Bad connection or power supply, hopefully. If so then it's very easily fixed, take it to an electrician and they should be able to sort it out without too much bother.
Umm, is it a regular flashing or just that it goes on and off? I'd have to check up on that, prbably fixable, though.
I have to go with what the big man says and tell you to go MVS. I have all the Neo formats and the CD is by far the worst. Please, don't tell me Neo Turf Masters is that good on Neo CD. The only benefit there is the bonus course that you can unlock. Too many things are left out of the CD versions. At the end of holes on NTM, there are blips between voice effects due to accessing. Load time in many games are unbearable. For the money, you'd probably buy a CDZ. That'll cost you about $200 or so. Then many of the good games are still not that cheap. NTM will run you $70-80. The Slugs will be in that range too. An MVS board and good supergun will set you back about $300-350 or so with a stick. Yes, that's more than the CDZ. BUT. - you can use that supergun to play hundreds of other arcade PCBs - the cost of MVS carts is dirt cheap (SS2, many KoFs, other stuff goes $20-40 easily) and there is no load times. These are arcade games and are the best gaming experience in many folks opinions - by far the most Neo titles were on MVS, some are MVS only. Yes, there were several CD only titles, but most will tell you they weren't worth the prices they get (Ironclad comes to mind) Buy MVS, you'll be much happier hearing the "Oh no!" in Turf Masters immediately after 3-putting hole 17.
You're preaching to the choir/beating a dead dog. This isn't a diascussion of whether the NCD is the best SNK platform. Scroll up, you'll see it's about the loading times. No one said the NCD was the ideal SNK platform. AES/MVS by far are. As assembler said, it's a low cost way for people to get SNK hardware and play some of the more acclaimed SNK games for much cheaper by bootlegging them. These kind of people aren't going to care, or literally can't, about prices for NCD games or the fact that they're slightly/significantly inferior. They're going to download them. For people in a positon like this MVS is in no way an option, AES far less so.
I'm pretty satisfied with my Neo CD... "good" games (Metal Slugs, shmups) are still on the expensive side but if you look well you can get a pretty good deal on the system with a few of the older games (KoF94, Real Bout 3, etc.). If only I had a #%^#@^ RGB lead for it the colours wouldn't look so washed out on my TV (it doesn't like NTSC over composite)
Actually if you read the original post/question, he is asking if the Neo CD is a good platform and if fighting games play well. That is what I was answering in all terms, from load times, to missing content, to price. Everyone else got off on the loading times thing. Owning the Neo CD and MVS it is very important and relevant to the discussion to compare the two. If you've ever played the MVS or AES formats, it is difficult in my opinion to settle for the load times and the missing content on the CD format. Yeah, the PS2 load times are only slightly better than the Neo CD times. Which is why the PS2 doesn't get any playtime at my house.
Blah! you complain about loading times? Didn't any of you have a Commodore 64? You had to wait like 5 minutes to play Dig Dug from Diskette. Don't even get me started on TAPES! Sure, it had cartridges too... but they were somewhat hard to come by. Never played a Speccy or a Tandy. Did those have huge loading times too?
Which is the point. Someone who's going to buy a NeoCD is either going to be a collector who already has an AES/MVS, or someone who wants SNK hardware and the most they can afford is the NCD and free downloaded games. Obviousy anyonw who can will go cart over CD any day, there's no pondering that.
As far as "free downloaded games", I think that's a very bad idea with the Neo CD. Not from a pirated software point of view, but from a longevity of the system point of view. Neo CD (and PC Engine Duo, Sega CD, etc) is first generation CD hardware and is designed to read at 1x. Burned CDs are always 2X or more and generally have errors in the writing. The outcome of this is that the CD hardware has a very difficult time reading some CDRs, no matter how slow you burn the disc or how good you think your error correction is. I've seen time and time again that PCE Duo hardware is totally screwed as far as reading CDs and much of the time it is due to using CDRs regularly. So, in that respect I think if you're buying a Neo CD you'd be much better off not burning your discs. Hell, if that's what you want, ROMZ, just play all the Neo games on your computer with GeoMame or whatever. No chance screwing that up. And since gameplay on the Neo CD is subpar (in my opinion) to cart based you shouldn't have a problem dealing with the idiosyncracies of the RomZ.
First I want to say thank you to everyone on this thread with the wealth of information on the Neo CD Format, id-republix makes a great point that made me rethink my direction with the Neo CD and that being will I buy it as a collector and set its faults aside and except it for what it is. D-Lite and ASSEMbler answered my question very well with what little they had to work with in my original post as with everyone else. They are showing me the option of (more bang for your buck). MVS is the way I wanted to go from the get go and being a rookie that I am I thought the Super Nova system would be the answer as it seemed to be just plug and go for a fair price, and a good place to get my feet wet untill I looked at the nightmare ASSEMbler is dealing with right now and this put a halt to that, so I then gave the Neo CD a look. Now that I have worn everyone down on this subject I will need to move my other questions over to the Supergun forum. Thanks again everyone.
Oh GOD yes! Well the Speccy anyway. I never knew anyone with a floppy drive for a Spectrum, and I'm not sure if any games were released for floppy on the system. Early 16K games took about a minute or two, but the more complex 48K games can be 4-6 minutes. And then you'd get some error half-way through - or even worse - right at the end the damn thing would just reset!! :smt067 Then there were the 128K games... er, you might want to put the kettle on for those... So, yeah, if you grew up with a C64 or Speccy, or Trash 80 or whatever, you could definately live with the loading times of a NGCD. But I'd still probably buy an MVS instead if I had the money, and I'll make my own Supergun ^_^. Though it will be awful...
A bit late on the topic, but I have owned a Neo CDZ. It was a pretty cool console, although as noted the quality of the games (cut animations/washed out colors) where what made me get rid of the system. I moved to an AES system (I only own 2 new games, the rest are all first gen cheapo carts), and I have some MVS stuff. I never had a major issue with load times, I mean it is a old cd system, there are bound to be some load times. I agree with ASSEMbler, the Saturn is always the system forgoten. It had some very good SNK games, i.e. Metal Slug, KoF Collection, Real Bout Collection, etc. (These are also not perfect, but you would expect the Neo Geo CD games to be on par with there cart counterparts) ^_^_^
I love my Saturn, I have both USA and JAP and they get most of my play time, so much so I am giving up my PS2 to bring more fighters into my life.
I don't think it's fair to blame "washed out colors" on the Neo Geo CD(Z) itself - it was probably down to using composite or something. I'm having the same problem with my NGCD, because I don't have a RGB lead - but then, the same goes for Megadrive, etcetera.
Deffinately, Neo Geo CD is the best video you can get anywhere on a Neo Geo. Bar perhaps RGB source from an MVS, which is probably exactly the same.
Maybe, I did only use the regular composite connection. I still think they could have worked the cd media a little better. I know that an RGB connection would give me a better picture, but as a whole to me the CD systems from Neo Geo where a disappointment. I think if I could get one real cheap, I would give it a chance again for the shooters, but for any other genre I would just stick with AES (the prices for most games have come down) which I own or an MVS (working on getting a multi slot board) system. ^_^_^
Um there are other reasons why people like Neo CD, some people enjoy CDDA and omake as well as the CD original titles. My order of appreciation is AES -> CD -> MVS, Neo CD systems are extremely well made and designed. Of course there is loading; Neo games are BIG. Also Neo CD isn't a walk in the park for most pirates. Lots of CD games are protected, it's not difficult to defeat (just replace a few 68K instructions) but it's probably beyond the scope of people who download ISO/MP3 rips (hehe)
