An evolution of the hardware that powered 1987's Time Soldiers & 1988's P.O.W.: Prisoners of War, the Neo Geo was powered by the same Motorola 68000 & Zilog Z80 CPUs that powered the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, but did so at higher specs along with using a 24-bit GPU bus, resulting in visuals that outdid pretty much any home console of the time, many arcade games from other publishers, & even some computers, like the Sharp X68000. Not only that, but SNK designed the Neo Geo to use interchangeable cartridges for its games that were plugged into a main hardware board, ala home consoles, which allowed arcade operators to maintain just a single arcade cabinet & pay a smaller price for new games, as they came out; Data East previously did something similar in the 80s with the DECO System, but that used cassette tapes. Cabinets also came in 1, 2, 4, & 6-slot variants, allowing multiple games to be housed in one unit, which in turn allowed for more potential profits to be made with just one cabinet. Finally, this is so far only about Multi Video System, or MVS, which is what first appeared in Japanese arcades on April 26, 1990, followed by a later worldwide roll-out. SNK also had a home variant called the Advanced Entertainment System, or AES, which allowed people to play the games on a home television, though the cartridges were altered slightly, so as to not allow MVS & AES carts to be played on their variant hardware. At first, SNK only offered the AES as a rental unit in Japan, but after getting enough interest they did a proper retail release worldwide on July 1, 1991, though it came at a price that was more than double what other consoles cost, at the very least, and individual games easily cost over $100 each; again, though, you were literally getting the same exact experience as what you were playing in arcades.
The Neo Geo would be what SNK relied on almost exclusively for new arcade games throughout the entire 90s, even as the hardware only aged more & more. SNK did try to move on with the Hyper Neo Geo 64 in 1997, which was all about 3D polygons, but that bombed so hard that SNK had no choice but to continue relying on its older hardware, which certainly played a factor in the company's eventual bankruptcy & purchase by pachinko company Aruze in 2000. Even then, though, the Neo Geo soldiered on, outliving the complete death of SNK in 2001 & remained utilized by savior Playmore until 2004, before finally being passed over for newer arcade hardware designed by other companies; what developers wound up doing with the Neo Geo hardware, though, is often mind-blowing. Today, the Neo Geo remains one of the strongest cult-classic favorite video game hardware/consoles of all time, and to celebrate its 30th Anniversary, I want to go over 15 games that saw official release, out of the total 156 that came out, one for each year the system saw official support by SNK/Playmore. As for which games I chose, I didn't necessarily go for the "best" game from each year, but rather just a notable, relevant, or simply fun game. Also, I wanted to avoid using the same franchise more than once, with only two exceptions, so as to keep things fresh. Since 15 games is a lot, this will be split across two parts, a first for Obscusion B-Side (fitting for the 40th entry), so in Part 1 we'll cover from 1990 to 1997, i.e. the years SNK actually kept the Neo Geo hardware in production.
The debut year of the Neo Geo, 1990, saw 11 games released. Understandably, though, there weren't many that you'd necessarily call "classics" from the hardware's catalog, with only NAM-1975, Cyber-Lip, Baseball Stars Professional, & maybe Ninja Combat arguably being worthy of that title. Topping all of them would be ADK's Magician Lord, which was one of the four "launch titles", if you will; people my age might even remember seeing it often in game-based game show Nick Arcade. Designed by Takashi Egashira (Time Soldier, OverTop, Beast Busters: Second Nightmare), the game is a mix of platformer & Contra-esque shooter where you control Elta, the titular Magician Lord, through eight stages as you aim to recover the eight tomes stolen by the evil sorcerer Gal Agiese, who wishes to resurrect the destructive god Az Atorse. Elta can fire magic bolts in the four cardinal directions on the ground & in air, can pick up "P" orbs that power up his attack, & come across colored gems, which allow him to transform into six different forms, depending on the combination of gems: Dragon Warrior, a fire-breathing dragon that can attack diagonally; Waterman, which launches water bubbles that burst into pillars when hitting the ground; Posiedon, which is essentially a powered up Waterman; Shinobi, who moves faster & shoots spinning fireballs; Samurai, which is the only form that can attack through walls; & Raijin, who can jump higher & create an electrical field around himself.
