Limed for the Truth

Nintendo and Sega were certainly the predominant players during the late 80’s and early 90’s, but they were far from the only companies to throw consoles at the wall to see if they stuck. Near the dawn of the 16-bit era, a company called SNK was doing pretty well on the arcade scene with a clever system in which they sold arcade owners a cabinet that could play any SNK game, provided you popped in the appropriate cartridge. Called the Neo-Geo, it was very successful, largely due to the string of phenomenal games that SNK crafted for it, eventually including such franchises as Art of Fighting, Samurai Shodown, Metal Slug, and others that still linger around today. What SNK soon discovered, though, is that it wasn’t just arcade owners and patrons who were enamored with their box – a small segment of people with money to burn were bringing these systems home with them.

Enter the Neo-Geo home system. $650 got you a console, a couple of pretty nice controllers, and a game. Additional games were a couple hundred bucks a pop. While certainly not for everyone, if you could rustle up the dough, you were in for a home gaming experience that pretty much kicked the living crap out of everything else available at the time. 4096 colors available on screen compared to the competitors’ 256 and 64, about a hojillion sprites on a line – this baby did it all, though “it all” here was pretty much limited to fighting games and the occasional shooter. Still, SNK had found their niche, and they exploited the almighty hell out of it for the next decade.

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