/vr/ - Retro Games

Yes. The Neo Geo CD could have been an awesome premium niche system like the AES. As others have said, the CD-drive and Ram limitations should have never even been considered. A double or even quad drive plus a huge amount of ram to load as much of the game as possible would have been wonderful. It might have been $600, but the SNK fans would have been all over it and would have not only bought new games for the system, but also re-bought games they had on AES that they probably could have sold.

$400 was too expensive for this to be considered by most gamers anyway, especially with the super late 1996 launch in North America. The $299 Playstation already had a huge lead with the consumer market, Saturn was still in competition, and N64 was coming in the fall.

Once the excellent Sega Saturn ports started to come out for most of the best Neo Geo games, the Neo CD was done.

I was a teenager during the 90's and remember seeing the advertisement for this in a Gamepro.

I loved playing Neo Geo games in the local arcade but hated the shit ports on the SNES and Genesis. In fall of 1995 I still hadn't decided which next gen system to get because there were so many systems at the time and I didn't want to get burned. I saw friends who had wasted money on Jaguar, 3d0, or 32x.

I think that was the first strike against the Neo Geo CD. There were so many other consoles that were floundering at the time (CD-i, 3do, Jaguar/Jaguar CD, 32X, etc.), the Saturn had an awful launch, the N64 was set to be released in 1996, and the PS1 seemed to have the best games being released for it.

By the time the Neo CD was released, most people had decided to either go with a PS1, wait for the N64 launch in September 1996, or go with the Saturn.

There were just too many consoles in too small of a period of time. Also at $399, it was too expensive. The $299 price point for the PS1 was perfect.

SNK could have made waves with the Neo CD if they could have kept costs down and marketed it as a secondary system for arcade-style gaming. The games could have easily been priced at $30 or less as many of them were ports from games that were years old by this time.

Also, by 1996 people realized that the Saturn did Neo Geo games very well - a tiny bit worse than the original AES but much better than the Neo CD.

The KOF 95 port that was released in America for PS1 was actually a good port too. SNK couldn't find a market for the Neo Geo CD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGJ-crd_7FY