The main problem with Magician Lord, though, is its difficulty, which is just absurd, even for an arcade game designed to make players waste their quarters/tokens to keep playing. Elta can only take two hits before dying, & new forms only give you two hits before reverting back to Elta, but it almost doesn't make any difference, because enemy placement means that you'll be taking hits constantly, especially when enemies later on will literally just spawn right on top of you. Also, most of the rooms you can enter are either pointless or straight-up death traps, making them tough to justify entering, even when they reward you with power-ups. Still, the gameplay itself is super solid, the music by ADK's trio of Yuka Watanabe, Hiroaki Shimizu, & Hideki Yamamoto is limited but just outstanding, & the Engrish-filled translation & voice work for Gal Agiese is simply hilarious. Seriously, with lines like "I'm destined just to die.", "Your are very dangerous. Be dead down here.", & "Come on, nice guy! But your life is mine very soon.", Gal is up there with C.A.T.S. from Zero Wing when it comes to memorably terrible Engrish. Still, Magician Lord was originally much larger, as there were 27 forms conceived before being dwindled down to just six, while the original beta location testing in January 1990 featured much longer stages. Also, a non-linear sequel was long in development, first for the AES home system, before being moved to the Neo Geo CD & then later the Neo Geo Pocket Color, before being cancelled due to Alpha Denshi's bankruptcy. An alpha build was discovered & dumped in 2012 by Gamekult, showing a game similar in style to a "Metroidvania", complete with Elta being able to transform at will.
As cheap & overly difficult as it could be, though, Magician Lord more than deserves being the title to represent 1990 in this list.
While the Neo Geo, & SNK in general, would become synonymous with fighting games, it actually wasn't something that happened right away with the hardware. In fact, there wouldn't be a single fighting game for the Neo Geo until 1991, when we saw the likes of King of the Monsters & Ashita no Joe Densetsu/Legend of Success Joe, the former of which was more of a wrestling game, while the latter is an infamously terrible boxing game based on an iconic manga. Still, of the 16 games released for the Neo Geo in 1991, which included the likes of Crossed Swords, Sengoku, Burning Fight, & Alpha Mission II, there's really only one choice to go with here, and that's Fatal Fury: King of Fighters, which came out at the end of the year & is the first "traditional" fighting game for the Neo Geo. So, in 1987, Capcom released a quaint little fighting game in arcades titled Street Fighter, in which you played as a gi-wearing fighter named Ryu as he aimed to become champion, and to fight you bashed down on one of two buttons for punching & kicking; the amount of force you hit the buttons with determined whether it was light, medium, & heavy strength. One of the designers of Street Fighter was a man named "Piston" Takashi Nishiyama, who has previously designed Moon Patrol & Kung-Fu Master for Irem before joining Capcom.
After 1988, though, Nishiyama left Capcom to join SNK, and wanted to make a successor to Street Fighter; coincidentally enough, Capcom was doing the same thing around the same time. The end result was Fatal Fury, or Garou Densetsu/Legend of the Hungry Wolf in Japan, which had the player control either Terry Bogard, his brother Andy, or best friend Joe Higashi in an attempt to win the King of Fighters tournament held by Geese Howard, the man who killed Terry & Andy's father 10 years prior. Nishiyama changed things up a bit by using only three buttons (punch, kick, & throw), made special moves easier to pull off than in Street Fighter, and added a second plane to fight on (though only the computer could control when the fighting switched planes), while the focus here was mainly to tell the story of how our heroes made their way up the (admittedly rigged) tournament, only to wind up facing Geese at the very end & knock him off the top floor of his giant tower after besting him in combat. In comparison, Capcom's Street Fighter II used six buttons, featured more playable characters, & focused more on versus play between two human players, which in turn made it a worldwide smash hit. However, Fatal Fury did feature multiplayer, though the focus here was on letting two players team up against the computer in 2-on-1 combat. Capcom wouldn't give this a try until Street Fighter Alpha in 1995, & even then it was an Easter egg meant to reference the anime movie that had just come out. Still, Fatal Fury wound up defining the direction SNK would primarily take for the Neo Geo, for better or worse, and was the debut game for Terry Bogard, who would become the de facto mascot for the entire company, even appearing in other companies' games, like Arika's Fighting EX Layer & even Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Remember when I said Nishiyama was "one of the designers of Street Fighter"? Well, turns out that the other designer, "Finish" Hiroshi Matsumoto, also left Capcom for SNK alongside Nishiyama, with his own idea on how to follow up on Street Fighter. Of course, 1992 was a very different year than 1991 for one simple reason: This was the year that came AFTER Street Fighter II. Because of the sheer success of Capcom's game, many imitators came from all over into the arcade, like Allumer's Blandia, Incredible Technologies' Time Killers, & Midway's Mortal Kombat; Capcom even revised its own game with Street Fighter II': Champion Edition. The Neo Geo wasn't any different, as 1992 saw three new fighting games for the hardware, including Fatal Fury 2 & Alpha Denshi's World Heroes, alongside 11 non-fighting games, like Last Resort, Baseball Stars 2, Sammy's Viewpoint, King of the Monsters 2, Super Sidekicks, & Mutation Nation. Housed in between those other two Neo Geo fighters, though, was Matsumoto's creation, Art of Fighting, or Ryuko no Ken/Fist of Dragon & Tiger in Japan, which may have been the most technical game in the entire genre upon release.
