Wow, that contest ad is a blast from the past, I used to salivate at those ads as a kid reading through GamePro.
Of course now in the age of the internet, there’s a post of someone who actually won said contest and shocker didn’t get the prize.
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OK, that’s perfectly reasonable. I’m very tolerant of load times too, especially for games I love which includes almost anything on Neo Geo if we’re being honest. If it’s not my favorite system, it’s second only to Sega Genesis.
I appreciate the reply! I will definitely continue to flesh out my Neo collection with less expensive CDs where applicable. 
Good luck. One game that I can recommend is Real Bout 2. They did some good programming tricks on that one. The loading is even shorter than the first RB and RBS. Also they did in this game a thing that they should implement it with every CD game: when choosing how to play or watch the opening, they keep looping that mode until you give a command to return to the main menu.
SNK had some other good ideas for dealing with loading times with the Neogeo CD. In Savage Reign, when you continue a game pressing select + start, they continue with the same character automatically, without returning to the character select screen (thus reducing loading times considerably). Too bad that’s the only game with that. It should be the default on all games.
aw now i’m bummed that link didn’t work - i’d heard it turned out to be every bit the scam it looked like, but i’d always wanted confirmation!
Modded my aes stick with some Sanwa buttons. Wasn’t too difficult,little bit of soldering. They feel much better than stock.
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Fatalll Furyyy SPECIALLLL!
Never unlocked him myself. Very cool!
Nice! I have them both or I’d take one off your hands.
Gonna stream some Kusoge Christmas Special later today. Gowcaizer, Burning Fight and shinohken are on the list.
Kuso streaming as well, (old) phone camera on screen, almost no commentary and Neogeo CD loading galore.
There was a thread for low quality streams in here?
Just wanted to share my thoughts on the Neo SD Pro that came last week:
If you’re like me and you want to own an AES only and never quite liked collecting MVS carts, dealing with sometimes dodgy MVS->AES converters, but are horrified by the price of WindJammers AES carts, a flash cart is the obvious choice.
Unfortunately, the options are not cheap, but after spending a week with the Neo SD Pro, I’ve decided I’m content with my choice. I have not tested the DarkSoft or Non-Pro options, so I am only working off of my impressions of this one cart and watching some youtube videos of the others.
The first step was using terraOnion’s software to convert and verify NeoGeo rom dumps. It’s windows only and there are three executables in the zip file. I don’t have an available working win machine at the moment, so I was able to use Wine no problem. Of the three supplied apps, the first is a simple command line app that will verify and convert zipped roms to the dot neo format. It will spit out informative errors if the file set is not complete, but otherwise, it just works. The second is a UI based app where you can specify source and destination folders and then group convert all your roms. The last is just a dot neo rom verifier. The latter two mentioned apps will give pretty good reporting on errors and even point out all the roms you might not have in your own archive. Thank god for Wine!
After you dump your roms onto your FAT32 formatted micro SD card (used a spare SDHC 32GB card I had on hand) you push it flush into your cart and you’re good to go. As long as their apps report the dumps you’re using are good, your cart should have no problem loading them up. One kind of annoying thing is that you have to take the cart out of the AES to pop the SD card out, but you will rarely be doing this save for cheat and jukebox files (which I have no tested yet). Once you flip the switch, it’s about five seconds to get the menu.
Now, if you’ve used the NeoSD or watched videos of it before, you have a pretty good idea of how the UI looks. It has not changed much beyond the new slot features. When you select a game, you are given five spaces in which to place it. The first is a RAM slot, where the game will be deleted once the machine is turned off, and the other four are rewritable flash slots where your choices will persist until you rewrite them.
The RAM slot is relatively quick, while the flash slots take a lot longer (over double the amount of time), but the best strategy is to load your four favourite big meg-count games in the flash slots and use the RAM slot for smaller games. Here are some load times. First time is loading on flash, the second is on the RAM. All times for flash include the erase/format process as well.
Kof 2003 (Largest Game: 708 Mb)
Flash: 2:24s
RAM: 0:59s
WindJammers (Smaller Game: 74 Mb)
Flash: 0:24s
RAM: 0:07s
Metal Slug (Medium Size: 193 Mb)
Flash: 1:00s
RAM: 0:18s
You get the idea. Medium to smaller sized games load relatively quick on RAM and the minute wait time for the largest games really isn’t too terrible. The Flash load times are a little slower than I’d hoped, and they seem in line with the times on the one flash slot on the non-Pro NeoSD. Having four of these flash slots is definitely a good feature and it’s like having a virtual 4-slot MVS in your AES. Once they are loaded in flash, starting games happens instantaneously.
Once you’re in a game, you can easily bring up the in game menu via D+Start where you can change slots instantaneously (you can choose from all five including the RAM), hard reboot, soft reboot or go back to the full menu. You can also just jump back to the full menu via A+D+Start.
