Made In Japan - SNK.

The arcade version of the Neo Geo system (MVS - Multi Video System) was released in 1990 by SNK Corporation. A short while later, the home version of the system was released, which was practically identical to the arcade version. Games for the home system are also identical to their arcade counterparts*, all carts contained both the arcade version and the home version of the game (However many home versions had extra options etc.) Also, most games contain both English and Japanese text, the only exceptions being mostly Mahjong games and the Quiz games which were only ever released in Japan.

*Note that you cannot plug arcade MVS Neo Geo boards into the home system and vice versa. You can have them converted to work, but this can be a costly procedure. This was done to stop arcade owners from buying the cheaper home versions of the games for use in their MVS'.

The Neo Geo was a lot more powerful than any of the other systems around at the time it was released. Many of the best and most well known game franchises ever (particularly fighters) were originally released on Neo Geo, the best examples being games like Samurai Shodown, Fatal Fury, King of Fighters and puzzle games like Puzzle Bobble.

The main thing that held this machine back was the price. At launch time it cost about $500 to $700 in the US, which was far beyond the reach of most people. Added to that, the games were also very expensive at around $200+ each, so only true die hard fans with LOTS of spare cash could really afford it. If you wanted to play the games at home, the only thing that most people could do was to buy the conversions that were made for various systems (SNES, Megadrive/Genesis). Unfortunately most of them were nowhere near as good as the original versions. Not even conversions to more modern machines like Sony's Playstation are all that good, although some of the Sega Saturn conversions were reportedly pretty decent, as are the Dreamcast conversions.

Technical Info:

* Processor: Motorola 68000 (12 Mhz, 16-bit), Zilog-80A (4 Mhz, 8-bit)

(Technically a 16-bit machine, not 24-bit)

* Resolution: 320x224
* Color Palette: 65,536
* Maximum Colors On-Screen: 4,096
* Maximum Sprites On-Screen: 380
* Minimum Sprite Size: 1x2
* Maximum Sprite Size: 16x512
* Maximum Amount of Game Planes: 3
* Sound Channels: 4-FM synthesis, 7-Digital, 3-PSG, 1-Noise channel
* Internal RAM: Work RAM: 64Kb
* Video RAM: 68Kb
* Z80 RAM: 2Kb

LINK:
Made In Japan - Nintendo.
Made In Japan - Sega.
Made In Japan - Sony.
Made In Japan - NEC.