Neo Geo / ネオジオ

Neo Geo is an arcade board and console created by SNK and released on April 26, 1990.

Its hardware is extremely powerful, being the most powerful compared to other arcade boards at the time of its release. It featured a Motorola 68000 CPU running at 12MHz plus a Z80 processor running at 4MHz, with a 24-bit video card. It was advertised as a 24-bit system, even though its main CPU was 16-bit.

It could generate images with a resolution of 320x224 pixels, with 4096 simultaneous colors on the screen, for a total palette of 65536 colors. Its sound chip is a Yamaha YM2610.

Its main memory is 64KB, while the video memory is 84KB and the sound memory is 2KB.

The arcade version, called the Neo Geo Multi Video System (MVS), was quite powerful and economical for arcade owners in Japan, as it used a cartridge system to store games. It made it extremely easy for arcade owners to have a new game loaded into the cabinet by simply changing the cartridge and the artwork.

Besides this convenience, these cabinets could hold up to six cartridges, which helped save space in establishments.

The home version was called The Advanced Entertainment System, abbreviated as AES or simply Neo Geo. Initially, this version was not sold, only rented to commercial establishments, but its success and interest were so great that even the high price of $650 didn't deter people from purchasing the device, which had the same hardware as the MVS, enabling a true arcade experience at home.

Release date: April 26, 1990