The NeoGeo was marketed and released not only as a home video game console, but also as an arcade system board, the 'MVS' (Multi-Video System). The MVS took cartridges, which allowed the arcade operator to play multiple games through a standalone machine. It could hold 4 games at once and you had the ability to switch between them. SNK also saw through the insightful idea for the NeoGeo, of a memory card, so gamers could save their game in an arcade and take it home etc. Although this was an incredible feat of a machine, it had one major drawback... the price. Launch cost of this console was a whopping $650, with cartridges reaching prices as high as $200.
It's two main competitors were the Sega Megadrive and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The NeoGeo was a slight third wheel in this sense, because of the domination of Sega and Nintendo's rivalry.
1990 saw the Japanese release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It was a massive improvement on its predecessor and had sold an estimated 50 million units. It played host to games such as..
...Super Mario World,
...Final Fantasy VI
...and Street Fighter 2
The Sega Megadrive was released in Japan in 1988.
It's believed to be Sega's most successful video game console, selling 35.3 million units. It lost the competition with the SNES for global market attention, however was still a highly popular machine, marketing well known titles such as Comix Zone (an awesome game based around a comic book artist fighting his creations in an innovative comic book style), Castlevania, Streets of Rage 2 and of course Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
In 1994, Sony released the first of their console systems, the Playstation.
The Playsation was a part of the fifth generation of consoles, its main competitors being the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn. My personal favourite is the Playstation. Having been bought it when I was fairly young, it sparked a great deal of childhood loves such as Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot.
The PS1's competitor, Sega Saturn, was a powerful 32 bit machine, launched in 1994. However, only 240 games were released in Europe and only 245 in the USA, Some of these titles being; Megaman X4, House of the Dead, Xmen vs Streetfighter, what have you.
The other competitor was the Nintendo 64.
The Nintendo 64 was designed as a multiplayer machine with 4 available controller ports, for games like Mario Kart 64 and Mario Party. This machine also had the Transfer Pak, which allowed the portable Gameboy color to exchange data with the Nintendo 64 in certain games such as Mario Golf and Pokémon Gold/Silver, allowing you to play these titles on the big screen.
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