Neo Geo AES+: The Black Box's Overdue Birth

Every collector has a cupboard at home, and the top shelf of that cupboard comes down a few times a year. First the old cartridge boxes come off the shelf, then a cloth that smells of mothballs from in among the jumpers. The dust gets blown out of the connectors (with your breath, if the cloth isn't up to it), we go digging behind the TV for the AV cable we haven't laid eyes on in years, and when it turns up we celebrate as if a long-lost relative had come home. Roast chestnuts, watching the rain, counting the streetlamps: leave those to other people. For some of us, the cheapest entertainment there is lives on this shelf. This autumn a new box was supposed to be set down in front of that cupboard.

It wasn't.

In this month's feature I'm going to tell you about NEOGEO AES+, which reproduces SNK's 1990 home console. Let me say it up front: we don't have a unit. The console isn't on sale yet, so there are no owners to tell us what it's like either. What I write here comes from the manufacturer's press page, news reports on prices and dates, and what a Famitsu reporter passed on after a short go on the machine at Tokyo Game Show.

First, the ID check: what it isn't, and what it is

No, this is not an emulator. It isn't an FPGA either. AES+ is being made by PLAION REPLAI, an arm of Austria's PLAION GmbH, together with SNK and for Neo Geo's 35th anniversary. What they're doing is rebuilding the 1990 AES with real chips, as a circuit. To get there, ASICs that do the work of the original chips have been designed from scratch. That's a road you rarely see taken in the retro console market, so let's get the terms straight first.

TERMINOLOGY

• Emulation (imitation): Mimicking a machine's behaviour in software on another processor. It's cheap and flexible; its accuracy depends on how fussy the person writing the software is.
• FPGA (field-programmable gate array): A chip whose internal logic circuits can be rewired after the fact. It's used to rebuild old chips at circuit level.
• ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit): A chip designed for one job and manufactured that way. Once it's printed, it can't be changed.
• DIP switch: Tiny slide switches on the board. You don't set them from a menu, you set them with your fingernail.

So why does the difference matter? Because the ASIC road is an expensive decision with no way back. A bug in an FPGA core gets fixed with an update. A bug in a printed ASIC gets fixed only by a new production run. PLAION has taken that risk, and the payoff is clear on paper: original AES cartridges work in the new console, and newly printed cartridges work in the old AES. In my view this two-way compatibility is the strongest thing about AES+. It doesn't make you bin the collection you already have, and it doesn't lock what you buy now inside the new box.

But every rose has its thorn. Nobody today knows how faithful the ASICs are to the original machine. That will only become clear once the unit is in readers' hands, running for months with hundreds of cartridges in front of CRT screens. The developers told Famitsu they tested more than 160 games. A good start, but a test list is no substitute for owners' reports.

What's in the box and what's round the back

According to the press page, the box holds the console, a wired Arcade Stick, an HDMI cable and a power supply. Let's go through the features one by one:

• HDMI output: Provides low-latency digital video. Famitsu mentions 1080p and 720p options.
• AV output: The original analogue output. It's there for anyone with a tube (CRT) television.
• DIP switches: According to the press page, they set the language, overclock and display mode. Famitsu reports that they sit under the bottom cover, and that resolution, aspect ratio and screen rotation are also set with these switches.
• Memory Card: Saves your high scores for good. The card is sold separately.
• Arcade Stick: Connects with a 15-pin connector. Original sticks work too.
• Boot menu: Hold the four buttons and Start together while the console powers on and a menu opens with language settings and system tests.
• HOME/MVS switch: Famitsu also mentions a mode switch. Exactly what it changes isn't explained in any detail.

I like the settings living on DIP switches rather than in a menu. It's quick, it doesn't ask for an account or an update, and nobody can quietly change it one night. One warning, though: switch the unit off and pull the plug before you start flicking switches. On a machine whose bottom cover you've opened, that rule is not up for debate.

The overclock option is intriguing, but for now it's only a promise. Nobody has measured and written up which games it speeds up and by how much, or what it breaks in which one. Until the numbers arrive, I'm leaving that line blank.

There's also a contradiction. The press page says the Arcade Stick is wired. Famitsu writes that the stick works both wired and wireless. The reporter passed on that there's slight lag in wireless mode, but added that he didn't notice it in his short session. Which is right? Until PLAION clears it up, read it as unconfirmed. And it's the very first question any reader buying a stick for fighting games should ask.

On compatibility, Famitsu writes that original sticks, memory cards and mahjong controllers work. It's also said that MVS cartridges from arcade cabinets work with an adapter, but that doesn't look like official support. If you have an MVS collection, don't count on it just yet.

