Gaming Neo Geo on Virtual Console - SNK Speak!

[Hadrian]

Source

"We mentioned the rather exciting fact that NeoGeo games would be coming to the VC a few weeks back, and now SNK have revealed a little more about their download plans. Speaking to IGN, SNK Playmore USA president Ben Herman confirmed that big releases such as King of Fighters will be coming to the Wii for 'just over' the current price of SNES/Megadrive titles (about $8).

How SNK will get around the fact that your average NeoGeo game is much larger than a SNES or Megadrive title has not been revealed, but if they're talking about doing it, they must be able to. However, Nintendo will have to address the space issue in regards to the Wii's internal memory - being able to actually run VC games from an SD card (rather than just use it to store them, as is the case now) is going to be a must when some of the bigger NeoGeo titles are made available.

The recent release of the Wii Metal Slug collection sadly means that we might not be seeing any MS games for a while, but there are more then enough decent NeoGeo games out there to keep us happy. From the comments made by Herman, it looks like the company is serious about making this a success.

Seeing how NeoGeo titles still command very high prices even today, this is something of a coup for Wii owners!"

EDIT: A more indepth interview is here.

 

[Redsquirrel]

1000 points a game is a bit expensive though =/

 

[Jax]

KoF FTW!!!

 

[Hadrian]

1000 points a game is a bit expensive though =/

Yeah especially as you can get Castlevania - Syphony of the Night on 360 for £6, but still cheaper than getting the games back in the day! Also cheaper than buying second hand. Of course you could just stick with MAME

 

[Harsky]

I wonder if the AES titles will come out on the VC as well? Sure would bring the prices of the consoles down real badly. Anyways, if SNK or Nintendo manages to sort out the problem of where the large games could be stored, it could open up to Saturn games on the VC. But then again, it's going to have to take a lot of compression.

 

[Vater Unser]

1000 points a game is a bit expensive though =/

Yeah especially as you can get Castlevania - Syphony of the Night on 360 for £6

aren't £6 more than $10?

anyway, $10 for downloaded retro games is way too much, wether it's N64 games or NeoGeo...it's cheaper to buy the original games from eBay most of the time (except for NeoGeo, obviously

)...like, I just bought GoldenEye64 + Banjo Kazooie from eBay for £1,99 (+ shipping)...and I certainly prefer the original cartridges over some downloads which will be worth nothing when the Wii is dead...

 

[Hadrian]

1000 points a game is a bit expensive though =/

Yeah especially as you can get Castlevania - Syphony of the Night on 360 for £6

aren't £6 more than $10?

anyway, $10 for downloaded retro games is way too much, wether it's N64 games or NeoGeo...it's cheaper to buy the original games from eBay most of the time (except for NeoGeo, obviously

)...like, I just bought GoldenEye64 + Banjo Kazooie from eBay for £1,99 (+ shipping)...and I certainly prefer the original cartridges over some downloads which will be worth nothing when the Wii is dead...

It's something like $11.50 which considering it'll cost 4 times that for the original PSX game used its not too bad, the only other options are to wait for the PSP remake (which includes Dracula X and original SotN) or well pirate it! As for downloads being worth nothing when the Wii is dead, I'm sure that they wont, VC will probably continue on the next Nintendo console or even handheld plus you can keep them on your Wii as well. Still it is too much money to pay if you consider how little effort and cost to Nintendo to putting these games onto VC.

I hear that PS3 downloads range from £1.99 to £6.99! Which considering some of those games are fairly new games like Tekken Dark Resurrection kinda puts Nintendos pricing to same, even if they are total classics.

 

[Strider]

I have been wondering.

How much can the Wii take? We haven't even seen 'high-end' SNES or Genesis games yet.

Do you think NeoGeo games will run fully, without drawbacks?

 

[lagman]

I have been wondering.

How much can the Wii take? We haven't even seen 'high-end' SNES or Genesis games yet.

Do you think NeoGeo games will run fully, without drawbacks?

Of course, the Neo-Geo is a contemporary machine of the SNES.

WikipediaProcessor

  * Main Processor: Motorola 68000 running at 12 MHz
     o Although the 68000 CPU was designed by Motorola, there were many other clones of this CPU found in the Neo Geo hardware. The most common CPU is the TMP68HC000 manufactured by Toshiba. This is essentially a Motorola 68000 clone.

  * Co-Processor: Zilog Z80 running at 4 MHz. This is used as an audio controller.
  * Sound chip: Yamaha YM2610 15 Sound Channels. 7 Digital, 4 FM synthesis, 3 PSG, and 1 Noise Channel.

