The Neo Geo brought the arcade home with zero compromise: it was literally the same hardware as SNK's coin-op board, so home games were pixel-identical to the arcade. A 68000 plus a Z80, an enormous sprite system, and gigantic cartridges that cost as much as a rival console each.
The Four Natures
each piece emerges by one of four natures
The Idea
the three-beat story
SNK's MVS arcade board and the home AES console share the same silicon — a Motorola 68000 at 12 MHz with a Z80 for sound — so a Neo Geo home game was identical to the coin-op, frame for frame. Unheard of in 1990.
The custom sprite hardware could place hundreds of large sprites with scaling, driving the huge characters and busy screens of SNK's fighters and shooters — far beyond its contemporaries.
Games shipped on massive ROM cartridges holding hundreds of megabits — and cost around 200 dollars each, with the console itself a luxury. Brilliant, and priced like jewellery.
The Teardown — Click a Block
the machine, laid out as a block diagram — the main processor on top, the rest of the silicon beneath, buses showing what talks to what. Click any block to read its spec. An accurate architecture diagram (a teardown illustration, not a schematic).
The Spec Sheet
the headline numbers — the spec edition
12 MHz.
sound.
380+ sprites · scaling.
FM + ADPCM.
~330 Mb · ~$200 each.
The Reckoning
the teardown, and the honesty about it
The Domain: Open It and Spec It
the teardown
- EXEREÚNESIS takes a real, made machine apart down to the chip and writes the honest spec — not a story-world but a technical anatomy.
- >One of a growing series of console teardowns; siblings link from the marquee.
Two-Layer Honest
datasheet vs lore
- Settled: the shared MVS/AES hardware, the 68000 + Z80, the sprite system, the YM2610 audio, and the enormous expensive carts are documented.
- Flagged: 'arcade-perfect' is literally true here because it is the same hardware — stated as fact, the rare case where the marketing was accurate.
Render, Not Invent
sourced
- Summarized from the public technical record for the SNK NEO GEO · AES; the manufacturer and its engineers are cited, not minted.
- No ROMs, BIOS, or copyrighted code are reproduced. Emergents are physical components; the block diagram is an illustration, not a schematic.
The Roster
every chip and part as an ACI .agent — each a birth certificate & a nature (6)
