Neo Geo CD



The Neo Geo was truly a beast in 1990, but that came with a price tag: $650 for the AES console and past $200 for each game. The almost identical Neo Geo CD was released four years later, to offer the same games at a much lower cost. Well, you get what you pay for: it was plagued with annoying loading times (say, up to a minute between each round of a fighting game), and it came with a gamepad instead of the badass Neo Geo arcade-style controller. Still, its main problem was the bad timing: the 5th generation had already begun, and it was clear that a pure 2D console could not compete for much longer.

Being technically similar does not meant it should be treated as a minor variation of the Neo Geo. While it is true that most of its titles were ports, they had rearranged CD-based soundtracks. It also had a handful of exclusives, as well as some MVS ports that the original AES didn't get.