
Neo Geo Programming Guide (1991) [pdf] - felhr
http://www.hardmvs.com/manuals/NeoGeoProgrammersGuide.pdf
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0xcde4c3db
Neo Geo is an interesting system. The graphics system in particular is very
elegant for old-school hardware. Like Atari 2600 and Amiga, sprites can be
extremely tall at essentially no extra cost; it's the width that really eats
up the budget (which on Neo, IIRC, are timeslices on a state machine that
renders the sprites into a linebuffer, rather than physical FIFOs). Unlike
Atari 2600 and Amiga, the hardware has the concept of "chaining" sprites so
that a huge meta-sprite's position can be controlled by a single attribute
block. There's no background hardware; the way you build backgrounds is by
creating huge sprites. The hardware also has a simple mechanism for automatic
animation so that various kinds of environmental animation can be done without
the CPU having to update all of the pattern numbers.

There is a textmode-like foreground layer (the "fix" layer, probably called
that because it can't scroll) for UI elements like score, credits, life
meters, etc..

Trivia: Neo Geo was not primarily designed by SNK, but rather by Alpha Denshi
(ADK), presumably acting as a contractor. It bears some similarities to
earlier boards for ADK and SNK games (see the MAME drivers "alpha68k" and
"snk68").

~~~
Leynos
I laughed a little when I read about the "free" animations, because I
immediately thought of the backgrounds in some stages of Blazing Star which
were effectively short looping videos. An effect also used fairly extensively
by NG:Dev.Team.

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Mithaldu
This is great to see, since this year's Revision party saw the release of two
NeoGeo demos at the same time, with there being almost none before that:

[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67110](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67110)
[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67100](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67100)

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superflit
That is a great material and has some wisdom too like:

"As a general rule, the most important thing to remember is to give a good
play value without resorting to shock tactics. Comedy in good taste is a very
good method to add gaming value to any game. If the whole family can laugh
together at a game with a sense of humor, it provided a more enjoyable
experience without being offensive. " page. 106 (guidelines).

I was too poor for having Neo Geo at home but I played it on arcades.

~~~
kingmanaz
Same here. Never could afford one.

I recall playing a side-scrolling arcade RPG put out by Neo-Geo sometime in
the late '80s/early '90s. From what I remember there was leveling and
different classes of characters ( fighter, mage, etc ). It was something like
Golden Axe, but a lot more detailed. Tried to find it later but never had any
luck.

~~~
city41
Possibly Crossed Swords:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H485or8VOC8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H485or8VOC8)

Or Sengoku:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZqBgAQak64](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZqBgAQak64)

Or also possibly Dungeons and Dragons:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8alVk4Zi5A0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8alVk4Zi5A0)

D&D was by Capcom on the CPS2, a competitor to the Neo Geo.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
Another Capcom game that fits the general description is The King of Dragons
(1991, CPS1 hardware).

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matt2000
I can remember wanting one of these so badly when I was a kid, but check out
the specs!

12Mhz CPU 64K RAM 64K VRAM

Now this thing has 83x the clock rate and ~8,000x the memory for $9:
[http://getchip.com/pages/chip](http://getchip.com/pages/chip)

I can remember reading articles about how fast and cheap computers would get,
but man.

~~~
mhd
Memory was the big issue of the Neo Geo, if I remember correctly. The system
itself was expensive enough, but what really broke the bank was the price of
each individual game. And that was mainly because they used cartridges with
many times the amount of ROM compared to what Nintendo or Sega used. That
meant that a single game cost more than their competitor's console.

And by the time the Neo Geo CD came out where this was suddenly not an issue
anymore, it was too late alredy...

~~~
city41
The Neo Geo CD had 7 megs of RAM, and the Neo Geo cart games just kept on
getting bigger. The last CD games released would often load midway through
levels or several times per fight for fighting games. Then from there many Neo
Geo games never got a CD release because it just wasn't feasible.

As for the price of Neo Geo games, just for some fun here is one that sold
last week for over $5000: [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Blazing-Star-Neo-Geo-AES-
JP-import-1...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Blazing-Star-Neo-Geo-AES-JP-
import-100-Genuine-SNK-Game-MINT-
Condition-/162010824124?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&nma=true&si=qk905YdVr1Z8fO1UbF%252FDFvCXqZE%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc)

Many Neo Geo games are now in four figure territory.

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LCDninja
A few years ago someone on the Mame forums released the full 68k source to Art
of Fighting. Apparently the Neo Geo source code was hidden in a PC-Engine
conversion of the game. Since then members of the community have re-assembled
the game & it's proven to work.

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Gazoo101
I must admit, I am surprised at how good the English is in this document so
far. Granted, I've only skimmed it, but I half expected to find a bit of
Engrish left and right.

Color me pleasantly surprised!

~~~
city41
This was most likely translated by SNK USA. Although the Neo Geo never gained
any US developers.

