Neo Geo Universe Bios

I've been reading good things about the Neo Geo Universe Bios for a long time, and yet I've continually put off getting it for my Neo Geo Candy cabinet. I finally decided to give it a try and I have to say, I can't believe I waited so long. This is an MVS owner's dream Bios, and I'd have to think it's pretty inviting for AES owners as well, given the added options. I popped the chip onto my MVH-4 board and I've been toying around with it ever since. You can switch regions at any time, which will give the ability to have the blood and Mai's bouncy boobs even if you're playing on a US MVS Board. You can also play AES mode on your MVS cabinet which opens up the additional game play options that many AES Neo Geo titles feature. One thing I found particularly handy was being able to soft reset without having to power down the cabinet. There are also a lot of other neat features and if you're interested in learning more about it, you can visit http://unibios.free.fr/. Trust me, this is the best money you can spend on your MVS cabinet.

I also had to share a pic of my MVS board that I just gave a facelift to. I decided to take the ugly silver cover and paint it a glossy white to match the inside and outside of my Candy cabinet. I sanded it, primed it, and then slapped 3 coats of white spray paint on it. I then applied a layer of clear coat and let it dry. It turned out much better than I expected and now I'm seriously considering sanding and painting my door covers and coin box. Maybe I'll try that when I get time.

For those following my new Project Neo Geo site, I also just added the review for Viewpoint. I'm now working on the review for King of Fighters '99 and it should be up within the next day or so. As usual, any review requests are welcome.

Project Neo Geo and other stuff!

Okay time for a little Neo Geo background on myself. I'm working on a brand new Neo Geo project to replace the Colecovision project I couldn't get off the ground due to problems with the domain name and using it for the web site. It's a long story, but to sum it up, someone else claimed they had the domain name first, blah blah blah, the end. We've tried to straighten it out for the past month and a half to no avail so rather than draw it out any longer, I just moved on to something else. Probably better that way anyway. Okay so here we are, July 7, 2008. I've been working on this Neo Geo page now for the better part of two weeks and it's finally beginning to take shape. I had written some Neo Geo reviews back when I first began reviewing video games in 1998. I later gave them to the "Neo-Geo.com" site to use for their page, which I still think is one of the best gaming sites on the internet. I've toyed with the idea of doing a Neo Geo web site for many years, but other things have taken precedence and I've just never gotten around to it. So when the Colecovision Critic idea fell through, I thought now would be a good time to get this thing off the ground once and for all.

First off I've been asked by many readers about my background with the Neo Geo and how I ever got into collecting for such an obscure system. Back in 1990 when the Neo Geo system was first introduced it became well known for being the "untouchable" system that only wealthy gamers could ever afford to own. It was bad enough that the console itself cost a whopping $650, but then you had to turn around and spend $200-$300 a pop for the game cartridges. So of course it was no surprise that in 1991 a friend of mine who's family were very well off financially got one of the systems for Christmas. I had just gotten my Super NES console, and was quite happy with it, when he called me up on Christmas day to say he'd gotten a Neo Geo system. He loved to rub his family's money in all of our faces, so this phone call was certainly no surprise. He wanted to know if I wanted to come stay the night out at his family's ranch house that coming weekend so we could play the system. Not being one to turn down the opportunity to play any new game system, I jumped at the chance.

That weekend I drove out to his family's ranch house and we stayed up most of the night playing Magician Lord and Nam 1975. He had another game for the unit, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. It must not have been too good since I don't even remember playing it. I thought the system was really cool, but I think the biggest draw of it all was that the system was just so expensive and not many people had one. But now that he had one, it didn't seem like such a big deal that I didn't. Of course that would all change two years later when I read about Samurai Shodown in Diehard Gamefan magazine. Then I became an obsessed lunatic and I wanted a Neo Geo system so bad I couldn't stand it. The good thing was that I was in college at the time and I could barely eat let alone buy a $650 game console. Needless to say, it would be 7 years before I'd finally end up getting a Neo Geo AES system. Of course that began a buying and selling spree of Neo Geo systems that would last almost a year since I couldn't find one I was happy with. The AES carts were too expensive, the CD system took forever to load games, and the CDZ system wasn't much faster. That's when I found the used Neo Geo Candy cabinet for sale and the rest is history. Actually you can read about it in the blog post below. It basically chronicles how I bought and restored the Neo Geo Candy cabinet from start to finish.

