug 4"... it's easy to see what indeed might have been had the NEO been a more affordable game system and the companies motivated to innovate rather than just cash in on the 90's fighting game craze.

So I think it's great that the NEO is playable on the emulation scene be it through MAME or Neo Rage. This is a world gone 3D-Insane and swaying to the online gaming side, leaving 2-D to be felt on only the Game Boy Advance handheld... so is the NEO the greatest system? I think it could've been and has the potential to still hang in there if new developers would concentrate on the innovation and taxing of it's 13 year old Hardware limitations... because it's ironic that ppl are willing to play 2-D games on the GBA but scoff at anything not 3- D when it comes to home games. The NEO should live on in the arcade scene, and it should live on if only through emulation for those gamers out there that like an alternative distraction but either can't afford or won't buy brand new games at 200 plus bucks, (which I do but I'm old school gamer nuts to being with) as a lot of us in the NEO community are willing to do. So as an old school gamer, I know full well that I'm a dinosaur. I don't like the idea of things looking virtual I like sprites. I like to know I'm playing "a game" not living in some almost-there-holodeck VR construct. While this posting is winded, am simply stating that games will continue in their non-linear way until we have a fully realized "Matrix", but ppl like me will still be playing old emulated games, or playing their NEO:GEOs. Now, if only I could find a NEO:GEO dev Kit, then I wouldn't have to worry about new games, I'd find others of a like mind and keep a legacy going long after it's prime if only to prove that the NEO always had the potential to be more than a system or arcade unit dedicated to just fighting games, and maybe getting a little more respect than it ever has got. And now that I've made a fool of myself I shall be on my way.

BOTTOM LINE... ALL THINGS EMULATED ARE GOOD. AND NEO:GEO WILL NEVER DIE!

-- Michael Shalako (sledge1138@yahoo.com), May 18, 2002.