As a Neo Geo owner with limited budget (!) I find the Sega Saturn ports to be excellent really, even when comparing to the originals. Just a shame there wasn't a Last Blade/Garou Motw port.
@@egg64 it would have been possible for later SNK games like Samurai Shodown 4 and Last Blade to be ported to the Saturn if there was support for a 4 meg RAM cart like Capcom used for their Saturn ports. Sadly SNK seemed to drop its support for the Saturn before Capcom did.
People nowadays don't understand how big SNK was during the 90's. I've got fond memories playing at the arcades spending some of my pocket money on KOF '96 and Metal Slug. Thanks for the video. Cheers!
I was only aware of SNK via a 4 game Neo-Geo cab in our local Wal-Mart in the 90's. I must have been one of the few people who ever played that, or the "Cadillacs and Dinosaurs" cab that sat next to it in the alcove. I rarely saw anybody else at the machines. I would of course get into Neo-Geo via the "NeoRageX" emulator in the late 90's.
The school I went to had an arcade for Magical Drop and my friends and I were constantly playing it. The principal eventually got rid of it because we were playing games over sitting at the tables and eating. We were eating and playing!
Owning a Neo Geo AES or CD was the best option for having SNK's hits at home in all their arcade glory, but it was pricey. The next best and more afforable option at the time were Saturn ports, which were pretty faithful to the versions on Neo Geo hardware and more affordable. The Saturn's limited RAM was the only thing preventing it from doing 100% accurate ports of animation intense SNK arcade hits
Not only that, but the sound is kinda bad since the music restarts after every. Single. Round. KoF 95, 96 and 97 on 32-Bit consoles seem to be based on the NeoGeo CD versions, so load times are expected and remedied on Saturn. But the sound is kinda off.
I never knew NEO-GEO had such a rich history on SEGA's 32-bit machine! And the Samurai Showdown RPG looks absolutely awesome, I really hope it eventually gets a fan translation
Am just diving into the Sega Saturn and want to thank you for your channel. About an hour ago I asked myself what SNK games are on the Saturn and right away knew you would have an insightful video about them. Really appreciate it and keep it up!
I bought all of these games when I was in college. They were a great way to play these arcade games without breaking the bank on an actual Neo Geo. Me and my friends would play them in the local arcades in Chinatown, and then play the home versions on the Saturn. Good times.
Was super excited you re-made this video! We absolutely loved your first (Which was used as reference and mentioned on our Neo Geo podcast). Great job, NGFL!
KoF 97 is still my favorite in the series and was the first import saturn game I had to have. Shame the saturn didnt get any other neo shmups like last resort, pulstar or alpha mission 2.
Everytime I watch your video's I have my "memo" app open on my phone so I can add to my "games I need to play" list! 😁 I own 2 neo geo Saturn games - FF3 which I got dirt cheap and Samurai Shodown 4 which I won from you 😊 Samurai Shodown 4 is excellent! Great gameplay and looks gorgeous on the Saturn! Those load times in FF3 though....😅
@@SegaLordX - it's disappointing that arcade operators don't seem to take care of their machines (in my experience anyway). Hell, even when I visited the Rochester Museum of Play Arcade this past summer, a few of the machines had busted buttons, sticks that didn't work correctly etc. I would have thought a museum would put in the effort to fix them up.
I had a massive MVS and AES collection some time ago, myself. Sold it off once digital versions and compilations began showing up. Regret that every single day.
Best Sega channel on RU-vid #facts I'm lucky enough to own a few of these games and it just goes to show how great the Saturn was at 2D even if some ports suffered for minor reasons. Great video man, keep up the good work.
Whoa, I owned a Saturn but never knew these Neo Geo games ever came out. I guess they were very rare in Canada where I grew up. Still, awesome video Lord X!
Waku Waku 7 is a lot of fun. Granted, it's a bit lacking in terms of number of fighters, a relic of the times, but I can't deny that it was a good purchase on the Switch.
In the arcade, the mighty arcade It's Sega Lord X toniiiiiiight In the arcade, the mighty arcade It's Sega Lord X toniiiiiiight Awemewa, Awemewa Awemewa, Awemewa Awemewa, Awemewa Awemewa, Awemewa
I didn't have the money for NeoGeo games on NeoGeo. Getting the games on the Saturn was the next best thing. I own several games. My friends & I played them alot during the 90s.
Same here. In the mid 90's, Neo Geo games and hardware was a pipe dream. It was just so expensive. Finally getting the ones on Saturn as close as they were was a blessing.
I owned all of these Saturn games back in the 90’s and enjoyed the hell out of most of them and after watching this video I just now realized that the Wii shop offered all of these (at least in Japan) as Virtual Console titles. Just thought that was a weird coincidence.
Great retrospective. I really enjoyed Neo Geo games on my Saturn when it was current. Even though I had already seen Capcom's CPS2 games in arcades, it was King of Fighters '97 that impressed me with its sprite designs and animation. When I saw that game, I knew I had to have it, and it was great news when I found out that same day that it would be coming to the Saturn some months later. I'd also get Metal Slug and the Samurai Shodown two pack. Though I preferred part four, I think the third game has the best sprite work overall in the series. I share your view on the Samurai Shodown RPG. I don't know if it's good, but it looks like the kind of thing I would love to try if I could read it. It was very cool having a system in the late '90s that could convincingly replicate Neo Geo and CPS2 games that were current releases in the arcades.
