These Are The Games Included In SNK’s Neo Geo Mini And Neo Geo Mini International

The lack of Ikari Warriors has me thinking I might just get the collection for Switch and call it a day. That’s definitely one of my favorite games from back then.

Twinkle Star Sprites is one of my favorite games, wish they would have included it on both versions.

The Japan version definitely has the better lineup. Looks like I might have to import this if I want it.

That came out of nowhere!

Guess if King of Fighters is your thing, yay?
Nintendo mini wide game selection this is not.

@samuelvictor Personally I am very happy with the ACA Neo Geo games they got for the Switch. By now I probably have more games than this and a better selection, no need for illegal roms.

@th3r3ds0x Ikari Warriors is not a Neo Geo game.

Where’s Neo Turf Masters!

Depressing... The Japan version is such a better lineup. Add a handful of games to that version and there is hardly any reason for the international version to exist. I'm a bit gutted.

I'm also irrationally upset they left out Neo Turf Masters and Baseball Stars 2 for far worse games. Also the Last Blade and Shock Troopers being exclusive while the sequels are universal.

Where's Nightmare in the Dark?

Doesn't really matter to me as there's only half a dozen Neo Geo games I'm interested in playing. But the ones I like I really like.

There were always going to be missing games, but Art of Fighting over AoF3 and Top Players Golf over Turf Masters are bizarre decisions.

Edit: Always thought Turf Masters was developed by SNK, but it looks like it was developed by Nazca and published by SNK. Guess that's the reason.

@samuelvictor Yeah I had a feeling the X wouldn't be worth it, glad I avoided it now since my Switch just seems to be a vastly superior take on the same concept. It would be nice if they were better about not releasing games so randomly, but as a fan who always wanted to buy the real thing but could never justify it, it is hard to complain right now.

Thinking it over, I would've easily bought both versions if the lineups weren't so goofy. As it is, I'm leaning against the investment and simply continuing to expand my Switch Neo Geo collection. Some of these decisions irk me enough that I doubt I will be satisfied, it might just be a source of frustration.

I was so on board it's a pretty deflating feeling... Maybe one day my dreams will come true and they'll release a Neo Geo Pocket Keychain...

I'll import the Asian neo mini because I like the colour of the unit better then slap a load of roms on myself , it's bound to be easily hackable.

Will anyone actually buy this

OK, I think I've got this right. Here are the games broken down by verison:

Mini Exclusive:
Aggressors of Dark Kombat
Alpha Mission II
Burning Fight
Cyber-Lip
Ninja Commando
Real Bout Fatal Fury 2: The Newcomers
The King of Fighters ’94
The King of Fighters ’96
The King of Fighters ’99
The King of Fighters 2001
The King of Fighters 2003
The Last Blade
Top Hunter: Roddy & Cathy
Twinkle Star Sprites

Mini International Exclusive:
3 Count Bout
Blue’s Journey
Crossed Swords
Foot Ball Frenzy
Ghost Pilots
King of the Monsters
Last Resort
Magician Lord
Metal Slug 4
Metal Slug 5
Metal Slug X
Mutation Nation
Robo Army
Shock Troopers

On Both Versions:
Art of Fighting
Blazing Star
Fatal Fury Special
Garou: Mark of the Wolves
King of the Monsters 2
Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle
Metal Slug
Metal Slug 2
Metal Slug 3
Ninja Master’s: Haou Ninpou Chou
Puzzled
Real Bout: Fatal Fury
Samurai Shodown II
Samurai Shodown IV: Amakusa’s Revenge
Samurai Shodown V Special
Sengoku 3
Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad
Super Sidekicks
The King of Fighters ’95
The King of Fighters ’97
The King of Fighters ’98
The King of Fighters 2000
The King of Fighters 2002
The Last Blade 2
Top Player’s Golf
World Heroes Perfect

A bit more interesting than EA's E3 presentation!

This is more like KOF mini!

