Topic: Arcade Archives / ACA NEOGEO eShop sales

@NinChocolate Cosmo Gang is a fantastic, trippy version of Galaga.

Just saw Hamster announce their release this week is Konami’s Tutankham! What a great addition from the earlier arcade days!

I first encountered this arcade machine at a local pizza place right near the dining room. Imagine being a 10 year-old kid trying to eat dinner with your family, with this game in attract mode just a few feet away - I must’ve spent half of dinner begging my father for a few quarters to play it!

I was hoping Hamster would bring us this one eventually - an insta-buy for me, for sure!

@canaryfarmer Which video settings do you recommend to alleviate the blur effect, I couldn’t see any cropping option for example?

@cra1g0s the only 'Screen Filter' setting under Display Settings that doesn't add a cheap fuzzy blur is 'OFF', it's very annoying that the blur is included with every scanline option, but the video always does look crisp and perfect without anything added, so I say just leave screen filters off.

Set 'Display wider screen' to ON under Display Settings. Maybe not every game has that option, it seems like every one I do does. It restores a little bit more left and right game area that I imagine old monitors would have covered up.

Really wish the Fatal Fury games (specifically 1, 2, 3 and Mark of the Wolves) would go on sale again; they only got reduced one time back in late-2019 to celebrate Terry getting into Smash and have remained at €7 each ever since (which isn't a bad price mind you, it just starts to pile up really quickly with how many Fatal Fury/Garou titles there are in the ACA lineup yknow?). Please @ me if that ever ends up being the case because I'll be on that in a heartbeat XD

@canaryfarmer That's awesome thanks!!

I've been pondering if I needed to buy Metal Slug as I recently purchased a Miyoo Mini+ which is great and I can play this and all the other Neo Geo games on this device, but I want to also play them on my Switch (in docked mode) and my aim was to have a great collection of original retro games, or 'new' retro games on my Switch and Metal Slug has such a great art style.

I've been thinking about getting ACA NEOGEO REAL BOUT FATAL FURY SPECIAL, but a bit undecided as Mark of the Wolves and the second Real Bout are seen as the better games, but how does RBFFS play?

@Fizza The ACA games are usually quite a bit cheaper if you are able/willing to use an overseas account to purchase.

RBFFS is really quite fun, and the presentation of the game itself, like menus and UI is and engaging and attractive! @cra1g0s

For like 3 bucks, I'd say grab metal slug, it'll never be that low again for possibly years.

edit: I just bought Metal Slug myself, after going both ways myself...I have the full collection for the Wii, but.... how often do I turn on the Wii!

One more Hamster ACA/NEOGEO display thing; if you want to get really wild, adjust the Screen size to 150 (from the default 160; keep ratio to 100) to keep an integer-based mathematic scaling of the game. Gonna copy this from elsewhere: "On the Switch's 720p screen size 150 is a perfect 3x upscale with no artifacting. The default 160 fills the vertical space on the screen at the expense of scaling accuracy. So really it just depends on what's more important to you." Besides turning off screen filters, expanding the screen width, and setting the sound to Average (again, I cannot emphasize enough how big a difference this makes), this is also the thing I do every time I start up a new Hamster game the first time right away.

Thus week’s big 10th Anniversary game (and Namco Festival extension) is Namco’s F/A (short for “Fighter-Attacker,” I believe). It’s a vertical scrolling shoot ‘em up I’ve never encountered before, but apparently it has excellent BGM and Japanese gamers (including Hamster prez Hamada-san) sound very excited about it joining the AA lineup.

Rumor is Hamster will also launch another sale this week, to commemorate their anniversary. I expect we’ll see some Namco titles discounted, at least. I’m hoping that jigoku meguri game (Youkai Douchuuki) is among them!

We should find out tomorrow - Hamster is doing their weekly Arcade Archiver YouTube stream one day early, as they are busy preparing for a 10th Anniv live event in Tokyo this week, too.

@canaryfarmer
I’ll echo the thanks from others here for your setting change suggestions! I don’t usually bother to fiddle with audio-visual settings, but they really do improve the look and sound of Tutankham and other Ake-Aka games I’ve tried it with. Thanks for the tips! 🙇🏻‍♀️

@Burning_Spear nice! I think I need that then

@Teksetter That's great! The 'Average' description is just so super unhelpful, I think it just brings up the bass and treble to form more of a classic EQ U-or-shallow-V-curve, as opposed to the default, I think, flat everything-at-0 EQ. I could be wrong, but that's the impression I get. Whatever it does, it helps.

So we do have Metal Slug X discounted, also some other NEO GEO titles and Arcade Archive ones.

