SNK Neo Geo AES
English-friendly titles in this collection: 113
Tested with the FinalBurn Neo (1.0.0.03 24de1b83) core in RetroArch
File size (uncompressed): 2.34 GB
Format: .zip
SNK was obviously well ahead of their time in hardware and game development. Their arcade machines in the late '80s and early '90s were sublime, especially with the arrival of the Neo Geo MVS - In the States, these cabinets were candy red and full of some of the best titles in any arcade, switchable with the press of a button.
What if you could put the power of the mightiest, most fun arcade games right in your own home? I'm not talking about watered down ports to the PC or consoles, I mean a 1:1 perfect experience. Well... You could! The crazy thing about the Neo Geo AES console is that it was literally a packed-tight home version of the arcade board. Any MVS cabinet game could literally be yours at home, albeit at an insanely inflated price (a few hundred dollars per game in '90s money). Yup, that's right - Only the richest of the rich kids had these systems.
One really rad addition to owning (or emulating!) a Neo Geo AES is that a lot of the games have extra features and modes made just for the console. In other words, you won't miss anything from the arcade versions - You'll actually have access to much more from the titles in this set!
Special items included: Unreleased titles, prototypes, and games not in English that are easy enough to play without being fluent in another language.
Items removed: Non-working dumps, duplicates, prototypes of games that eventually saw a full release, homebrew titles past the console's lifespan, titles that require proficiency in another language to play, and hacks.
Release notes: Don't uncompress the games themselves, simply run them as the .zip files they already are.
Where to put the included BIOS files? Check your emulator/frontend's documentation.
There are many ways for different emulators to run in AES mode rather than the default MVS mode. For me, I had the best compatibility by using the FinalBurn Neo core in RetroArch and picking "UNIBIOS" from the "Neo-Geo Mode" option in the Quick Menu. When a game is booting and you see the Universe BIOS screen, press the Neo Geo's A+B+C buttons and set your region to Euro/Console.
The prototype "Digger Man" is included because AES functionality was going to work. However, the only version that has been dumped so far did not include anything but the MVS code. Because of this, you'll need to run it in MVS mode so you can "insert" coins to play.