Is it possible to make a cheap neo geo clone?

I was thinking, with all these genesis and snes clones coming out that are pretty much spot on now, is it possible to make a neo geo clone that's cheaper to buy then a real neo geo?

 

There are a few bootleg MVS boards on the market (actual PCB, not games, which have been bootleg'd forever)

 

it's time for a neo on a chip with sd card support and rgb out? Surely i would be interested in such a product

 

250K for rights? isn't that a bit on the cheap estimation side?

 

Ah that's right the hardware rights haven't expired yet. As for board, I am referring to aes, not mvs.

 

you mean that the companies making those genesis on a pad, portable genesis, etc are paying off that much only of hardware reproduction right? incredible since they sell at such low prices! (and the genesys ones are legit and include even some sega games on them!)

 

Yes, the Neo Geo is actually simpler than the Genesis to clone for the most part and the costs are only slightly more expensive by way of 4K more memory and I/O. Will it happen? It already has for MVS, albeit not a SoC. Will it happen for AES? Not likely.

 

Just buy an MVS. I got mine for about 50USD.

 

Yeah, the games are cheapass too. If you don't want to collect (only AES games or MVS kits), MVS is like a console. Good + wanted games cost 50-100$, regular and common ones can be had for 10-30$.

Ideal, no need for a clone from my side!

Though it would be an interesting project, I gotta admit that. As for licenses, which of the countless Chinese Famiclone producers cared about trademarks? Why has there never been an attempt to clone the Neo Geo while it was still at it's peak of popularity in 1998-2003?

 

Probably not the cheapest device to clone at the time.

 

a well made clone would be 20 years younger

 

I think there is a market for a neo geo clone. As for mvs games, I agree they are cheaper but not everyone has access to an arcade monitor or the skills to make a supergun. However a neo geo clone could possibly have an mvs slot with an aes converter cart or vice versa.

 

Exactly, as far as I know, KoF is very popular in China.

 

Given the proliferation of devices capable of emulating the NeoGeo, any demand there ever was for a hardware clone of the platform is probably long gone. It would never have had broader appeal without pirate games, anyway - there's no way anyone who's quibbling over the £50 a genuine NeoGeo AES costs would stump up £1k for Metal Slug.

Enthusiasts will buy an AES or convert an MVS. Everyone else will make do with a Dingoo handheld or whatever.

 

Sadly I think you're right Alchy. I can't really see atleast any for profit pirates cloning the NeoGeo. But it is still possible a hobbyist might do it as a project with a FPGA (or several) which would be cool.

 

Quite easy pirate the hardware, dump the games on eproms and sell it for profit...

*strokes nonexistant beard*

I might be on to something here....

 

What are you talking about? For most if not all NeoGeo games you would spend more money bootlegging a cartridge than you would buying the original if you are using EPROMs. Also as far as games go, there are plenty of "100-in-1" MVS carts out nowdays so you won't make shit selling NeoGeo bootlegs unless you make some awesome all in 1 cartridge.

 

In case people missed it, the Neo WAS cloned. The part cost is incredible though, probably reaching $100 due to discrete CPUs and memory. That's exactly why it cannot be easily fit into a system-on-a-chip; there's 150K of RAM and either 192 or 256K of integral ROM (BIOS and scaling), and lots more in the case of MVS. Beyond the fact that even bootleg Neo games aren't cheap at all by Chinese standards, Neo cloning probably never caught on because it REQUIRES a BIOS; FC, PCE, MD, GB, SFC and GBA do not (GB, SFC and GBA sort of do but they're extremely small and can be well hidden from the user/Nintendo). Cloners fear legal action too.