        Memory

  * Main Memory (used directly by 68K): 64 KiB
  * Main Video Memory: 64 KiB
     o Palette Memory : 8 KiB
     o Fast Video RAM : 2 KiB
  * Sound Memory (used directly by Z80): 2 KiB

 

[Strider]

Yes, essentially, but it does have quite a set of special chips. And as I said, we've not seen any high-end SNES or Genesis games so far on the Wii VC to fully convince me of it being able to theoretically run all SNES/Genesis or then even NeoGeo games.

 

[lagman]

Yes, essentially, but it does have quite a set of special chips. And as I said, we've not seen any high-end SNES or Genesis games so far.

But you don´t think that it´s becuase of hardware limitations, do you?
They need some AAA titles for the rainy days

Even the xbox have pretty good NG emulation, despite the little ammount of ram.

 

[Hadrian]

Yes, essentially, but it does have quite a set of special chips. And as I said, we've not seen any high-end SNES or Genesis games so far.

Donkey Kong Country is fairly high end to me! As for Mega drive/Genesis, I think Gunstar Heroes pushes the system quite well and thats perfect on VC. Then you've got N64 games! Nintendo are just starting out with the VC thing, so I doubt we'll get the prettier titles till later.

Wii is more than capable to do Neo Geo titles, plus you've got the likes of Nintendo doing the emulation side of things. The only problem is that some NG games are a lot bigger in rom form. Games like Prehistoric Isle 2 & Shock Troopers 2 are around the 65MB mark. Other lower spec games are around 6-15MB. I've read that SNK wont be doing King of Fighter or Metal Slug games for a while, perhaps this is due to the current space limitations, so I'm guessing that smaller games will appear for a while.

 

[Strider]

But you don´t think that it´s becuase of hardware limitations, do you?
They need some AAA titles for the rainy daysÂ

Even the xbox have pretty good NG emulation, despite the little ammount of ram.

I really hope that's it

Just as I wanted to state that the xbox isn't a comparison, because it's got 64MB ram, I noticed the Wii has 88MB

- I see this as essential in a console emulating a Neo-Geo since it loads quite a lot (again, for a console) into ram (the full game which ran off the cartridge).

Can any Metal Slug (Wii) owner state if it has the same extreme slowdowns as the PSP version?

 

[Arm73]

But Metal Slug also suffered from massive slowdowns in it's original arcade form, isn't it ?
I remember they tried to partially fix the problem when they released Metal Slug X.
How can you tell whether it's an emulation fault , or the game was designed that way ?

 

[Hadrian]

But you don´t think that it´s becuase of hardware limitations, do you?
They need some AAA titles for the rainy daysÂ

Even the xbox have pretty good NG emulation, despite the little ammount of ram.


I really hope that's it

Just as I wanted to state that the xbox isn't a comparison, because it's got 64MB ram, I noticed the Wii has 88MB

- I see this as essential in a console emulating a Neo-Geo since it loads quite a lot (again, for a console) into ram (the full game which ran off the cartridge).

Can any Metal Slug (Wii) owner state if it has the same extreme slowdowns as the PSP version?

Wii & PSP versions do have the same slowdown. The versions on that compilation were not the arcade ones but from PSX & Saturn versions, the slowdown was vertially the same as those versions.

As for slowdown in the Arcade versions, never had it to be honest while running MAME and my PC is crap!

 

[amptor]

Well as far as I recall, if you use the emulator's overclock feature it eliminates the slowdown. Imo it's better to just have it coded right in the first place, but the neogeo cpu has limitations that won't help the slowdown unless you take things out of the frame to reduce cpu usage. There was a shooter on the neogeo that had the same problem too because it was originally coded for better hardware.

Neogeo ran fine on a p200mmx system back in the day, every console that is out now has more than enough power to emulate neogeo games.

 

[Issac]

well... I've been suffering from SERIOUS slowdowns.. and guess from which game? Kirby for the NES!

I wan't to see how "high end" snes games are handeled.. if kirby has slowdowns...

 

[lagman]

well... I've been suffering from SERIOUS slowdowns.. and guess from which game? Kirby for the NES!

I wan't to see how "high end" snes games are handeled.. if kirby has slowdowns...

Well, those came from the original game, it was full of them.
Kirby´s Adventure was a really big game for the NES.

 

[Parsaw]

KoF FTW!!!

KoF, Samurai Showdown, and Garou: Mark of the wolves FTW!

That'd be the greatest thing if Garou or Samurai Showdown came to VC.

 

[Westside]

Sonic Wings (Aero fighters) 1-3 FTW!!!