Grabbed Metal Slug X 💥 and Metal Hawk! 🚁

There is currently a sale on in North America ending Wednesday, May 29, 2024. (the 30th after midnight ET)

Keep in mind, there are over 100 ACA NEOGEO games and nearly 300 Arcade Archives games. And only 5 to 10 of each go on sale at a time, and games from these collections only go on sale a couple of times a year. So you really have to jump on them, because if you miss it, it could be years before any individual title goes on sale again.

ACA NEOGEO METAL SLUG X
ACA NEOGEO ROBO ARMY
ACA NEOGEO WORLD HEROES 2
ACA NEOGEO THE SUPER SPY
ACA NEOGEO STAKES WINNER
Arcade Archives GALAGA
Arcade Archives Metal Hawk
Arcade Archives PHELIOS
Arcade Archives THE TOWER OF DRUAGA
Arcade Archives PAC-LAND

Neo Geo games are on sale for 50% off. Namco Arcade Archives games are on sale for 30% off.

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 410 separate entries.

Metal Slug X ended up the #5 best Neo Geo game, the 2nd best of the series after Metal Slug 3.
Robo Army ended up the #40 best Neo Geo game, and the 3rd best "true" beat 'em up on the system.
The Super Spy ended up the #61 best Neo Geo game, a unique (some, like NintendoLife, say repetitive) first-person beat 'em up.

Galaga and The Tower of Druaga are already available in the Namco Museum collection.
Pac-Land is already available in the Pac-Man Museum+ collection.

In my weekly Reddit poll series, Galaga was voted the #1 best game of the Atari Era (1976-1984).

So Galaga and Metal Slug X are definitely the crown jewels of this sale.

A while ago I googled for lists of the best Sega Genesis games. I looked for long lists each at least 50 games long, that were ranked. I assigned points based on rank and added them all up. I was left with 16 lists, 396 unique games and 1,465 total entries.

Phelios ended up a Top 100 Sega Genesis game.
According to Wikipedia, the original arcade version was never released in the U.S. because of racy bondage/torture cutscenes.

@MontyCircus
Thank you for another excellent summary!
I can’t believe we’ve had 2 Arcade Archives sales in consecutive weeks! Hamster is really spoiling us. Usually we go MONTHS without a sale.

A couple of these (Phelios and Metal Hawk) have been in my wishlist for a long while so I’m obligated to buy. I’m also tempted by Metal Slug X. Galaga is a timeless classic, but I already have it in the Namco Collection, plus on a countertop Arcade 1up machine.

As usual, too many games, too little time!

@Teksetter

You're welcome!

I've done some googling and have some unscientific findings on some of the other games:

• Robo Army said to be a pretty bare-bones unspectacular beat 'em up, but some good fun, especially with a friend.
• World Heroes 2 When asked what the best "World Heroes" game is, the joke response is: "Street Fighter II", as the series is a pretty close clone. World Heroes Perfect is said to be the best of the series because it added balancing and strategic depth, but that game puzzlingly omits the "Death Match" mode, which is what a lot of people liked best about 1 & 2. One person said: "The older games were broken messes but they were a lot of fun."
• The Super Spy I found one article/post entitled: "Super Spy: it's not THAT bad! Really!" It is frequently dismissed as one of the poor games from the NeoGeo's early era.
• Stakes Winner looks like a fun game if you're interested in being an arcade-style horseracing jockey. But the sequel is said to improve on the first in a bunch of different ways.
• Metal Hawk looks like fun. There are 2 main reasons it was never ported to consoles: it was graphically advanced for its time, and the arcade machine was a motion-simulator cockpit.

I find it's often hard to get an honest read about some of these games because of 2 reasons:
1.) The people recommending often played it for free emulating on MAME for a half hour. Actually recommending to pay real money to own it, and worth playing vs. other options in its genre, etc, is a different proposition.
2.) Some recommendations are based on nostalgia a la: "I played it once at a Chuck E. Cheese when I was twelve! So fun!"

@MontyCircus Awesome, thanks for the heads up. I’ve been eyeing Phelios since it released and now’s a great time to add it to my AA collection:)

(EDIT: man, scrolling up is not my forte, Lol! You’re already on top of it.)

I already got most of what I wanted from the current sale. I’ll pick up The Super Spy, Phelios, and maybe out of curiosity The Tower of Druaga as I’ve never given it a meaningful go around.

Thanks, btw, to @MontyCircus for picking up the thread where my free time dried up long ago. You’re doing a great service!

@NinChocolate @masterLEON

You're welcome guys. I'm just glad there seems to be so much interest about these sales!

Metal Hawk is pretty great, it's a shooter but you can go in any direction, and you can raise and lower your elevation so you can attach ground forces and it's all super smooth looking. 🚁

Phelios seems interesting but I may just watch an arcade playthrough instead 🙃