Getting back into collecting.

Yoshi

,
20 Year Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2001
Posts
1,444
If you want the dopamine hit from buying something, just get the Hamster Arcade Archives Neo Geo releases on Switch, PS4, or the Windows 10 store. The overwhelming majority of the Neo library is available for $8 each, and they go on sale sometimes.
 

Tarma

Old Man
20 Year Member
Joined
Nov 7, 2001
Posts
7,137
Why is it always - "thinking of getting back into AES collecting" or "any advice for collecting AES in 202X?"

Why can't someone come to the forum and go: "Hey, I'm thinking of getting back into gaming" or "I'm new to Neo-Geo what are the best games you guys recommend?"

People who post the word "collect", "collecting", "collector" or variations thereof and have below a certain post count and/or join date should just be fucking insta-banned.
 

madmanjock

Bare AES Handler
20 Year Member
Joined
Dec 31, 2002
Posts
7,723
We should put out a formal health warning.

Buy games off ebay, brag about it on Facebook/Reddit, find life is still hollow and unfulfilling, become a tranny, Seppuku…

… Your family sells your games on ebay…
 

Heinz

Parteizeit
15 Year Member
Joined
Feb 13, 2005
Posts
22,330
On the other hand, if you don't buy an AES, then you will never again know the awesome feel of chunking those luxurious and generous sized carts into the cart slot. Each one, a testament to hundreds or even thousands of hours from a team of young artists and coders, slaving away in Japan late into the night throughout the 90s in order to present you with a detailed and complex thesis about how good and fluid a 2D game on 1980s hardware can be. You know well that other 90s consoles with their tiny carts are barely even a pale imitation of the AES, and can barely hope to do a game that is 1/10 as impressive. Each single character in a king of fighters game has literally hundreds of sprites, even the bullshit characters you never play as like Hinako in King of Fighters 2000. For all of the advancements in technology and development tools, you know that no one is really making games like this, with such incredible hand drawn pixel art and fulsome animation, and probably won't, ever again. There is no longer a mass market for it and the public taste has moved on. But that doesn't matter to you. You know that the AES is part spectacle, part art collection, and is imbued with the essence and fantastic energy of 1990s Japanese youth culture. The fact that you can hold one of these fantastic works in your hands, let alone play it as a perfect and lossless premium arcade to home conversation, is a rare situation where you are experiencing something that practically has no right to exist. SNK beat their brains out and put the company into a kamikaze dive to give you this experience. It is an incredible honor just to own an AES and pay your respects to their video game banzai charge... You KNOW what to do...
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Atro

Who?,
20 Year Member
Joined
Jan 30, 2002
Posts
9,209
No one under 40 should be getting into collecting Neo Geo games, period. If you are starting out now you are just chasing clout on the internet.
Even MVS carts price are going theough the roof let alone AES.

To have a new cart coming in, I really need to do a decent trade nowadays.

People who didn't lived that era or near it, should just stick to their Wii's and PS2's. There's enough Neo ports on those systems too.
 

sirlynxalot

Genjuro's Frog
Fagit of the Year
Joined
Apr 10, 2019
Posts
1,129
We should put out a formal health warning.

Buy games off ebay, brag about it on Facebook/Reddit, find life is still hollow and unfulfilling, become a tranny, Seppuku…

… Your family sells your games on ebay…

Omg, this is 100% accurate... I have seen it happen to more people over the years than I thought I ever would.


Also... does that mean the forum is destined to ultimately become a tranny forum?
 

NeoSneth

Ned's Ninja Academy Dropout
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2000
Posts
11,084
What if we could replicate the smell of new AES carts? Would you really need to own them if you could just cram that smell into your nose.
 

Burning Fight!!

NIS America fan & Rent Free tenant
10 Year Member
Joined
Jan 12, 2014
Posts
4,336
Honestly whoever gets into AES right now is a sucker that's going to contribute to someone else's college or retirement fund, or someone that's going to buy fatal fury and samurai shodown only to *mysteriously* (:keke:) stop and sell everything. There's no ifs or buts about it really. What's the point of it?
 

edd_jedi

NEST Puppet
Joined
Oct 28, 2018
Posts
167
I got my first Neo Geo 5 years ago which was an NGCD, and bought my first AES console last year. You don't need to spend thousands, the console was £350, I then spent £100 having a UniBios fitted, and then I bought an OSSC which was £100 on Amazon (however I would also recommend the Rad2x, which is built on the same technology as Retrotink and is under £50, does a good job too.)

Games wise, sure lots of them are crazy expensive now, but if you look through the history of this forum there were $1000+ games in 2001, so expensive AES carts is nothing new. I have a collection of 12 AES carts which all cost me under £200 each (some much less than that) and I also have the 161-in-1 cart, which combined with the UniBios has "pick n mix" mode which is a much improved user experience, and the cart has 80% of the games you want to play on it.

So if you want to have a real console and collect carts, go for it, just don't expect to own Neo Turf Masters :)
 

BIG BEAR

SHOCKbox Developer,
20 Year Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2001
Posts
8,230
Break your muddafukin' bank and invest in all the physical sh8t you can as that stuff appreciates unlike the dollars in your pocket.
BB
 

edd_jedi

NEST Puppet
Joined
Oct 28, 2018
Posts
167
Alternatively, while maybe not popular with some, if you want something close to the real arcade experience but a fraction of the size and cost, here's my Raspberry Pi setup running Retropie which cost:

Raspberry Pi 4 2GB - £52
Sega Astro City USB joystick - £120
Lenovo 5:4 monitor - £10

Under £200 for an arcade quality setup. This Sega stick, which has Sanwa buttons and joystick, is way better than the OG SNK home system sticks, and if you wanted the purist Neo Geo experience you could easily blank buttons 5 and 6 (but I also like to play Capcom games so have kept them.)

I own a real AES and NGCD, and you cannot tell the difference between those and the Pi, there is zero lag or performance issues. Emulation in 2023 is as good as the real thing, even without FPGA.

IMG_2821.jpeg IMG_2820.jpeg
 

Tarma

Old Man
20 Year Member
Joined
Nov 7, 2001
Posts
7,137
I own a real AES and NGCD, and you cannot tell the difference between those and the Pi, there is zero lag or performance issues. Emulation in 2023 is as good as the real thing, even without FPGA.
So why bother spending any of your money on an AES and homecarts.... unless you're a collector?
 

edd_jedi

NEST Puppet
Joined
Oct 28, 2018
Posts
167
So why bother spending any of your money on an AES and homecarts.... unless you're a collector?
I collect and play, nothing wrong with that. I got the Pi mainly to play Capcom CPS2 games, but it does a good job of Neo Geo too.
 

wyo

King of Spammers
10 Year Member
Joined
May 22, 2013
Posts
10,108
We should put out a formal health warning.

Buy games off ebay, brag about it on Facebook/Reddit, find life is still hollow and unfulfilling, become a tranny, Seppuku…

… Your family sells your games on ebay…
It's the circle of faggotry.
 

edd_jedi

NEST Puppet
Joined
Oct 28, 2018
Posts
167
And everytime you play Top Players Golf, you’ll know there’s a sweaty nerd playing a much better game than you which they paid $300 for in 1998.

Thank god for emulation.
Yeah TPG is terrible, Turf Masters is reason enough to buy the 161-in-1 cart.
 
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