No third party stuff as expected. Shame as SNK vs Capcom was one of the best fighters on the system.

The system itself is an interesting, unusual design. I'm frankly surprised they went with it, as it won't really work under a TV, and the tiny screen won't really cut it for long. A mini AES would have had much more mainstream appeal.

I assume by CYBER-UP they actually mean CYBER-LIP? Never heard of a Neo-Geo game called CYBER-UP???

As the Neo Geo was best known for its 1vs1 fighting games I figured it would lie towards those. Plus I got most of the games I wanted on the Switch. So wil give this a pass.

Great, we get green blood in SSII and sweat in all the Metal Slugs (amongst other edits) because they're making it run like a US home machine.

SNK has treated Western fans like idiots for 25 years so why stop now.

A Neo Geo without Bust-A-Move is not a Neo Geo, licensing rights be damned. =P

This is nice and everything, but i already have the majority of these games on the Wii VC, Wii collections and Switch arcade archives.

costs?

Devastated there’s no Windjammers or Neo Turf Masters. I don’t understand the constant neglect and omission Windjammers gets, given it is the defining game on the platform.

@RetroGamingBlog I think all of the games are ones developed by SNK. Someone called Paon owns the rights to Windjammers since Data East went bust. There was a port last year by DotEmu with online multiplayer for PS4 and Vita.

@samuelvictor I am pretty sure my entire collection of nearly every ACA Neo Geo game on the Switch cost me less than a single MVS/AES title would have on Ebay. I would prefer physical but lets be realistic here, I have never bought them for a good reason. After I got the Hori arcade stick it doesn't feel like I am missing out on anything. The physical benefits are not worth the thousands upon thousands of dollars they would command. Plus, having native HDMI and save points is nice. Once you have the game downloaded and installed it is just like owning anything physical as even the old hardware can get lost over time. I personally never understood the digital gaming phobia when the games are installed like they are on the Switch.

Oof, that’s kind of a brutal lineup on the Mini. I’ll consider the International model, and I realize these minis will be a bargain at almost any price given the AES/MVS market, but I think I’m clear to play catch up with ACA titles on Switch now that these lineups have been announced.

@Pablo17

Same here.

I'll wait and see what the 40th anniversary collection on Switch looks like.

Was really looking forward to this but thinking now I’ll skip it and just buy what I want individually on the switch. Each version has games that I want which is really irritating and in quite a few cases makes no sense to why they were omitted on the other. The fact that the keep putting off talking about the price make me think it won’t be as cheap as I’d hope it would be either, although that’s just a guess.

I'm in for the complete Metal Slug collection. Everything else is a (welcome) bonus.

I just want the Metal Slug games and that alone on Switch would cost me $48, so if the Mini is price close to that number I'm getting it.

@moroboshi SvC: SNK vs. Capcom Chaos was great but I feel they can't include that even though they originally made the game for NeoGeo due to Capcom owning half that character roster.

Kinda stupid, of all the Art of Fighting game they only give us part one which was the worst one, could had just give us Art of Fighting 2 and 3 or replace that with other hits like Rage of the Dragon or Savage Reign instead.

Wooo boy, that's a BIG difference in games between regions... that's uncalled for. I liked the design of the Japanese unit more anyway, but IDK... hopefully it's as hackable as the Nintendo classic systems...

I'll get them both, and two controllers.

@Gerbwmu The game lists are completely different. The 40th Anniversary collection has non-NEOGEO SNK titles from arcade and console (NES).

I've got the majority of those games on my Switch, and a Hori arcade stick.

But I get it. It's the novelty. I myself might even be interested if the price was low enough (like $49.99). But it won't be, and so I'll pass.

@masterLEON - yes, that is why I'll be waiting for the complete list for the Switch game, I have a feeling I will like that collection much more then either of these

@JoakimZ that’s a bummer, I didn’t realize that.