Similar to what Nishiyama did a year prior, Matsumoto put a storyline as the focus for AoF, this time telling the tale of Ryo Sakazaki & Robert Garcia, friendly martial art rivals who team together to save Ryo's sister Yuri, after she's kidnapped for unknown reasons; the ending of the game is iconic & memorable, much like Fatal Fury. Unlike Nishiyama, though, Matsumoto made "Story Mode" a separate option, as two players could select from an entire roster of eight characters for versus play; the bosses, Mr. Big & Mr. Karate, aren't regularly selectable, but can be cheated to play as in versus. While it still featured the same "punch, kick, & throw" button layout, where AoF differed from Fatal Fury was in how it played. As Nishiyama focused on a game that was simple to pick up & play, Matsumoto created a game that featured a good number of systems to learn. The biggest of all is the Spirit Gauge, which is below both characters' health & decreases when special moves are done; if you don't have enough spirit, your specials are weaker & projectiles don't go anywhere. You can recharge spirit by holding down punch & kick, while a fourth button is used solely to taunt your opponent, which lowers their Spirit Gauge. Not only that, but properly completing the three special stages will increase your life & spirit, or allow you to utilize the Haoh Shokouken (simply "Ha-ow Ken", originally), the first very first "super move" in a fighting game; it requires an entire Spirit Gauge, but can be done at any time & does a ton of damage. The throw button is also multi-purpose, as it can be used to triangle jump off of the wall while jumping backwards. Without a doubt, Art of Fighting truly showed how fighting games can be made more complex, even if this results in the game itself being a little rough to play today; it holds up better than I thought it would, but I still prefer the third game from 1996. Regardless of my opinion, though, what Hiroshi Matsumoto did to advance the evolution of the genre in a single game cannot be ignored.
I have no idea what happened in 1993, but only a scant six games came out for the Neo Geo throughout the entire year, with each game being the only one released in their respective months. February saw Sengoku 2, which would find itself a cult following for its truly wild & bizarre mixture of Western & Eastern iconography. March had 3 Count Bout, or Fire Suplex in Japan, the only "proper" wrestling game for the Neo Geo, but otherwise kind of forgettable. April saw World Heroes 2, which expanded a bit on what Alpha Denshi, now shortened to just ADK, did with the first game. September had Fatal Fury Special, an expanded form of Fatal Fury 2 that featured the very first crossover for SNK, as Ryo could be fought as the extra hidden boss fight. December saw Spinmaster, Data East's first Neo Geo game, & a really fun action-platformer, at that. With so few games to choose from, there was really no competition to be found here, as the most relevant Neo Geo game of 1993 is the one that came out in July, Samurai Shodown. Designed by Yasushi Adachi, the game known in Japan as Samurai Spirits wasn't the first weapons-based fighting game by any means, I mentioned a couple in the previous entry already, but it really was the first to execute the idea extremely well. Taking place during Japan's Sakoku period, specifically the Spring of 1788, the game sees 12 characters from around the world (but primarily Japan) combating each other, all while Shiro Tokisada Amakusa has been revived by the dark god Ambrosia, 150 years after his death, so as to get his revenge on the Tokugawa clan.
