Well after years of hemming and hawing I finally got a Neo Geo AES. It came with two joysticks and two games: Ninja Combat and Baseball Stars Professional. I've always wanted one of these since I saw it in Babbges back in 92.

My first reaction upon pulling this stuff out of the box was how big the games are! When people were charging $5 to $7 shipping on ebay I thought they were just ripping people off, but these things are huge and heavy! Think Super NES game on steroids. Also I noticed they have two boards in them, I've never seen that before.

Unfortunately the first game I played on the Neo Geo was also one of the worst. Ninja Combat has to be one of the absolute worst games I've ever seen! If this is 46 Mega I want to know what they did with the other 45.75 Megs! Not only were the graphics only ho-hum, but the enemies were repetative, the control was lousy, and the plot was laughable. The game was also freakin' hard! One or two hits would kill you, and there was no limited invincibility when you got hit so one enemy could just run through you and you'd die. I gritted my teeth and worked my way through the game just to see the ending and never touch it again. Bad bad bad.....

The second game I played was Baseball Stars Professional. Now this game was more what I was thinking of. I wasn't expecting much since it's one of the earlier Neo Geo games, but I ws pleasently surprised. The graphics were pretty good (for 1991). The gameplay was simple, which is exactly the way I like my sports games. The best thing was the announcers, they were easy to understand and really added some character to the game. Too bad the computer kicked my ass 9-4.

Overall I'm happy with the Neo Geo. I'm looking forward to getting some of the later games like KOF 2001 or Metal Slug 3. Good thing is I have one of my favorite arcade games coming next week: Samurai Shodown 2!

Tempest