That's alot of King of Fighters games. O_O

The international has all the games I'd want to play. Sadly, it does not include the first Samurai Shodown, which is the one I have the most fond memories of, being the only one I actually got to play in arcades at the time. But no big issue, and I can say why they chose the other sequels instead. Lack of Neo Turf Masters is truly disappointing though.

That said, day one for me if <= US$100, maybe $150.

@samuelvictor Yeah we all have our experiences to justify our actions. Thing is, if you were really so against having games installed on a device you wouldn't be interested in this item in the first place. Classic hardware can be nice, I have a lot of it as a collector for many years, but it is just kind of ridiculous to suggest spending many times more on the old stuff when you can save tremendous amounts of money and have a lot more convenience with the new stuff.

At the end of the day video game collecting is a hobby, and it can quickly become a very expensive hobby if you have a money is no object classic gaming approach. I just think modern convenience is too worthwhile to brush off and dismiss. I too have had a bad experience with memory cards, I got a USB memory stick for my Wii U that simply wouldn't work right for some reason even though it didn't seem to have anything wrong with it, but then I just went back to using an older one which never had any problems. It is why I never upgraded the SD cards in my 3DS consoles and why I am really happy I can just swap out the memory card on my Switch without needing to worry about things like profiles and saves.

Wonder if these companies knew these games would eventually bring cash as in the old times (meaning all, including Nintendo and all the “remastered”-or not versions shipping to new consoles.

@samuelvictor Oh wow you are very retro lol. I love my old 90's tech game consoles but 80's tech was a bit before my time so I never really invested in any of that. I feel ya though, I still got my old consoles hooked up to a TV that still has s-video and my classic video game collection is something that I have always appreciated having. It is nice to know that no matter what happens with current and next gen tech, I will always be able to play my favorite old games with this stuff.

Hmm, I’m kinda satisfied with the Neo Geo games I have on Switch to be honest.

@BionicDodo Nazca was also the developer of the original Metal Slug, so I doubt that's the reason for Neo Turf Masters not being included. It also had a recent ACA NeoGeo release.

@th3r3ds0x Ikari warriors????

I have an MVS 7 AES already but these are kinda cool.

@brianvgplayer Good point! And after they made Metal Slug and Neo Turf Masters SNK bought them anyway, so there really is no reason for them to leave Neo Turf Masters off. Odd.

I expect it to be really expensive, but if it isn't I'm glad to see international line-up has only 4-5 games I was planning on buying on Switch -and for now I'll refrain from doing it-, plus 2 I already have. It's not that bad.

I'll wait for the price announcement and will decide. If it can't be hacked for adding new games both versions will definitely be lacking a lot of interesting games.

Most probably I'll continue buying these games on Switch though, because portability is great for my circumstances.

@YANDMAN yea yea I’ve already been told that it wasn’t a Neo Geo game... that’s a shame.

@samuelvictor Yeah I never collected much in the way of Turbo Grafx stuff either myself, but I did get a lot of the games on virtual console for my Wii. It is sort of what got me into it as I honestly didn't even know the platform existed when I was a kid. 8-bit consoles were just before my time, I grew up with Genesis and SNES then moved on to PS1 and N64, I didn't really even get into NES and Turbo era games until I got older and started downloading some of the stuff from VC, it was a nice easily accessible way for me to get into that.

Right now my oddities are mostly 16-bit and 32-bit consoles like the Jaguar, 3DO, and Sega CDX. PC games I grew up with was pretty much Windows 95 - XP era so it's all handled by virtual machine apps these days it seems. I do love to check out some of the youtube channels that cover old 80's tech simply out of curiosity though, I always found it interesting to see where so many of these platforms got their start.

@OnBeingHuman gotta piggyback on success and hope they are adept at making sufficient supply rather than ripoff Nintendo style

Other than Metal slug series, does it have anything that isn't just a lot of fighting games and a few sports games?

@samuelvictor Yeah there is this youtube channel LGR that seems to cover a lot of the old PC stuff from the past that I had an interest in. It is pretty crazy how much stuff there is. I would never really get into it myself since it can be hard to track down, difficult to use, and takes up a lot of space.