Yes, "SamSho" not only relied on a historical backdrop but also utilized actual historical figures, or at least fictionalized versions of them; there's even a Jubei Yagyui & Hanzo Hattori to be found, as those were pseudonyms used by many people. In terms of gameplay, SamSho takes yet another different direction than most of its contemporaries by focusing on slower-paced, risk-vs-reward combat. Due to a quirk in the original Street Fighter II that Capcom then expanded on, fighting games started focusing more & more on comboing attacks together, but while SamSho did allow for some minor combo potential, it instead was about finding openings in your opponent's offense & defense, followed by striking back & delivering damage... And I mean BIG damage. With the right situation in hand, a single hard slash or special move could deliver close to, if not exactly, half of an entire health bar. This resulted in SamSho being pretty radically different in execution compared to the competition, and when combined with its cool historical setting, one where cool-looking samurai can fight against the likes of a female French chevalier, a kabuki warrior, or a mutant-looking human with the same last name as a buxom kunoichi found in Fatal Fury 2, it certainly made the game a must play. This game was also a perfect example of the uniquely amusing localization tone found in SNK's English translations by this point, where characters would go from serious to silly-sounding almost instantly, even poking fun at other Neo Geo games (like Jubei stating that he's not the guy from Fatal Fury). Unfortunately, the game is also a poster child for SNK's eventual habit of relying on input-reading AI for single-player, as the computer is capable of raising one's temper with seemingly-impossible counters & reaction speeds at all points, even with difficulty as low as Level 2 of 8 (Level 4 was the default for MVS); even at Level 1, Amakusa is annoying as hell.
Still, Samurai Shodown would go on to become one of SNK's most iconic franchises of all time, even being the most recent to receive a new game, in the form of the excellent Samurai Shodown [2019], which is technically "Samurai Shodown VII" (even though it's technically the 11th original fighting game in the franchise).
If I didn't institute the "one entry per franchise" restriction (again, minus the two exceptions, which won't be seen until the next article), then 1994 would be a perfect way to take it easy & just pick another entry in an iconic series, or pick the first in what would become an iconic franchise. Of the 17 games released in 1994, we have sequels like Art of Fighting 2, Data East's Fighters History Dynamite (which is honestly a really damn good fighting game), ADK's World Heroes 2 Jet, Samurai Shodown II, Video System's Aero Fighters 2, & Super Sidekicks 2, or notable first entries like The King of Fighters '94 or Puzzle Bobble, let alone "unique" one-offs like Aggressors of Dark Kombat, Top Hunter: Roddy & Cathy, or Street Slam. 1994 was also the year SNK introduced the Neo Geo CD, an attempt at making a more cost-effective home console equivalent, since games on CDs could be sold for a fraction of the price AES carts cost; unfortunately, a single-speed drive quickly resulted in embarrassingly long load times for larger games. Therefore, I decided to go with an original title that stands on its own amongst the 1994 Neo Geo lot, and it's the first one to come from a third-party company. Whether or not ADK was a "true" third-party can be debated, but there's no debate to be found with Data East, & especially when it comes to Windjammers.
Lead by programmer Takaaki Inoue, in what seems to be his only game as leader, the team at Data East essentially combined Pong with "flying disc" (better known by its trademarked name, "frisbee"), hence why it was called Flying Power Disc in Japan. This resulted in a game where two players aimed to throw the disc in play past their opposition & into their scoring wall, made up of two 3-point sections & one 5-point section (while not catching a disc results in a "miss", which gives the opponent two points), with the goal of either getting at least 12 points, or simply having more points than your opponent if the timer runs out. To help make things tricky for your opponent, you can angle the throw in various ways, namely to bounce off of the walls, rotate the d-pad/joystick around to add a curve to your throw, and can also either do a traditional throw or a high lob. Also, when a disc is coming your way, you'll want to press the throw button at the moment of impact, so as to pop the disc up, which can allow you charge up for one of two special throws, which are unique to each character; if you manage to time it just right, you can even throw an opponent's special throw back at them! The end result was a fast, frenetic, & instantly lovable game, one that matches Data East's penchant for unique and/or bizarre concepts & mash-ups, while also being honestly one of the company's best games, period. The game itself never really achieved much notoriety during its release, and after Data East's closure in 2003 it didn't wind up being one of the properties that G-mode got the rights to. Instead, it went to developer Paon DP, which was formed by ex-Data East staff, alongside Karnov, Chelnov, & both the Kuuga & Glory of Heracles series (though Paon has only actually done much of anything with the last one). Windjammers did see re-release in Japan via the Wii Virtual Console in 2010, though it was delisted in 2013, possibly due to litigation (someone tried claiming that he had created the sport Data East used for the game & wanted royalties). Sadly, the delisting happened right as gaming website Giant Bomb started bringing the game back into cult notoriety, but since then DotEmu worked with Paon to port it to modern consoles, and is even working a full-on sequel, Windjammers 2. Today, Windjammers is arguably more successful, popular, & beloved than it ever was during the 90s, and it's a testament to just how excellent the game was... and still is.
