SNK's Neo Geo was two machines running one library. The MVS was the arcade board and the AES was the home console, and because the AES used identical hardware, the cartridge you bought for the living room played exactly the game in the arcade. That promise came at a price. The AES launched in the US on 1 July 1991 at $649.99 — adjusted for inflation, the most expensive home console released up to that point — with games at around $200 and up. Worldwide, SNK sold roughly one million MVS units and 410,000 AES consoles, and kept releasing games for the platform until Samurai Shodown V Special in 2004.
That split is why the library is worth playing now. Very few people owned the home version, but anyone who went to an arcade in the 1990s played these games, and today they run on the same emulation cores as everything else on a retro handheld.
This page covers the arcade and home Neo Geo only — not the Neo Geo Pocket, which is a different handheld with a different library. Release dates, developers, mechanics and review scores come from each game's documented release history and the outlets named in each section, checked 2026-09-13. Three of the five games already on this list had been described with features they do not have, and those descriptions are corrected below. The list also gained two entries it was conspicuously missing: SNK's most acclaimed late fighter, and a shooter.
The seven at a glance
This is not a strict ranking. It runs from the run-and-gun, through the four fighters, to the two outliers.
| Game | Arcade (MVS) release | Developer / Publisher | Genre | On the record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metal Slug 3 | 23 Mar 2000 (JP) | SNK, original Metal Slug team / SNK | Run-and-gun | Hardcore Gaming 101: "heralded as the apex of the series" |
| Garou: Mark of the Wolves | 26 Nov 1999 | SNK / SNK | Fighting | GameSpot's Best Fighting Game of 2001; Metacritic 86 (Dreamcast) |
| The King of Fighters '98 | 23 Jul 1998 | SNK / SNK | Fighting, 3-on-3 teams | Widely regarded as the best entry in its series |
| Samurai Shodown II | 28 Oct 1994 | SNK / SNK | Weapon-based fighting | 9/10 from all four EGM reviewers; Game Informer's 9th best fighting game of all time (2019) |
| Fatal Fury Special | 16 Sep 1993 (JP) | SNK / SNK | Fighting | Japan's third highest-grossing arcade game of 1994 |
| Blazing Star | 19 Jan 1998 (JP) | Yumekobo / SNK | Horizontal shooter | Player One 83% (arcade), 81% (Neo Geo) |
| Neo Turf Masters | 29 Jan 1996 | Nazca Corporation / SNK | Golf | IGN 7.5/10 for the Wii Virtual Console release |
Metal Slug 3
Metal Slug 3 reached arcades in Japan on 23 March 2000 and North America the following month. The home AES cartridge followed on 1 June 2000 in Japan and 17 September 2001 in North America. The first three Metal Slugs, this one included, were built by the original Nazca team that created the series; that team disbanded after SNK went bankrupt in October 2001.
It is the most structurally ambitious game in the series. There are five missions rather than the six of the two games before it, but each one is much larger, and Metal Slug 3 introduced branching paths: most missions fork, and Hardcore Gaming 101 notes that some stages have "branches within the branches". The final mission is the famous part — HG101 describes it as almost as long as all the prior stages put together. Along the way there are new Slugs (an Elephant Slug and an Ostrich Slug with guns strapped to the animals, the LV Armor mecha and the Slug Driller), freed prisoners of war hand out bonuses, and the game can transform your soldier into a zombie or a mummy.
It is also hard. HG101 calls it "substantially more difficult than the previous games, with bosses that have huge amounts of HP and ridiculous attack patterns," which is the cost of all that length.
One correction. This page used to say you choose from "a variety of characters, each with unique abilities." You pick one of four soldiers — Marco Rossi, Tarma Roving, Eri Kasamoto or Fio Germi — but in this era of the series they are, in HG101's words, "almost all identical". Character-specific abilities did not arrive until Metal Slug 6. Pick whoever you like the look of; two players can go through together.
The later home ports have held up with critics: Metacritic 76 for the original Xbox release and 78 on Xbox 360, where Eurogamer gave it 9/10.