Now comes the fun part. I've just put up my new "PROJECT NEO GEO" web site and I'll be adding new Neo Geo game reviews on a constant basis. Hopefully no one will claim this domain name or web site title. At least I hope not. You can click on the logo at the top of this blog post to visit the site or surf over to WWW.PROJECTNEOGEO.COM. Enjoy!

My Agonizing Pursuit of Neo Geo!

In order to keep this story short, I'll summarize. I always wanted a Neo Geo system because I loved games like Samurai Shodown, Last Blade, and the Metal Slug series. I finally broke down and bought a Neo Geo AES cart system, but I wasn't terribly impressed with the joysticks, and the carts were just too expensive at $300 a pop. I finally sold it and bought a Neo Geo CD system, only to find that the load times were absolutely excruciating. That thing loaded more than U-Haul, and it also had to load in between every single stage of the game. Needless to say, it got put on ebay and about a year later the Neo Geo bug bit again and I decided to track down a Neo Geo CDZ system, as I had read that it had a double-speed cd drive in it. I mean that's got to help, right? Nope! It was a tiny bit better, but it still had painfully long load times. Do I need to tell you that the CDZ went on ebay too? I didn't think so. I knew at this point that there was nothing left to do but try to find a cheap used Neo Geo arcade cabinet or Super Gun and hope it wasn't too rediculously priced. Well it turns out most were in the neighborhood of $1000 at the time, and there was no way I had that kind of money to throw around on a cabinet that would still need a lot of work, most likely. That's when I happened to see an ad in my local newspaper of a guy selling a Japanese Neo Geo Candy arcade cabinet and that's where this story begins.

The guy wanted $200 for the cabinet, which I thought was a damn good price until I got to the guy's house and saw it. To say that this cabinet needed some work would be the understatement of the year. The cabinet had no cover door to the inside MVS part, it had no MVS board, no Jamma harness, no joysticks or buttons other than the 1 and 2 player and select buttons, no light fixture behind the marquee, the marquee holder was broken in half, the power supply was burned out so you couldn't test anything including the monitor, and it was also missing the entire Neo Geo Candy sticker on the right side. So basically I was about to buy a Neo Geo Candy shell. I almost walked away from this deal, but then I began thinking that I could pay the $200 and then just fix a little bit here and there, and someday I might actually have a nice Neo Geo arcade cabinet. After much debating, I went ahead and talked the guy down to $170, and then took my new peice of junk home. Over the course of the next 3 years, using ebay, an old Neo Geo MVS manual I got from a local Amusement Rental company, and many wiring resources I got off the net, I began putting this cabinet back together. Below is a list of everything I did to the cabinet in making it the beautiful arcade machine it is today.

--- Installed brand new HAPP arcade joysticks and switches
--- Installed brand new HAPP arcade buttons and switches
--- Installed a brand new JAMMA harness
--- Installed a working power supply and brand new fuse
--- Installed two brand new speakers
--- Rewired the speaker wiring to the new speakers
--- Installed new ballasts and tube light in the marquee slot
--- Found a Candy cabinet MVS cover on ebay
--- Replaced the right side Neo Geo Candy sticker
--- Replaced a spring in the coin slot mechanism
--- Bought a really nice used 4-slot MVS board off ebay
--- Replaced wiring to the monitor with higher grade wire
--- Just recently found a Candy coin catcher

It was a lot of work and three long years, but the results have been well worth the effort. I now have a fully-functioning Neo Geo Candy MVS cabinet and about 30 MVS carts at last count. It's also rather nice that many of the Neo Geo MVS games can be bought on ebay for between $10-$30 instead of the insane $250+ of the AES carts. The MVS cabinets may cost you an arm and a leg on your initial investment, but in the long run, it's much cheaper and a lot of fun if you like a good "fix-it-up" project! If any of you out there are considering doing one of these MVS projects, keep in mind that there are a lot of great resources on the net for putting these things together, and if you have any questions, I'll be happy to help you out.

Yes I know this is basically a re-run article, but I've gotten a lot of requests to repost this blog article, so here it is. I'm also going to be doing some other Neo Geo-related stuff in the near future so I figured this might be a good time to bring this article back anyway. Enjoy!