1995 looked to be a banner year for the Neo Geo for two main reasons. First, 20 games saw release for the hardware (plus 4 exclusively for the Neo Geo CD), the most of any year. Second, the designers at SNK managed to finally break free of the 330 megabit (41.25 MB) size limit that the cartridges originally had via bank switching, which now allowed Neo Geo games to potentially become as large as 716 megabits (89.5 MB). In comparison, the Super Famicom's biggest game was Star Ocean in 1996 at 48 megabits, while the N64's carts maxed out at only 512. Real Bout Fatal Fury wound up being the first game to surpass 330 at the very end of the year; by the end of the hardware's support in 2004, 500-700 megabits had become the norm. However, while 1995 did have stuff like Aicom's Pulstar, two Fatal Fury games, The King of Fighters '95, Far East of Eden: Kabuki Klash (the only game in that series to actually see international release), CD-exclusive Crossed Swords II, Super Sidekicks 3, & Aero Fighters 3, a lot of that "quantity" are exactly the cream of the crop; again, it "looked" to be a banner year. You have decent or at least flawed games, like Technos Japan's Double Dragon (inspired by the live-action movie), Sunsoft's Galaxy Fight, Savage Reign, or Samurai Shodown III, as well as a number of games meant only for Japan, like Saurus' Quiz King of Fighters, ADK's Shogi no Tatsujin, or Takara's Chibi Maruko-chan: Maruko Deluxe Quiz. Therefore, the game I have chosen for 1995 is the final entry in a fighting series that has always had a fanbase, even if it always felt like a second-string entry compared to SNK's main lot. I choose ADK's World Heroes Perfect, which coincidentally is the largest game in this half of the list, at 226 megabits.
For those unfamiliar, World Heroes was a four-game series from 1992 to 1995 based around the concept of a scientist named Dr. Brown (later given the last name of "Sugar"), who created a time machine & decided to organize a tournament to see who is truly the strongest warrior in not just the world, but all of history; yes, the reference is meant to be that obvious. This resulted in the cast eventually featuring the likes of both Hanzo Hattori (a different one from Samurai Shodown's) & Kotaro Fuma, Rasputin, Janne D'Arc, Captain Kidd, & Jack the Ripper, alongside others whose references are visually there, but feature much different names, & there are even fighters based on fictional characters from works like Journey to the West, Kinnikuman, Fist of the North Star, & even a fusion of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure & Baoh. In terms of gameplay, the first three games were fairly simplistic in controls (punch, kick, & throw/taunt), mainly appealing in that first two offered a "Death Match" mode, which added environmental hazards (& a tug-of-war style health meter in WH2), while World Heroes 2 Jet utilized more of a "realistic" tournament structure. In comparison, Perfect seems like the most generic one of all, as it switches things over to a more "standard" two punches & two kicks layout, and removes the alternate modes in place of the usual 8-opponent arcade ladder. It was also headed up by Takashi Hatono & Muneki Shiraishi, who were just character & sprite designers for the series, beforehand. However, where WHP becomes the best entry is in all the little details, because there's a ton of them here. Similar to the first Samurai Shodown, you can press both punches/kicks together for a hard variant (essentially making it a 6-button game), while pressing A+B+C activates the "ABC Special Move", which is unique to each & every character. Sure, the usefulness of the ABCs varied wildly, but some were literally years ahead of their time, like J. Maximum catching & returning projectiles or Hanzou essentially getting a Roman Cancel from Guilty Gear X, years before that game existed! Hell, character's heads track their opponents at all times, even while jumping, which was just unheard of for a 2D fighter. Not just that, but the general pace of the game was very fast, feeling more like a modern fighting game than one of the 90s. At the time, World Heroes Perfect was kind of passed over by most, either due to the strong competition or because of what many thought it was going to be like, going off of past series experience. Today, though, it's earned itself an earnest & strong cult following, primarily in Japan (where it's part of a sort of "Second-Tier Trinity", alongside Fighters History Dynamite & Breakers Revenge, that still see active competition to this very day) but also in the West; Shoryuken.com even did a triple-interview regarding it back in 2014 that's well worth a read.
