As created by the divine SNK, the Multi Video System (MVS) version of their Neo Geo hardware is functionally identical to the Advanced Entertainment System (AES) home version. The Neo Geo sports a 50+ game catalog of releases from 1990-2004, after which Sammy’s Atomiswave JAMMA system and standalone JAMMA boards have finally taken the 2D crown.

Neo Geo MVS motherboards themselves come in several different flavors, including different revisions with slight compatibility differences. The vast majority of the boards out there are standard one-slots, with room for one cartridge. You may also see two-, four-, and occasionally six-slots; these are the equivalent of a CD autochanger for Neo Geo games. You’ll need a Select button wired into your control panel through the JAMMA harness if you want to switch between games yourself, as mentioned in [Hack #59] . There are regional differences, generally basic and language-based, with differing BIOS affecting the language you see the game in, but there are no region lockouts.

As for the games, there is a wealth of titles from SNK as well as external developers. Look for the Metal Slug series of side-scrolling 2D shooters; the seminal cult King Of Fighters series of Street Fighter-style beat-em-ups; and a gigantic range of sports games, puzzle titles, one-on-one beat-em-ups, action games, and other 2D sprite-based titles. The excellent Neo Geo For Life site (http://www.neogeoforlife.com/) reviews almost every single Neo Geo title in some detail, so that’s a great starting point to track down the best titles for the system.

In terms of pricing, the older fighting titles go for as low as $10 plus shipping on eBay. Many of the best titles cost less than $50. This is amazing for large solid-state carts that originally cost hundreds of dollars each. Even the most expensive recent titles rarely cost more than $150.

Sega’s own mid-’90s proprietary cart system, the ST-V (also known as the Titan in America), is essentially a cartridge version of the Saturn. Many developers either ported their titles to ST-V or made sure they developed games with small enough footprints (that is, no FMV) to make translation to the ST-V easier.

The ST-V/Titan definitely has regional lockout problems. Confusingly, they’re completely different for different carts. You won’t go far wrong if you buy a Japanese ST-V motherboard, though. Very few games have lockouts on it, and you’ll enjoy the full game experience on the much more common Japanese carts. For example, Cotton 2’s story mode disappears when the game runs atop the U.S. BIOS.

Game recommendations include the Olympic-sized 3D-totin’ duo of Decathlete (a.k.a. Athlete Kings) and Winter Heat, both excellent multievent 3D sports titles, spectacularly good puzzle games such as Baku Baku Animal, several Columns variants, and Puyo Puyo Sun (which, bizarrely but genuinely, appears with an “Action Against AIDS” charity logo on boot-up). Other games worth considering are Treasure’s pricey vertically scrolling shooter Radiant Silvergun and multiple titles in the two-player Puzzle and Action minigame series.

There’s one place to learn about the range of games for the ST-V: the amazing System16 site (http://www.system16.com/sega/hrdw_stv.html). It has pictures and names for every ST-V title ever released. Sadly, the ST-V lacks its own fan-run review site, presumably because of its overlap with the Saturn. Fortunately, if you want to know something before you buy, search for Sega Saturn reviews of the offending game. Even if it had a Saturn release only in Japan, you’ll probably find an English-language review somewhere.

Again, eBay is an excellent source for games, although they appear with less frequency than carts for the MVS. Common carts can cost as little as $10, with only a few costing over $50. Radiant Silvergun is by far the most expensive, given its cult-like status and difficult availability; it can cost over $100, although that’s often cheaper than the equally rare Sega Saturn version.

Following the massive success (and, unfortunately, massive bootlegging) of Street Fighter II, Capcom developed a common platform for their subsequent arcade games. This is the CPS2, a completely custom piece of arcade hardware with no connection to any home consoles.