Yeah, many people don't understand that the time period really played a huge role in the enjoyment of these kinds of games. Access to them was far more limited then, and many of these were really close to their arcade release dates. Some mere months. Having that kind of access at this level was a godsend.
Good coverage, especially on the KoF series. I didn't realize there are that many NG ports for the Saturn. Good options now that even NG CD games are getting expensive.
Even some of the Neo Geo CD games has animation cuts like Franco Bash idle stand animation in Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 the Newcomers. That's the only animation cut I've seen on a Neo Geo CD game I've noticed so far.
I went heavy with ports of Neo Geo games up until about 2003, when I finally put up and bought an AES. I eventually picked up an MVS cabinet as well, but I never really went back to ports other than to enjoy the ones with significant differences. I will say, though, that I prefer these ports from tge Saturn, PS1, and Dreamcast over the later emulated collections that came out. The extra features they often bore were fun, and they have a more crisp look and feel compared to the filtered, bare bones compilations that came later.
Something most probably don't know or haven't noticed about Real Bout FF and Special is both games are programmed to know which region your sega saturn is. if you play the games on a japanese saturn the title screen will display the japanese name for the game and play the japanese voice track for the title screen only while the American sega saturn will display the english name after you soft reset the games after starting one of the modes and play the english voice track from there on. Real Bout best collection was also the first neogeo game collection I got for the system and soon after I got the KoF best collection. playing these games and then playing the ps1 versions of the games always made me glad I went with the saturn versions since the ps1 versions were missing too many animations that made them feel choppy along with the audio sounding bad.
@@SegaLordX Yeah, I had KoF95 for ps1 first and then later on got the saturn version in the KoF best collection. it was clear cut night and day the saturn version is the better version with everything and it was too hard for me to to even look at the ps1 version again after spending so much time on the saturn. I'm just glad I never wasted money getting the Real Bout games on ps1 because I was upset when I got KoF99 years later and saw how bad a port it is compared to the neogeo and found myself wondering how the saturn would have handled the game if it and 98 made it to the system.
@@SegaLordX you deserve it man,waiting on my 1 slot mvs to play my real bout and sam sho4 on my versus city,video has me hyped for its arrival,game on bro
I think You should do a “Dreamcast exclusives”. There are tons of Great Dreamcast games that never came out on any other platform. I am still bummed I can’t play versus power stone or rival schools 2.
I just watch to see if you was gonna mention Twinkle Star Sprites, the greatest SNK game ever. I never even heard of the last game you mention tho, it's looks interesting.
If there was one point that caused me regret in having a Playstation it was the performance of Saturn in 2D fighting games, genre that I always liked. It was much superior, practically the same experience as the Neo Geo CD. Unfortunately, SNK did not deal well with the limitations of playstation like Capcom. Congratulations on the video.
I am way into your videos, I'm not a gamer but I was into it back in the early 90s. I get bored with most anything but your videos go down smooth. Can I ask, what's your fascination with the saturn?
As always great video, but you just opened an old wound ,lol. Samurai showdown on Saturn . I'm kicking myself as I either didn't know, which is unlikely, or the price was wrong back in the day and I buried the pain down deep. Either way what was I thinking???
I am not familiar with Neo Geo at all, when I was a theology student Another guy, Johnny showed moving clips on his laptop, he notified that some 32X games had "Neo-Geo prices", meaning he thought they were expensive. I did not know it was a machine with places for discs and cartidges, the fighting games seem to be a bit intense, for my taste but I have had Fatal fury on Mega drive before but I grew tired of it and I do not own it anymore. This Eclectic spin on a puzzle game with shoot em up featured and arcade features rolled all in to one in "Twinkle Star" and the magical drops game seem to be right down my alley in definite terms, I am taken by the neat flow and splendour yet easy going mindset these Neo-Geo games came with. Do YOU mean the additional RAM is mandetory to play the games or do you mean that it is just a kind of perfomance change in the dynamics dynamic when taking the cartridge up and putting it in the slot? there are not any wayto play games without the ram extension if they demand it, or do they work in some kind of lo-fi performance without extra ram? this is a question not only based on fighters in this clip but there are many aspect to this question on the Saturn Selection on the whole. Then again the games that are demanding the ram cartridges perhaps does not come in to happening on any of the genres that I like so it .. maybe so.. will not create problems for me. Neo Geo games and Machines ah well have I know so Little on this corner stone of gaming? What else have I missed?? Cartridges AND Compact Disc drive? Yes, apparently, keep on enlighting me about the fly time and perfect groove in terms of gaming M'Lord! I am a great fan of this show.
iPlaySEGA yeah I didn’t like that either only one member had music playing or some teams didn’t even have that luxury at all. Shame I did like some of the themes for ‘97.