Remember the Neo Geo? Chances are you probably never owned one, the brand was forever regulated to obscurity due to a rather high price point. It twas a console brought to you by SNK, the folks who created Metal Slug back in the early 90s – although your probably more likely to remember the Neo Geo Pocket Color. Despite never being able to quite compete with the likes of Sega and Nintendo due to being ludicrously expensive, the Neo Geo did gather quite a strong cult following with it’s first console, the Advanced Entertainment System due to a strong game line up.

To celebrate Neo Geo’s 20th anniversary Tommo Inc and SNK Playmore have partnered up to produce the Neo Geo X Gold, a brand new handheld that’s due to hit the shelves just in time for Christmas, meaning some annoying child will open up their stockings to find:

Not only does the package come with the hand held, which looks suspiciously like an iPhone with a couple of buttons, and a dodge circle pad tacked on, it also comes with a massive retro joystick and a console station similar in design to the AES that you can plug into your TV so you can game away like it’s 1995 – in HD no less, as the Neo Geo X Gold also comes with much coveted HDMI outputs in the docking station.

The console also has a bunch of awesome games pre-loaded, with instantly memorable classics such as Fatal Fury, Fatal Fury Special, and World Heroes Perfect. Never heard of them? Well at least the whole package comes at a reasonable price, with Tommo CEO Jonathon Wan reassuringly stating that;

“Great game consoles don’t die; they’re just reborn in much more affordable and convenient packages”

Remember how I mentioned before that Neo Geo hardware had a tendency to be ever so slightly overpriced? Well in this case affordable means $200, which is about what you’d pay for a 3DS with a whole shed load of Mario games. Clearly the word “Gold” adds an extra $50 to the tag, and the “X” just makes it cool. As for great games consoles never dying, the Neo Geo may well have been reborn, but I haven’t thought nor heard about that brand in well over ten years. If it had died, I really didn’t care and I still don’t either way.
 
If the Neo Geo tickles your fancy, or you can’t believe it actually costs $200, check out NeoGeoX.com - for evidence.