I was lucky enough to live in Japan during the early 90s and again the early 00s, and remember the neo Geo and wonderswan fondly. I never owned any, I had a Gameboy, but I had friends with them. Japan’s older games always had a unique charm to them, especially on those consoles, and of course their arcades (all their * mania machines!)

I mostly remember seeing reviews of Neo-Geo games in CVG UK when I was a kid, and remarking at how insanely expensive they were. I think one game was something crazy like 300 pounds of 1990s money, so probably about 10,000 pounds of today’s money. When I moved to Japan I would see the same games on sale used for about 500 yen, which was about 4 pounds at the time.

Neo Geo was one of the first systems I was really into playing on emulators because of how much we all desired them as kids and because they played great even on my ancient Pentium 200 back in 2000 or so.

EDIT: I just remembered that when I joined my first company in Japan (in 2006 I think), one of my colleagues had a real Neo-Geo and we played 2-player Metal Slug during our afternoon break from time to time. He had the smaller sticks, not the behemoth ones that are larger than the console itself, and they were quite comfy to use. He had Blazing Star, Last Resort, Metal Slug and Metal Slug X. I think only Last Resort and Blazing Star were legit carts, and he sold Blazing Star for a decent amount of money when he got rid of it all.