From the Vault columnist. Grew up feeding quarters to the Ms. Pac-Man machine at his uncle's pizza place; still owns his childhood SNES and every Nintendo Power he ever begged his mother for. Writes the retrospectives and the hidden-gem hunts.
Ranked by what the disc does best: the complete, arranged, affordable versions of the Neo Geo’s greatest games — from the perfect versus disc to the shooter that outgunned the cartridges.
A cute-’em-up with versus DNA, a bowling game with a cult, a first-person brawler’s cousins and ADK’s forgotten best: ten Neo Geo CD deep cuts, none of them among this collection’s full reviews.
In 1994 the same game cost $250 on a cartridge or $50 on a disc, if you could stand the monkey. Thirty years on the machines swapped price tags and the discs kept the games: a collector’s economics of the format war SNK fought with itself.
Ironclad, Crossed Swords II, a Samurai Shodown RPG and a puzzle game cancelled so late that finished discs escaped: the Neo Geo CD’s exclusive shelf is small, strange and essential.
One times speed, 150 kilobytes a second, and a monkey who juggled while a generation waited: how the Neo Geo CD’s loading screens shaped its games, its design and its strange nostalgia.
The Fatal Fury reboot that traded planes for speed: ring-outs, chains, and the definitive Geese Howard finale — a mid-size conversion that shows the CD coping well with 1995’s ambitions.
SNK’s arcade baseball distilled: huge sprites, fifteen-minute games, and drama manufactured by the inning — an early, compact cartridge that the CD carries without breaking stride.
Video System’s vertical shooter at its arcade best: eight pilots, a world tour of destructible landmarks, and a CD conversion that keeps the chaos whole.
Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits: Bushido Retsuden — a full console RPG built exclusively for the CD, with two scenarios, six heroes and a fan translation that finally opened it to the West.
ADK’s first-person sword opera returns — only on CD. Bigger, faster and funnier than the arcade original, with a versus mode and a combat system that still has no imitator.