The Great NeoGeo Debate

[JoustGod]

I've been sitting back watching, with interest, at the back and forth opinions concerning NeoGeo games.
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It seems to me that we have arrived at the inevitable crossroad. That crossroad is the dividing line between the "old line golden age" players and the "post-golden age" players. Not to say that all old line players are old or that the post-golden players are youngsters, but most likely this would probably be the case.

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I guess I consider myself one of the "old liners", I'm 39 and the games that came out in the '70s up until roughly '84-'85 are the games that I played. It was around the '84-'85 that a change came about the arcade scene. Fighting games became all the rage and the old days of having high scores being a focal point of a player became passe.

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I'm not saying that the newer games were terrible, but they certainly were a deviation from what us "old liners" were used to and a lot of us just simply didn't care for this style of game. Granted there were games released that echoed the "golden age", it just seemed that a majority of the games became "fighting", "driving", or "basketball" games with not a lot of new gameplay ideas (although the graphics on some of these games are just incredible). Thus, we "old liners" cling to the golden age games and reject the newer ones.

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That brings us to the current crossroad. I, for one, am not the biggest fan of most of the NeoGeo games. This also, unfortunately, brings up another aspect of the current deluge of NeoGeo games. Some of us just don't have the horsepower to run these games properly (read that as "fast enough"). And that's a shame. It means no chance for the CPU-deprived to participate in NeoGeo arena, so to speak. It's kind of a class division at this time, but I'm sure that eventually this will resolve itself by either everyone moving on to a bigger, better machine or the MAME dev team finding a way to get even the most demanding games to run properly on at least a P200. I don't know how feasible this is, but there's always hope.

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I'm in agreement with some of the others, I'm not that interested in most of these games anyway, so it's no big deal to me...just waiting for more of those obscure B&W roms from 1977 to show up so that we can have more fun battles on these cheesy games!

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Thanks for bearing with this long post,

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JoustGod

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pinballwiz1@msn.com

[BeeJay]

I too am one of the "old liners" - 32 years old, married with 3 kids, 1 cat, 2 cars and a house (well a mortgage actually ).
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I guess for me the time investment required to get all the moves learned for the fighting games is just not warranted as these games seem a complete waste of time to me. Especially when there is no urge to get a new high score or a new PB.

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That's not to say I don't like some fighting games. I did spend ages playing Karate Champ when it first came out but again that was probably because it was a new style of game.

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I also like vertically scrolling shootem-ups but I'm not quite so keen on horizontal scrollers.

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I'm dead keen on the cheesy old games and I love simple platformers - but you probably guessed that from my Wonderboy and Pitfall scores. I'm not so keen on the platformers that have such busy backgrounds its hard to tell where you're supposed to be going next. Wonderboy3 almost falls into this category but I'm going to take a serious look at it soon to see if its only 1st impressions and maybe I will like it once I start to learn it.

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What used to worry me with Mame was how few of the games it emulated I didn't play heaps as a youngster.... but now with the advent of Neo-Geo emulation I no longer feel this way so I guess there is 1 bright point to the emulation of neo-geo for me.... and of course some of the shootem-ups/puzzle/platformers are fun to play as well !! )

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Cheers,
BeeJay.

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PS: 1 hour and 15 minutes until Monday's work is done and I can head home for another evening of Mame.... )))

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bjohnstone@cardinal.co.nz

[BBH]

Well, I'm willing to wager that I'm the "baby" of the MARP bunch... I'm only 19 years old! A lot of MY childhood arcade memories were from the mid-1980's, and I loved games like Time Soldiers, Rygar, Black Tiger, Willow, etc. And I've always had an interest in high scores, and feel that any game without a scoring system loses a good deal of its replayability.
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When SF2 hit the arcades back in 1991, I was hooked. Unfortunately, everyone wiped the floor with me. It took me about a year to finally learn what I was doing, learn general strategy and combos, etc... just in time for Champion Edition. I loved the head-to-head competition... competing against high scores in 1P games was fun, but this was so addicting. I fondly remember the first time I got around a 40-game winning streak... being able to hold the machine for hours was a great feeling. I'd learn something new every time I went to play, I always wished I was old enough to drive back then.

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But for some reason or another, I've also always held a strong interest in Neo-Geo games. I don't know what it is about them, but I like a lot of the games on the system, and even own a Neo CD. Yes, some of the fighting games SUCK... but there's a lot of good ones. And almost every game has some sort of scoring system, thankfully. I still haven't gotten to break 19 million on Shock Troopers yet, but I will keep trying.

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So it's strange... even though I still play recent games, I also have a great deal of respect for a lot of the classics. Although there's only a few old games that I'm actually really good at.

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-BBH

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lordbbh@aol.com

[Angry]

Since this thread has turned into a mini-bio section for MARP players, as well as an arcade history lesson, I thought I'd continue the theme.
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I'm 29 and didn't really arrive on the video game scene until late 1981 or so. I recall playing some games before this, but hadn't really grasped the concept of becoming good at a game. I probably learned more games during the '83-'88 period.

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I agree that there was a shift in the arcade scene around '84/'85, but the shift had not yet entered the fighting game era. In '84, the entire video game industry imploded (both arcade and home), which left many companies and arcades scrambling for a way to turn a profit. This is when the bulk of all new arcade games were cheap conversion kits, and in general, many games began clone one another. (Romstar comes to mind as the king of importing many of these from Japan - I'm not knocking Romstar, they were just the kings of the import)

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The original Street Fighter was released in 1987, but was not nearly as popular as its successor. You may remember this game as being in a very large cabinet, with two pressure sensitive buttons for attacking (which ruined the game). Street Fighter 2 (in 1989?)started the final emergence of fighting games in the arcades today - which is when I began to lose interest.

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There have been a few decent games released in recent years, but I agree that most of the Neo-Geo games just aren't all that great. Outside of a few puzzle games, they just never did it for me.

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As for the great Neo-Geo debate, I could really care less about it. I think it's great that MAME emulates over 900 games, regardless if they ran on Neo-Geo, Capcom's CPS-1, Atari's System 1 or 2 - it just doesn't matter. Of the games emulated, there are so many good fun games that I find that I've never heard of that are sort of fun to learn. MARP has introduced me to some really good games like Mr. TNT, Amidar (which I knew from before, but never played until MAME), Bandido, Gypsy Juggler, Fast Freddie, and Jumping Jack.

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I'm really looking forward to the upcoming addition of the Williams/Midway titles from '89 forward. NARC, Smash TV, Total Carnage, Trog, and Strike Force were all great games.

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Well, I suppose I've rambled on enough. Happy scoring everyone. =)

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=Angry=

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greggg@ix.netcom.com