The menu is simple enough. Here you can create one custom favourite list, or switch between pre-defined filters such as sports, mahjong, etc. You can set your system to be AES or MVS and select the region. They advertise full compatibility with the UniBios, but I do not have one at this time.
In terms of minuses, I don’t have a lot as things are petty simple and I have no major complaints. I have noticed that, on occasion, when I boot up a game, the text layer on the game and menu can become slightly glitched, but a reboot via the software fixes it and there are no recurrences during gameplay. I’m not sure if this is caused by my slots being dirty or what, but this system is old as hell and I’ve never cleaned it. It kind of sucks that they don’t have at least a Mac or Linux native command line tool, but again, Wine is fine. Otherwise, I don’t think you’ll find anything to dislike.
I have not tested the jukebox or cheats features, so no comments there.
I’ve played quite a bit of MS1, X and 2, GarouMoTW, Kof98, windJammers and LastBlade (and sampled a lot of the other shit) and have not noticed any…weirdness, I guess. The look and play fine and exhibit the same behaviour as the real deal.
Packaging wise, the cart comes with a the usual giant porno box casing the Neo Geo Aes was known for. At first glance, it looks like a transparent plastic clone, but in reality, it’s a new design that’s actually superior in that it won’t crease the insert on the top and bottom (good job). It doesn’t feel brittle and it looks right at home next to regular AES carts. The cart is also nearly identical to an aes cart save for being transparent as well. It’s a little lighter than I’d expect, but that’s not a knock against it.
In closing, at the end of the day, retro-gaming on real hardware is a colossal extravagance and I’m not going to say this thing is worth what I paid for it, because in reality, it’s just a game, so it really isn’t. But if you feel this purchase will bring you a certain degree of fun or happiness you feel is worth the cash, then you’ll be buying a fine product that works as advertised.
Hope you liked my review!
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Great write-up, thanks!
This is the route I want to take, but I think I would go the full MVS way. Not sue if I want to put forth the effort to consolize the board on my own, when there are pretty nice acrylic solutions out there, but collecting for the MVS or AES is not something I would want to get into.
hi hi hi i clearly hate money and want an AES while here in japan,. pleased to send ur consolized MVS suggestions to the sensible hell they belong
i have an RGB cable back home and many questions here
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NG forums make it seem like the desire for a low serial # for better RGB signal have been debunked?
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super potato (shut up) had a unit for like 270 or so with currency conversion. this price looks fair,I’m gonna check the one here in Osaka as well. any idea how/if these stores give any guarantee on its working condition?
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what do those wannabe everdrives go for? the ones that take forever to load but have nearly full compatibility? do i need to sacrifice someone to get one?
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does unibios matter/is it hard to do? more concerned with helpful ninja dog gameplay options than region stuff
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what are good prices for a stick, and pad? anything to look for? of dig one of each, and they never look bundled with the system in these spots.
speaking of ninja doggery how does one get rapid fire options
I’m sure I’m forgetting stuff so lemme know, love y’all
I can’t tell you if it’s hard to do (mine was pre-installed), but unibios matters… a lot. I wouldn’t own stock hardware at this point. Being able to access AVS/MVS on the same cart, turn on blood settings, change the difficulty level, and access dip switches in general opens up the possibilities.
Like, in WindJammers, I like to play rounds with a 90 second time limit instead of the stock 30 seconds. It was set at the arcade owner’s discretion. Not having that option makes it a far more limited game for multiplayer. I think it’s essential.
The basic options you’d get on other consoles get cut off when you don’t have dipswitch access on MVS. And I assume it’s similar on AVS (although I usually play in MVS mode).
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You don’t need a unibios to do that, it’s a standard soft dip setting. Uniobios is good for cheats, region and aes / mvs modes but everything else is accessible through the soft dip without it.
I would say that just generally the Unibios is good for enthusiasts.
And I would consider 99% of us on this board enthusiasts.
You can access dip switches on an AES without Unibios?
My bad, missed the first paragraph of irishninja’s post. Sorry.
If you’re going AES, many people mod those with Unibios but I have not. It’s not mandatory. You simply change region to Japan if you want blood in SamSho, but you do lose the English text if you do that.
$270 seems fair if it includes a controller. You definitely want a joystick and specifically the OG rectangles. The gamepads that came later with the CD units are superb, but the sticks are the deal. It’s one of the best ever made IMO.
Everdrives are super expensive. Twice what you’ll pay for the system. Sacrificial person will need to be acquired.
I think sticks have gone up so anything under $100 is good these days.
If you do buy a game or two (and you should) then go with the stuff that’s common to build a little collection. Art of Fighting 1 and 2, Fatal Fury Special, Samurai Shodown I and II, King of Fighters '94, World Heroes 1 and 2 and Jet are the “cheap” fighting games. Nam 1975, Magician Lord, The Super Spy… those are cheaper games of other styles. The next tier up would be the likes of Ghost Pilots, Crossed Swords, Super Baseball 2020, League Bowling…
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No worries. I never owned an AES so don’t know what’s possible.