Garou: Mark of the Wolves
The old list carried three SNK fighters and not this one, which was the most obvious gap on the page. Garou reached the MVS on 26 November 1999 and the AES on 25 February 2000, with a Dreamcast port in 2001 (27 September in Japan, 23 November in North America).
It is set ten years after Terry Bogard killed the crime lord Geese Howard, with Terry and his adopted son Rock Howard entering a new South Town tournament. Of its 14 characters, every one is new except Terry — and SNK threw out the Fatal Fury series' signature idea along with the old cast. The two-lane battlefield of the earlier games is gone, and the fight happens on a single plane.
In its place are two systems that define the game. T.O.P. designates a section of your life bar; once your health is in that zone you gain a T.O.P. attack, gradual health recovery and increased damage. Just Defend rewards a block made at the last possible moment with a small amount of health back and the chance to counterattack immediately.
It was acclaimed on every release. The Dreamcast version scored IGN 9/10, GameSpot 8.5/10 and 86 on Metacritic, and GameSpot named it the Best Fighting Game of 2001.
The King of Fighters '98
Released on the MVS on 23 July 1998, the AES on 23 September and the Neo Geo CD on 23 December, The King of Fighters '98 — subtitled Dream Match Never Ends in Japan — is exactly that. Unlike the entries before it, it has no storyline; instead it brings back most of the fighters who appeared from '94 through '97. Those characters come from across SNK's catalogue, including Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier.
You pick three and fight team against team. You also choose between two playing styles, Advanced and Extra, which handle the super-move gauge differently: Advanced is built around stocking power gauges, while Extra shortens the charge time.
Its reputation is the reason it is on this list. It is widely regarded as the best entry in the series and one of the greatest fighting games of all time, and Eurogamer singled it out as the game that made people stand up and take an interest in the series. IGN scored it 8.4/10 and GameSpot 8.6/10, it sold over 100,000 copies in Japan, and SNK remade it in 2008 as The King of Fighters '98 Ultimate Match.
The old copy also called it "a staple in competitive gaming." That may well be true, but nothing checked for this update supports it, so it is gone.
Samurai Shodown II
The first thing to correct: this page used to say Samurai Shodown II "introduces a weapon-based combat system." It did not. The original Samurai Shodown (July 1993) was already SNK's first arcade fighter built primarily around weapons, set in feudal Japan in the late 1780s at a time when most fighting games were modern-day and hand-to-hand. The sequel, set a year later, reached the MVS on 28 October 1994, the AES on 2 December and the Neo Geo CD on 15 December.
What the sequel added is why it is the one people recommend. Controls are more responsive and there are more moves, most notably the POW meter now doubling as a super special move meter. You can roll forwards and backwards and duck under high attacks, and it added an offensive blocking technique — a parry — to the toolkit.
The roster keeps the whole original cast except Tam Tam and Amakusa and adds six newcomers: Genjuro Kibagami, Cham Cham, Neinhalt Sieger, Nicotine Caffeine, Mizuki Rashojin and Kuroko, the black-clad figure who refereed matches in the first game.
The reception was close to unanimous. All four Electronic Gaming Monthly reviewers gave it 9/10 (36/40), Famitsu scored it 34/40 and GamePro 5/5. In Japan the AES cartridge sold 205,554 units and the Neo Geo CD version 129,951, and it was the country's eighth highest-grossing arcade game of 1995. Game Informer ranked it the ninth best fighting game of all time in 2019, and Complex placed it 18th among the best arcade games of the 1990s.
Fatal Fury Special
Another correction. The old copy credited Fatal Fury Special with an "innovative two-plane fighting system." The two-lane battlefield — a background row and a foreground row that fighters move between — was the most novel feature of the original Fatal Fury: King of Fighters in 1991. Special inherited it.
What Special actually is: an updated Fatal Fury 2 (1992), released in Japanese arcades on 16 September 1993 and on the AES on 22 December 1993. It raised the roster to 15 by making Fatal Fury 2's four computer-only bosses playable — Billy Kane, Axel Hawk, Laurence Blood and Wolfgang Krauser — and bringing back Tung Fu Rue, Duck King and Geese Howard from the first game. Art of Fighting's Ryo Sakazaki appears as a hidden opponent at the end of the single-player mode. It also introduced an all-new combo system.