Cartridges: this is where the real sums are

Ten new cartridges are announced for launch: Metal Slug, The King of Fighters 2002, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Samurai Shodown V Special (Zero Special), Shock Troopers, Pulstar, Twinkle Star Sprites, Magician Lord, Over Top and Big Tournament Golf. The golf cartridge gets the Scotland course from the Neo Geo CD version. The covers are double-sided: Japanese art on one side, American on the other. One developer told Famitsu that the final version of Samurai Shodown Zero Special will bring back the arcade version's blood and finishing moves. Famitsu also lists a version of Toaplan's Zero Wing adapted for Neo Geo under the TATSUJIN licence.

There's a second group that Famitsu passed on after Tokyo Game Show: Fighter's History Dynamite, Magical Drop 2 and 3 as two games on one cartridge, Dunk Dream and Miracle Adventure. These look like Data East licences, but Famitsu doesn't name the company outright, and a Spanish report gives a different list. Count this second group as half-confirmed.

Now for the part where you'll want a pen and paper. A new cartridge is €79.99, £69.99 or $89.99 (¥9,980 in Japan). The standard console is €199.99, £179.99 or $249.99 (¥32,800 in Japan). So anyone who buys all ten launch cartridges one by one will hand over roughly €800 for cartridges alone, four times the price of the console. The white 35th Anniversary Edition is $349.99. For the Ultimate Edition, which comes with ten games, Generation Amiga says $999.99 and Italian sites say €899.99. That price isn't on the press page, so don't treat it as final.

Dirt cheap, isn't it? Neo Geo was never a cheap hobby, and AES+ keeps the tradition alive. To be fair: next to today's second-hand prices for original cartridges, a freshly printed cartridge that also runs on the old console is a sensible option for a collector. But for the reader who wants to buy "a games machine" and play a handful of games on it, the sums don't add up easily. The Memory Card being sold separately instead of going in the box is a small but irritating extra line on that bill.

The delay: the birth is ten months late

AES+'s original release date was 12 November 2026. On 9 September 2026 (10 September Japan time, according to Famitsu), PLAION announced that the launch had been delayed worldwide. The new date on the press page is 16 September 2027. The gap is about ten months, a little longer than a human baby spends in the womb. The console has had its first complication before it's even born.

The reason? PLAION's statement puts global parts shortages first, memory chips in particular. News sites pin that shortage on the appetite of AI servers. Second, the company says demand from pre-orders and retailers has been "extraordinary", and that it will use the extra time to scale up production and secure parts. In the delay coverage, demand was pushed to the front and presented almost as an excuse. In the statement itself, though, the parts problem comes first and demand after it. That order is worth reading correctly. And a 1990 box held up by memory-gobbling servers must be the finest irony of the year.

For anyone with a pre-order, the news isn't bad. Orders keep their place in the queue, you don't need to do anything, and prices aren't going up. Every console from the first production run will come with an extra called the "Founding Supporter Bonus". What that extra is isn't written in the sources we looked at. PLAION says it will spend the additional year running hands-on events around the world. The first was 17-21 September at Tokyo Game Show in Makuhari Messe, where both the black standard model and the white anniversary model were playable on the stand. One more note: at least one news site gave the date as 17 September. The press page says 16 September, and that's the one we're going with.

So what now?

Let me give the verdict up front: AES+ is a machine walking the right road that hasn't proved anything yet. By the right road I mean this: rebuilt chips instead of emulation, two-way compatibility with old cartridges, an AV output kept alongside HDMI, and settings left to switches instead of a menu. What's unproven is this: the real compatibility of the ASICs, what the overclock actually delivers, whether the stick is wireless and how much it lags. All of that is still waiting on the first owners' reports. There are no user reviews, no critics' reviews, no yardstick like a Steam page. What we have is a press page, price lists and a few minutes of play on a trade-show stand.

My advice to you is this: if you have a pre-order, leave it where it is. The price won't go up, your place is kept, and you have a year to change your mind. If you don't have one, don't rush. When the first consoles reach their owners in September, what gets written about heat, stick lag and old-cartridge compatibility will be worth more than anything anyone can say today. And work out your cartridge budget before you look at the console price. That's where the real money goes.

Yes, that's the AES+ file for now. Top up your tea, dust off the old cartridges, and don't throw out that AV cable; by the look of things you still need it. When the black box really does get set down in front of the cupboard, we'll take it up again in these pages. Until next month, goodbye...