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From: gl11+@andrew.cmu.edu (Gregory James Legowski)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: Neo Geo
Message-ID: <gbWIjDS00WB7AASqx4@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 8 Jan 91 04:34:23 GMT
Organization: Class of '92, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 36

All this fuss over yet another overpriced game system.  Sheesh.  The machine
itself is no more powerful than older systems (it's main CPU is a 68000, and it
also has a Z80.  This is IDENTICAL to the setup used by the SEGA Genesis,
although the 68000 does have a higher clock speed.)

The graphics and sound are good, but I'm mot impressed by pretty pictures;  I
like gameplay, and personally I just don't like the games for it right now.
For $600, I'd rather get a machine that does more than just games (like, say,
an Amiga :-)

And the ads are terribly misleading.  What the hell is "4-dimensional realism"?
And the "bar graphs" they show to compare against the NEC TurboGraphix-16, SEGA
Genesis, and Nintendo are downright wrong--for the "sprites" and "sound
channels" graphs, they reversed the NEC and SEGA bars (minor but annoying...)

Overall, I don't think the NEO*GEO is worth it--the system (once you get a
controller and a game so you can use it at all!) costs more than an Amiga 500
and only plays games;  EACH game costs as much as or more than the next most
expensive game CONSOLE (the SEGA Genesis costs about $180 including 1 "joypad"
and an admittedly sucky game, and has been on sale for as low as $135 new (!)
at Ames;  the TG16 is <=$150;  the base Nintendo is about $80)

The NEO*GEO may find a market with incredibly rich game fanatics with nothing
better to waste money on, and definitely DOES have a use in arcades, but as a
general home system I don't see the point (and if SNK isn't pushing it as a
home console then why have they been placing ads in video game magazines?)

Note:  Between me and my brothers we own a SEGA Genesis, NEC TurboGraphix16, an
Amiga 2000, and a cheap IBM clone.  But we will NOT be getting a NEO*GEO
anytime in the near future, unless they drop the prices of the console and
games by at least 50% (not likely in light of the amount of ROM going into the
carts...)

All these are of course my own strongly biased opinions, but there they are.

Greg Legowski  |  gl11+@andrew.cmu.edu  |  Whatever it was, I didn't do it...