It was a major arcade hit in Japan — the third highest-grossing arcade game of 1994 there — and EGM's four reviewers scored the Neo Geo version 9, 9, 8 and 8. Between 1994 and 1996 it was ported to the SNES, Sega CD, Game Gear, PC Engine and more; our SNES fighting games list covers what those 16-bit home versions were up against.
Blazing Star
The old list had no shooter at all, which misrepresents a library this broad. Blazing Star is a follow-up to Pulstar (1995), developed by Yumekobo — the studio formerly known as Aicom — and released by SNK on the MVS in Japan on 19 January 1998 and on the AES on 26 February.
It is a horizontally scrolling shooter in which each pilot — Leefa, JB and Asayuki among them — flies a ship with a different shot type, power and speed. The core mechanic is the charge: hold the fire button to build it, then release for a powerful focused shot that can also be dispersed to cover a wide area.
Its scores have stayed consistent across decades. Player One gave it 83% in the arcade and 81% on the Neo Geo, and modern re-releases have scored 9/10 at both Nintendo Life and Pocket Gamer.
Neo Turf Masters
The outlier. Neo Turf Masters is a golf game developed by Nazca Corporation — the studio that created Metal Slug the same year, before merging with SNK — and published by SNK on the MVS on 29 January 1996 and the AES on 1 March. It later came to the Neo Geo CD in Japan and, in July 1999, to the Neo Geo Pocket Color.
You play as one of six golfers with different attributes across four fictional courses set in the United States, Japan, Australia and Germany, in stroke play for one or two players or match play for two. The old copy praised its "realistic mechanics," which is the wrong word: it is arcade golf. One press sets the power of the shot, a second sets its height, and the B and C buttons select hook and slice. That brevity is what makes it such a natural fit for short sessions.
It did well in Japanese arcades — the twelfth most successful arcade game there in March 1996 — and IGN gave the Wii Virtual Console release 7.5/10.
Playing Neo Geo games on a handheld
Two practical points apply whatever you play on, whether that is an ANBERNIC RG 34XX or anything else.
You need the BIOS. FinalBurn Neo, libretro's arcade core covering the Neo Geo, requires neogeo.zip. Its documentation says the core looks for the file in the same folder as the game first, then in an fbneo folder inside your frontend's system directory, then in the system directory itself, and that only the MVS Asia/Europe ver. 6 (1 slot) BIOS inside the archive is mandatory.
Romsets have to match the core. The same documentation warns that romsets change over time as FBNeo keeps in step with the best available dumps, and not to expect things to work properly from sets that were not built for your version. It also warns that save states are only guaranteed to keep working as long as you never update the core — worth knowing before you lean on one halfway through Metal Slug 3's final mission.
Frequently asked questions
Is this the Neo Geo Pocket? No. The Neo Geo Pocket and Pocket Color were SNK's handhelds, with their own library. This page covers the arcade MVS and the home AES, which shared one. A few games crossed over — Neo Turf Masters got a Pocket Color version in 1999 — but those are separate releases.
Were the home cartridges really the same as the arcade games? Yes. The AES used identical hardware to the MVS, so home owners played the games exactly as they ran in arcades. That is also why the console launched at $649.99 in the US, with games starting around $200.
What was the last Neo Geo game? The last official SNK game for the system was Samurai Shodown V Special, released in 2004 — fourteen years after the MVS launched in Japan on 16 April 1990.
Why were three of these entries corrected? Because the old descriptions credited each game with something it did not introduce or does not have: unique character abilities in Metal Slug 3, weapon-based combat as a Samurai Shodown II innovation, and the two-plane system as a Fatal Fury Special innovation. All three games stay on the list; only the claims changed.
If I like the fighters here, where next? The PlayStation is the natural next stop for the same era. Our ranked list of PS1 fighting games covers the 2D and 3D contenders, from Street Fighter Alpha 3 to Guilty Gear.
