Ever since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to have arcade games… Maybe even an arcade room in my house. Yesterday, I began fulfilling that dream with the purchase of a Neo-Geo MVS-4-25.3.

The Neo-Geo was a system that was far ahead of its time. Even before Super Nintendo and right when Sega Genesis were available with 16-bits, the Neo-Geo boasted 24, which is open to interpretation (it had 16+8 in two processors), but anyone with half a clue can clearly see how advanced this system was for 1990.

I had a friend with the home version (AES, not MVS) way back in the day, and I was really jealous, but games were several hundred dollars apiece! I couldn’t handle that so I didn’t lose much sleep over it.

Fast forward nearly two decades and you’re able to get a 4-slot (it is cartridge based, you can have 4 games in it at once) with a great monitor for just a couple hundred DELIVERED!

My system came with Metal Slug 2, a side-scrolling shooter, Puzzle De Pon (aka Bust-a-Move), a Snood-like puzzle game, World Heroes 2: Jet, a crappy 2D fighter that I plan on replacing, and Samurai Shodown 3, another, better fighter. Immediately, I plan on replacing World Heroes with Baseball Stars 2. Eventually, I hope to swap Samurai Shodown 3 with Samurai Shodown 5 and Metal Slug 2 with Metal Slug 5 or 6 (I need to research which is better). Even further down the line, I’ll probably drop the puzzle game for AeroFighters 3, but that is way down the line since I think people will enjoy the puzzle game.

Since I don’t have room at home, this machine will be staying at work where it’ll likely receive 5x as much play as if it were at home; I’ve got enough games there.