Just for grins - an old video game console print ad

[Dimensional Traveler]

https://pixhost.to/show/89/297876495_snk-neogeo-ad2.jpg

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

[Spalls Hurgenson]

On Wed, 3 Aug 2022 18:47:43 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
<dtr...@sonic.net> wrote:

>https://pixhost.to/show/89/297876495_snk-neogeo-ad2.jpg

Well... okay. I don't see anything remarkable about that particular
advert, but it's a fun trip down nostalgia-road nonetheless.

Back in the day - being a computer master race person* - I didn't
really pay too much attention to the consoles... not after the heyday
of the Atari 2600 at least. It didn't help that there were so many of
them on the market: the NES, the SNES, the Master System, the
MegaDrive (or was it the Genesis), the Jaguar, the TurboGrafx, the
7800, the GameBoy, and - yes - the NeoGeo.** It was mostly just noise,
as a new console seemed to be released every other month and I had a
hard time telling them all apart, if I even bothered.

In fact, for the longest time, I confused the NeoGeo with Sega's
"Genesis" (better known as the MegaDrive) machines. "Geo"...
"Genesis"... if you're not following that market, it's an
understandable mistake. Their marketing - as indicated in the example
above - also shared similar audaciously cool themes.

I only encountered a NeoGeo many years later (sometime in the 2010s I
think). By then I'd long since corrected my misunderstanding about its
origins, but I'd never actually played around with the machine until
then. Even though the hardware and games were twenty years old at the
time, I was quite impressed with the device.

The Neo-Geo really was years ahead of its competitors. It was a very
focused machine; it was designed to push lots of sprites and push them
fast, but it did it extremely well. It might not have had as many
colors, background planes and as good sound as later 16-bit consoles,
but you'd hardly notice with all the action on screen. Even today, I'm
impressed by how frenetic a scene this console can create with only a
12MHz processor.

There's a reason NeoGeo games (e.g., the "Metal Slug" games, the "King
of Fighters" series) still sell well - albeit emulated/ported - on
Steam... and not as part of a generic "NeoGeo game collection" but as
individual titles. They really were that amazing. If you've never had
a chance to look at the games, do so... and then remember this was all
being done on a machine with less than half a megabyte of RAM in
total.

It's a good thing I never encountered a NeoGeo back when it was new.
It might have made me rethink my entire view of consoles vs.
computers, and who knows how that might have affected the direction of
my life? I might instead be on alt.games.video.action discussing how I
impressed I was with a Voodoo 3DFX computer when I first encountered
one in 2015? ;-)





---------------
* depending on the date, I may not have been a member of the PC Master
Race club yet, but even then I already considered proper computers the
superior platform ;-)
** of course, computers weren't much better in that era either: PCs
(themselves divided up into XT, AT, Jr, Tandy, and vaguely
'compatible' models), Apple II (numerous versions there too),
Macintosh (ditto), VIC-20, Amiga, C-64 (and -128), PET, BBC Micro,
Z-80s, TRS-80s, etc. etc.

[Justisaur]

On Thursday, August 4, 2022 at 10:05:04 AM UTC-7, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Aug 2022 18:47:43 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
> <dtr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
> >https://pixhost.to/show/89/297876495_snk-neogeo-ad2.jpg
>
> Well... okay. I don't see anything remarkable about that particular
> advert, but it's a fun trip down nostalgia-road nonetheless.

All I got was some NSFW pics, not very good ones either.

> Back in the day - being a computer master race person* - I didn't
> really pay too much attention to the consoles... not after the heyday
> of the Atari 2600 at least. It didn't help that there were so many of
> them on the market: the NES, the SNES, the Master System, the
> MegaDrive (or was it the Genesis), the Jaguar, the TurboGrafx, the
> 7800, the GameBoy, and - yes - the NeoGeo.** It was mostly just noise,
> as a new console seemed to be released every other month and I had a
> hard time telling them all apart, if I even bothered.

I first played on friends Atari 2600s, but not often, and never got one.

Another more distant friend got a Colecovision and I was far
more impressed with that. Space Fury was the one I really
liked, basically asteroids with powerups and enemies, but
it sure seemed impressive at the time.

My first console was some time after that, an Intellivision.

I did get a PS2 and had a lot of fun with that, and then got another
one when that one died. I just got rid of it last year when moving
as I couldn't justify the space for it.

Next was a gamecube, but I inherited that when I got married.
Played a few games, but nothing great on that.

A used Wii, nothing that really grabbed me on that.

