Neo Geo — Taking the Arcade Board Home

The Neo Geo is a game system SNK launched in April 1990. Two things arrived together: MVS, an arcade board for game centres, and the NEO-GEO home console, which played the same games. The home unit was not sold in shops at first. It was offered for rental, and general retail sale in Japan officially began on 1 July 1991, with the console at ¥48,800.

The sources disagree on price. GAME Watch's 2026 article gives ¥58,000 for the 1 July 1991 release, while Famitsu and Japanese Wikipedia say ¥58,000 was the original 1990 price, cut to ¥48,800 when general sale began on 1 July 1991. This page follows the latter.

MVS and AES

SNK's official "SNK HISTORY" site describes MVS (Multi Video System) as an innovative system that let several games share a single cabinet, and says about 12,000 were installed across Japan.

The home unit is also called the AES (Advanced Entertainment System). According to GAME Watch, it had the same performance as the arcade MVS, and the game data was identical. Early MVS cabinets had a memory card slot, so a game played in the arcade could be continued at home. SNK presents the home unit as designed to bring arcade games home unchanged, under a slogan that invited players to take the amazing games home with them.

According to Japanese Wikipedia, the main specifications were:

GAME Watch notes that Nintendo's Super Famicom, from the same year, cost ¥25,000 with games around ¥10,000, while Neo Geo games initially cost roughly ¥20,000 to ¥30,000. The same article also remarks on how large the home cartridges were.

From rental to retail

According to Famitsu, the Neo Geo was rolled out from 1990 as arcade games and rental games, with some test sales. GAME Watch says the home unit was first rented out, together with games, through video rental shops. General sale officially began on 1 July 1991, and according to Famitsu the console was then repriced at ¥48,800, with games at ¥13,800 to ¥21,000 depending on capacity.

Famitsu describes the Neo Geo as a luxury home console that played the same games as the arcade. Games over 100 megabits carried a "100 Mega Shock" badge, the first being Art of Fighting.

A fighting-game machine

According to SNK, Fatal Fury was released in November 1991. GAME Watch says the fighting-game boom from 1991 led SNK to concentrate on the genre, and the Neo Geo came to be seen in that light. Famitsu lists Fatal Fury 2, Samurai Shodown, Art of Fighting 2 and The King of Fighters '94 among the representative titles.

In September 1994 came the NEOGEO CD, which replaced ROM cartridges with CD-ROM. SNK says it was developed as a Neo Geo for casual players. According to Famitsu, CD games were cheaper, at ¥4,800 to ¥8,800, at the cost of long loading times.

Fourteen years of games

According to SNK, new Neo Geo games kept coming for 14 years, until 2004. Japanese Wikipedia names the last as Samurai Shodown V Special (2004) and says repairs for the hardware ended on 31 August 2007.

SNK's own sales figures could not be found. Japanese Wikipedia gives 350,000 home units in Japan and 410,000 worldwide; English Wikipedia gives 1 million MVS units. On those figures, the arcade MVS outnumbered the home console.

A reissue, the NEOGEO AES+, is also planned. According to VGC, SNK and Plaion announced in September 2026 that a component shortage had pushed its release to 16 September 2027.

For the wider story, see the game consoles timeline.