While 1995 may have arguably given the Neo Geo overall "better" fighting games than this, they were mostly just iterations of larger franchises & today have been bested by later entries. In comparison, World Heroes Perfect wasn't quite as the name said it was, but it was definitely a game well ahead of its time.
If 1995 was the year of "quantity over quality", then 1996 is likely the best overall year for the Neo Geo, as it not only saw 19 games released (plus 2 CD exclusives), but almost every single one of them is either notable or just downright excellent. As I mentioned earlier, Art of Fighting 3 is my personal favorite of that series, & was an early example of using rotoscoping for character animation. Technos' last hurrah also came this year with Super Dodge Ball, while Sunsoft released its final Neo Geo game in the excellent Waku Waku 7. ADK was on fire in its final year of support, too, with Ninja Master's, Over Top, & Neo Geo swan song Twinkle Star Sprites. Visco Games finally went beyond average with the excellent Breakers & Neo Drift Out. Saurus was putting out interesting games, like Ragnagard, Pleasure Goal: 5 on 5 Mini Soccer, & the MVS & CD-exclusive Ironclad. Finally, SNK itself was putting out the likes of KOF '96, Kizuna Encounter, Samurai Shodown IV, The Ultimate 11 (a.k.a. "Super Sidekicks 4"), & the highly beloved Neo Turf Masters. The last one is of particular note, because it marked the debut of a studio named Nazca Corporation, which was formed by ex-Irem staff after that company went into development inactivity in 1994; Irem wouldn't return to game development until the end of the 90s. Specifically, the staff that formed Nazca had worked on the likes of Air Duel, Undercover Cops, In the Hunt, & GunForce II, the last of which would become the spiritual precursor to the game that I feel best represents the Neo Geo in 1996, Metal Slug.
Sadly, the actual identities of most of the Nazca staff remain known only by their in-game credited pseudonyms, with only planner Kazuma Kujo (who'd later create the Disaster Report series & found developer Granzella), programmer Atsuhi Kurooka, & music composer Takushi Hiyamuta having since been identified, and none of them wish to reveal anyone else's true identities; Atsushi Inaba (now of Platinum Games) was also at Nazca (& later SNK), but not as a developer. Regardless, what the team at Nazca did with Metal Slug was essentially create the true spiritual successor to Konami's Contra series, which was about to hit some hard growing pains by transitioning into the polygonal world. Similar to that series, Metal Slug saw you play as either Marco Rossi or Tarma Roving (i.e. Player 1 & Player 2) as they went through six stages of nonstop combat against the forces of General Morden, who wishes to (you guessed it!) take over the world with his rebel army. While fighting, Marco & Tarma can rescue various P.O.W.s, who will reward them with either bonus points, more grenades to throw, or new (& limited) ammo for the likes of flame shots, shotgun blasts, launching rockets, or (most iconic) the HEAVY MACHINE GUN(!). Also found in each stage are the titular Metal Slugs, versatile tanks that can both duck & jump, and when near destruction can even be launched forward without a pilot as a powerful kamikaze attack. Also similar to Contra, Metal Slug isn't exactly a long game, a normal playthrough shouldn't take more than about 30 minutes, but it's relentless in its difficulty. It never borders on cheap or unfair, but rather shows no remorse in trying its hardest to kill you, as it only takes one hit; you are given multiple lives per continue & always respawn where you died, though. Regardless, the game is just a joy to play, and its habit of being willing to poke fun at itself keeps things relatively light-heartened, even as you kill entire squadrons of enemy soldiers. It's really no surprise that Metal Slug would become another tent pole franchise for SNK, with Nazca being acquired by SNK shortly after Metal Slug's release, & the team would make another three entries (Metal Slug 2, X (an improved remake of 2, & 3), before disbanding in 2001, following SNK's bankruptcy. SNK, though, would keep producing Metal Slug games, with the series currently having seven main entries, two remakes (X & XX), & seven spin-offs, eventually bringing in aliens & even the KOF version of the Ikari Warriors (Ralf, Clark, & Leona).