I also have a big interest in that lost era of odd 32-bit consoles, and for similar reasons as I remember reading about it but never knew anyone who had the stuff. It is why I got myself a Jaguar and a whole collection of Jaguar games. Same reason I got a 3DO and a bunch of games for that as well. CDi is one of those consoles that I feel like is almost better seen on youtube as they are very unusual, everything you would want seems to be quite expensive and rare, and none of it is apparently any good. At least the Jaguar and 3DO have some great games to redeem their value for collectors. I always wanted a Neo Geo collection, pretty cool how you actually went for it. That is sort of the crown jewel for collectors of the era.

Another thing I liked to collect was handhelds, I got myself a Game Boy Light and some odd stuff like a Gizmondo. The Game Boy Light is probably my favorite of the era as it gives me everything I liked about the 90's era of handhelds with a screen that I can actually easily see in most conditions.

@th3r3ds0x I thought that perhaps you were getting confused with one of the shock troppers games.

@samuelvictor I understand where you are coming from with the handhelds that don't have backlighting, I also grew up with a NGPC and even though I loved it I never really want to play it these days. It is why finding a backlit Game.com was such a big deal to me when I was looking for them. I also got an N-Gage but I could never get the thing to work. I have some old SM card that I put in it but it still gave me problems and then the battery died and the entire thing won't even start without a new one even if I have it plugged in. I pretty much gave up on that, same with what I did with an old Gamegear and 32X, those just proved to be very unreliable devices.

I even had a Tapwave Zodiac back when that was the new and forward thinking handheld is you can even remember it. It was very promising and I loved it for a while but the promising titles never materialized and the company just sort of fell apart. Now the battery is dead and I haven't used it in years, but apparently that is a quick and cheap fix. That seems to be the problem with old handhelds that were reliant on built-in rechargeable batteries, but somehow the GBA SP had seemed to prove reliable after all these years.

Probably the oddest thing I got is the R-Zone Super Screen. Easily the biggest handheld game console ever made, and quite possibly one of the worst, but a very interesting piece of handheld gaming history at the same time.

@YANDMAN Na I played Ikari Warriors a lot at the local convenience store when I was a kid in the mid 80’s. I’m kinda surprised it wasn’t on NeoGeo. I also had the NES version but it wasn’t really anything compared to the arcade.

@retro_player_22

Nintendo managed to get a ton of third party content onto the NES and SNES mini. Anything is possible if you have the will and the money.

@moroboshi Yeah but Nintendo is bigger and had more money than SNK. I don't think SNK had the money to invest in paying for licensing just to have an old crossover fighting game included for their product. A product they are still not sure if it'll sell successfully.

@samuelvictor Yeah exactly. I was never a big fan of the Tiger handhelds, but I had a couple as a kid and they are definitely an iconic part of an era. I got the R-Zone simply for the novelty, same reason I got the Game.com and Gizmondo, although I can at least give the Gizmondo some credit for having some hidden gems and decent quality.

@samuelvictor Yeah the N-Gage is just a terribly designed piece of hardware as far as portable game consoles go IMO. It was an ambitious move for Nokia at the time, but it shows how flawed the attempts at adding a game console with a cell phone were in an era before smartphones. I bet it could have had some amazing shoot-em-ups considering it's vertical screen, but like you said most of it's games were ports originally designed for 4:3 or wider.

I honestly think the Gizmondo was ahead of it's time. If it came out in an era when downloading games was common it could have been a great little console, but it was something that most people just weren't ready to use. Now it just seems like some odd middle period console kinda like the 3DO, lots of good stuff going on for it's time but people weren't quite ready for it and then better stuff eventually came out.

If I decide to buy one, it won't be the International one. I want Twinkle Star Sprites, but almost as importantly, I can't have a piece of crap like Magician Lord stinking up my game selection screen. It's bad enough that ML was included in SNK Arcade Classics Vol 1.