Then the kids... and they got an Xbox 360, and now a switch.

The Xbox 360 was more my stuff, and played a few games on
that. Mostly Minecraft splitscreen with the kids though, for
some reason that versions I found far better than the PC,
or the later switch versions.

> In fact, for the longest time, I confused the NeoGeo with Sega's
> "Genesis" (better known as the MegaDrive) machines. "Geo"...
> "Genesis"... if you're not following that market, it's an
> understandable mistake. Their marketing - as indicated in the example
> above - also shared similar audaciously cool themes.
>
> I only encountered a NeoGeo many years later (sometime in the 2010s I
> think). By then I'd long since corrected my misunderstanding about its
> origins, but I'd never actually played around with the machine until
> then. Even though the hardware and games were twenty years old at the
> time, I was quite impressed with the device.

They had them in the arcades in an arcade cabinet, and I played those
once in awhile as they had a number of fun games, and I was quite an
arcade player in the 80's-90's. Today I learned they were a console too.

- Justisaur

[Dimensional Traveler]

On 8/4/2022 3:53 PM, Justisaur wrote:
> On Thursday, August 4, 2022 at 10:05:04 AM UTC-7, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>> On Wed, 3 Aug 2022 18:47:43 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
>> <dtr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>>
>>> https://pixhost.to/show/89/297876495_snk-neogeo-ad2.jpg
>>
>> Well... okay. I don't see anything remarkable about that particular
>> advert, but it's a fun trip down nostalgia-road nonetheless.
>
> All I got was some NSFW pics, not very good ones either.
>

Sorry. The link is one posted by someone else on a web forum. The
image host, like most, has porn ads because those pay the bills.
NoScript and an ad-blocker will block them.

[Spalls Hurgenson]

On Thu, 4 Aug 2022 15:53:26 -0700 (PDT), Justisaur
<just...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, August 4, 2022 at 10:05:04 AM UTC-7, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>> On Wed, 3 Aug 2022 18:47:43 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
>> <dtr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>>
>> >https://pixhost.to/show/89/297876495_snk-neogeo-ad2.jpg
>>
>> Well... okay. I don't see anything remarkable about that particular
>> advert, but it's a fun trip down nostalgia-road nonetheless.
>
>All I got was some NSFW pics, not very good ones either.

Really? UBlock and NoScript meant all I saw was the requested image.
Honestly, I can't imagine browsing the web without those.

(Well, I can because too often I'm called to help somebody else with a
computer problem and have to do something on an un-adblocked
browser... it's a horrible experience and I can't see why anyone would
inflict that upon themselves ;-)

>I first played on friends Atari 2600s, but not often, and never got one.

>Another more distant friend got a Colecovision and I was far
>more impressed with that. Space Fury was the one I really
>liked, basically asteroids with powerups and enemies, but
>it sure seemed impressive at the time.

>My first console was some time after that, an Intellivision.

I think I mentioned this in paste, but my first console was the Coleco
Telstar Arcade. I played around with other machines in the earliest
years of the video-game revolution - most notably the Atari 2600 - but
after the initial fascination with the technology passed, I moved on
instead to PCs. For the most part, I ignored consoles through the 8-
and 16-bit generations.

I only started noticing them again when a friend showed me "Sonic the
Hedgehog" on his Genesis in the early 90s; I was impressed by the
machine (largely because my memories of consoles were rooted in the
'red dot eats green dot' era of 2nd Gen machines) but still considered
them the inferior breed.

I eventually started accumulating a number of consoles, but always
after their heyday had passed (largely because they were much less
expensive then ;-). And I've had fun with a lot of their games (the
X360 and PS3 in particular) but they've always been 'also ran' games
compared to the games on my preferred platform, the PC.

Which is why the NeoGeo was so unusual for me. Yes, it's an extremely
dated machine and its limitations - both technically and in terms of
the gameplay in its games - are very obvious... but it felt much less
'behind the curve' than other consoles. It's a shame - but not
entirely unexpected, given its cost* - that it was so overlooked by
most people when it was new. It really was a revolutionary machine.

>They had them in the arcades in an arcade cabinet, and I played those
>once in awhile as they had a number of fun games, and I was quite an
>arcade player in the 80's-90's. Today I learned they were a console too.

The console and arcade versions were essentially the same machine,
albeit with differently shaped cartridge slots so arcade owners
couldn't buy the cheaper home version games. It really was "bringing
the arcade to your home" ;-)




------------
* adjusting for inflation, a NeoGeo would have cost $1500 USD today.