Finally, we end this first half with 1997, which is the year SNK officially discontinued the Neo Geo hardware, so as to focus on the release of the Hyper Neo Geo 64; games would still be developed, but MVS & AES hardware stopped being manufactured. Coincidentally, this would also be the last year that saw enough new Neo Geo games to make it into double-digits, & it's also the year that saw the final two CD exclusives, including Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits Bushido Retsuden (a.k.a. Samurai Shodown RPG). Among the 11 new MVS/AES games, we saw an eclectic group of third-party efforts, includng Face's Money Idol Exchanger, Visco's Neo Mr. Do!, Hudson's Neo Bomberman, & Video System's Pop'n Bounce. SNK (& developer Saurus) also debuted some iconic smaller series this year with both Shock Troopers & The Last Blade, had some dream match fun with Real Bout Fatal Fury Special, & brought an end to the Orochi Saga storyline with The King of Fighters '97. Really, though, 1997 is probably most notable for being the the last year in which third-party support for the Neo Geo was still really a thing; if you count all of the remaining third-party games, it'd only be one more than this one year alone. Therefore, I think it's only fitting to pick a third-party game for this year, and in that case there's no better option than Data East's final Neo Geo game, Magical Drop III.
Originally debuting in 1995 on Data East's own proprietary hardware before moving to the Neo Geo with the sequel in 1996, the Magical Drop games had their own take the "Versus Puzzle" concept that Compile really made popular with Puyo Puyo; the style existed a little back in the 80s, but Puyo Puyo is what prompted others to follow. Describing what MD does is kind of tricky, but essentially you control a jester on the bottom of the screen as balloons of various colors come down in rows from the top; think Puzzle Bobble, but set to a timer, instead of moves. Your job is to match at least three of a single color vertically, upon which they'll flash away along with any like-color balloons adjacent to them, which will then prompt any balloons below them to "drop" upwards, and if you they create (at least) three-of-a-kinds of their own, then you get chain removals. Also, all of the characters in the game live in a comical fantasy world & are based on the Major Arcana. When it comes to the third entry, you have three options. Puzzle Mode is a single-player endless mode where you try to prevent the balloons from hitting the bottom of your screen for as long as possible; think reverse Tetris. There's also your standard Vs. Mode, where you either try to fill your opponent's screen to the bottom by playing better, or be the first to hit your quota for balloon removal (which defaults to 200). Finally, there's Adventure Mode, where you move across a giant board to reach the end, and in order to move you survive puzzle fields, while also trying to accumulate fire balloons, which add to how many spaces you can advance at a time; admittedly, though, it's tough to get past two spaces, as it requires quick movement & mastering chains. The end result is an insanely fun & fast-paced puzzle game, one that truly puts it own spin on the likes of Puyo Puyo & Columns.
Unfortunately, playing the English release is not the way to go, because Data East cheapened out & removed a lot of content, instead of actually translating it. Vs. Mode, for example, was originally "Story Mode", which actually featured some intro & ending sequences for everyone. Also, the Japanese voices were completely removed from the English release, replacing them with what sounds to be extremely limited Spanish voices. What's even worse, though, is just how much got cut from Adventure Mode, which was "Sugoroku/Board Game Mode", which not only featured more character-specific cutscenes, but also had you compete against three other players, either CPU or human! If you land on a space that an opponent is on, you can choose to initiate a versus battle, with the loser being removed from play completely. Honestly, you can't even blame Data East USA for this, as that division died out just a year prior, so this was translated on the cheap by the Japanese company itself. In fact, Magical Drop III is the last Data East game to ever see international release, and the company would exit video games completely after 1999, which saw both Magical Drop for WonderSwan & Magical Drop F for PS1, before going bankrupt in 2003. Luckily, Magical Drop III's release for Hamster's ACA Neo Geo series includes both the Japanese & English versions.
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And that brings an end to this first half of celebrating the Neo Geo's 30th Annviersary by way of highlighting a game from each year it saw official support. Come back on April 26, the day of the anniversary itself, as we look at the last seven years, 1998 to 2004, which saw 34 games in total come out. Luckily, those last few years saw what might be the absolute best games of all for this hardware.
Magician Lord © 1990 SNK
Fatal Fury © 1991 SNK
Art of Fighting © 1992 SNK
Samurai Shodown © 1993 SNK
Windjammers © 1994 Paon DP, Inc.
World Heroes Perfect © SNK 1995
Metal Slug © 1996 SNK
Magical Drop III © 1997 G-mode
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