SNK Announces ACA NEOGEO Selection Vol. 3 And Vol. 4 For Switch

Hello everyone!

Vol. 4 looks tasty. But give me a nice sale on the previous ones first!

Gimme gimme gimme! I’m all in on these Ake-Aka physical releases, and it’s awesome how Hamster and SNK are bringing us this next batch so soon.
I was hoping to see Magician Lord or Nam ‘75 in the mix, but Pulstar and Blazing Star are most welcome!

A much better lineup but still the fact that they only include 10 games per collection for $40 each still make em feel like a ripoff. It should had been 30 games per collection.

If any of these 4 collections are half as good as the Pocket color ones, I’d be interested in seeing them brought over.

Easy pass. Not wasting money on emulation collections that could be way more robust.

1 & 2 are on Play Asia with an Asian version which has multi languages, including English.

@Overzeal They're just the ACA Neo Geo games inside one app

@Serpenterror We truely live in strange times when essentially $4 for game is a rip off.

Milk, milk, milk.

I'm tempted, but these are all so stingy (same goes for Taito).

But I'd love to see Nintendo's Hamster releases collected physically as well.

@KoopaTheGamer : They are decades-old games that have had virtually no additional work put into them. And retro collections from hardware generations' past weren't quite this stingy either.

A while ago I googled for lists of the best Neo Geo games. I looked for ranked lists at least 25 games long. I ended up finding 7 qualifying lists with 132 unique games and a total of 413 separate entries.

What I would call a "top Neo Geo game", the top 50 or so, of these 10-game collections, Vol. 3 has 5 "top Neo Geo games" and Vol. 4 has 4 "top Neo Geo games". So about half of each collection are "must-haves".

If you are interested in games from the full Neo Geo library (i.e. "all Neo Geo games are good games!"), or you're really into collecting physical editions, then these collections are a good deal.

But if you just want the "top games", then it's probably better to get them individually, especially from those oh-so-rare Hamster sales.

There's surely a dart board involved in how they're selecting the games for these collections.

Games are based on NEO•GEO MVS versions, not even AES ones. So, most of them don't even worth anything separately.

These collections are about 20 years too late and too small number of titles. Shame as I’m sure they will get enough sales to warrant them.

@KoopaTheGamer Those people are just complainers. They were probably never going to buy or play the games anyways.
People who think "these are old games" and expect to get them for pennies each probably don't value them very much or at all.

For so long back then, I wished for the games such as ragnagard and world heroes perfect to come to Switch physically. However, when I learned about the controls of some of the games and that the boss characters in both games need to be unlocked by game codes, maybe it was not quite worth the wait. Sometimes people wish for things, they get them and it is not always the way you would expect it. Still, I am surprised it has happened as well as many other things. CAPCOM seems to get this collection thing down better with Practice modes, gems, memories, superheroes and supervillains, stories, monsters, demons, angels, creatures of urban and mythos, etc.

Volume 4 is interesting because Neo Geo Cup '98 is delisted, it has no longer been available for purchase for a few years on the Nintendo e-shop, at least in Europe.

Capcom are giving their fighting library the absolute royal treatment and it’s a shame SNK aren’t capitalizing and doing the same.

There’s so many franchises or at least genres that deserve Capcom’s level of love and beyond. Not to mention SNK’s untouched character/box art

It’s a real shame to see these no frills releases with genres or franchises calculatedly spread across volumes so fans of a specific series feel more compelled to buy them all.

I wonder how many times SNK milked these 30+ year old games.

A Switch cart could fit all SNK games.

Poor selection, honestly. Why not sort it by genre, year, etc? It would make more sense than a completely random choice of titles.

@WaveBoy literally hate when they make terrible wallpaper instead of just having the black borders. The black borders make me love ACA. 62 games on my switch.

The idea of owning The King of Fighters 2000 (my favorite KOF) physically makes Vol 4 tempting, but as I already said before, I'd rather have a collection with all the ACA NEOGEO KOF games and the Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting games, either together in the KOF collection or as a separate colletion of both series.

“RAW KUT LAWUNCHURRR…”

@rushiosan
I get what you’re saying, but I may actually prefer these random collections that sprinkle in a lot of variety.
It’s like walking up to a Neo Geo cab in the arcade and seeing what’s in there this month. 😁

Each volume is like a little cross-section of the Neo Geo experience and will get me to try out some games I probably would have avoided otherwise, like the golf or baseball games, or even the 2D fighters. If these were focused title or genre collections, I probably would have bought only the Metal Slug, schmup, and action platformer volumes and skipped the rest. Of course, that would have saved me money! 😵‍💫

Volumes grouped by year would be interesting, too, but I wonder if that would result in an unbalanced distribution of the heavy-hitter games.

It’s interesting that the Taito physical collections are randomized, too. You certainly could argue they’re milking it, or you could say they’re trying to preserve a decent value proposition for each successive volume. All depends on your perspective, I guess! 🤷🏻‍♀️

@HammerGalladeBro I just bought myself one of those little NeoGeo Mini cabinets. Includes KOF94-2003 and more or less every great fighting game, and Metal Slug 1-5. It's a novelty for sure, but I'd much rather play on that little machine than buy these collections which just feel like SNK played spin the wheel when it came to game selections.

Still no Metal Slug 1-6 collection on Switch...

It's systematic
If I import a game, that Asia-exclusive game gets a Western version announcement while the game Is IN TRANSIT.
If you want a western version, wait for the my signal.

Ah, west means Limited Run. So, for EU folks like me, still the same.

Can they give me a Metal Slug collection? It should be easy.

Pulstar and Blazing Star on two separate collections? I didn’t know SNK were evil.

@Zuljaras I want this to happen, both for your benefit and for there to be a game out there called Slug Lord Selection.

@Zuljaras yes odd how anthology is on PS2 and PS4 yet the natural home would be switch.

@Zuljaras I’d bite on that I forget exactly how many metal slug games there are. I’d like to see what we got on the wii collection all those years ago plus the gba one. Magician Lord is tough as nails, I never made it that far but I’m with you, I was drawn to it when I had it on the virtual console back in the day and I love that opening track if nothing else. Rise Magical Slug!

These Ake-Aka NEO GEO Selection vols 3 & 4 are the main attractions in Playasia’s “3 games for US$100” holiday sale running at the moment. It includes free shipping, too, so it’s potentially a good deal depending on your exchange rate and import tax situation.

I ordered 3&4 together with Shantae & the Seven Sirens and will look forward to trying them out this spring. Vols 1 & 2 delivered right after Xmas and have been sufficient, no-frills fun so far. I’m glad each game has only one menu icon on the Switch main menu. Open that and you’re taken to a simple game selection screen with icons for the ten games. Click your desired game and after a short load, you’re ready to play. Each game is essentially identical to the ACA eShop version, except there is no Caravan Mode. You do still get to compete in online rankings for the normal game mode, though.

I love Hamster’s work on Arcade Archives and want to support these physical releases, so I’ll be buying these volumes as they come out. Maybe Hamster could find a way to release the non-SNK games physically, too? One can dream… 😌

These pre-orders didn't just go live as I pre-ordered around a week ago. Placed two orders Ender Lilies SNK sel. 1&2 and wizardry and an order with SNK Sel. Vol 3&4 with Freedom Wars Remastered. As stated above on both orders I got the 3 for $100 deal which is why I actually added in Wizardry to qualify on the first order. Can't go wrong with SNK games.

This easily could've been just one collection.

Wow 🙄 I wish evercade would do something like this