The CPS2 doesn’t quite support cartridges as you might expect. Instead, it uses equal-sized A and B boards. The A board is the motherboard, available in blue, green, or gray, depending on its source region. The B board is the game itself. To switch games, pry out both boards and swap out the B board. They’re still classifiable as carts, but they’re very large—about the length and width of a letter-sized piece of paper and much thicker and heavier.

With regard to regional compatibility, twinning blue (American) and green (Japanese) A and B boards isn’t a problem; they’ll work without any issues. Should you see any gray (Asian) boards, be careful. Because of an intentionally inverted connector, they’ll work only with other gray boards. There’s more information on this in the excellent CPS2 text FAQ (http://members.aol.com/CMull11217/private/cps2faq.txt), which has pin-outs and everything else you’ll ever need to know about CPS2.^[12]

Do beware of the CPS2’s strange B board suicide problem. Because Capcom wanted to avoid the bootlegging problems of Street Fighter II, they sealed off everything under plastic and stored a special encrypted key in SRAM on the board. Five to ten years after the board’s manufacture, an onboard battery will die, losing the encrypted key from SRAM. The game will then refuse to play, even if you replace the battery. Razoola has a good FAQ about the fairly technical method of dealing with this problem on his site (http://cps2shock.retrogames.com/suicide.html). He’s even managed to resurrect dead boards, but it’s extremely complicated and involves decrypting game ROMs. It’s probably better to swap out the battery before it dies in the first place.

There are around 30 games available. Obviously, six-button fighters dominate, including plenty of Street Fighter games (all the way up to the new-ish Street Fighter Alpha/Zero 3), the gorgeous Darkstalkers/Vampire Savior series, as well as Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men, and Marvel Vs. Capcom. There are also some marvellous cult titles of a different flavor lurking in the library, especially the Dungeons And Dragons side-scrolling action RPG games and the genius Super Puzzle Fighter puzzle game.

Pricing for CPS2 games depends on whether the battery has been replaced. It general, it’s a little higher than for MVS or ST-V games. Prices start at $30 for the most obvious and common fighters such as the original Darkstalkers or Street Fighter Zero/Alpha. Expect to pay three figures for rarer and more desirable carts such as Super Puzzle Fighter.

There are a few other, less popular interchangeable systems. Taito’s F3 (http://www.system16.com/taito/hrdw_f3_page1.html) is a very interesting cart-based custom system and is especially good for classic Taito puzzlers. Nintendo’s PlayChoice was a pioneer, basically putting NES carts in the arcade. Sega’s recent Naomi requires a very expensive JAMMA adaptor to behave properly on most machines.

It may be obvious and tedious, but the trading behemoth is one of the best places to find cheap deals on carts, especially Neo Geo MVS and Sega ST-V carts. Be very thorough with searching, though. Some Neo Geo MVS carts lack the string MVS in their descriptions. Worse yet, some people advertise their Sega ST-V carts as STV and others as ST-V. Search carefully.

Several Asian-based retailers, such as the Hong Kong specialists at Cosmicco (http://home.netvigator.com/~cosmicco/), sell JAMMA cart motherboards and carts themselves. The high shipping prices from the East don’t make it worth it unless you’re buying a large amount of items or particularly obscure titles. At the time of writing, Cosmicco had carts for the super-obscure Taiwanese IGS PGM cart-based JAMMA system. These rarely surface on eBay at all.

Although many of the more obscure systems lack fan pages, the excellent site at Neo-Geo.com (http://www.neo-geo.com/) is a major trading hub for MVS games. It also sometimes has other JAMMA-related material for sale by users. Although it has no formal feedback system as eBay does, traders are friendly and will call out scammers and other ne’er-do-wells.

There are other possible places to find these JAMMA boards and carts; however, U.S. arcade vendors are sometimes very expensive compared to the previous options. Trying to buy directly from Japanese auction sites such as Yahoo! Japan is very tricky because many buyers will not ship internationally, and you may have a language barrier.

However you find your JAMMA boards and carts though, I hope you have fun.