Conversions are fine.
I only have problems when you flood one system with ports from another.
I am buying an AES+ not an SNK Super Nintendo. 😅

arcade conversions are taking hardware that essentially belongs to another hardware, and adapting it to run on another platform with a different architecture. A port takes the OG code, is heavily adapted and then placed on the hardware. One is built from the ground up, the other is a renovation. If you were to think of a house , a conversion would be to build it foundationally building your house from the ground up, a port would be taking a basement and converting it into a bedroom. This is why human language doesn’t work because as you can see I used the word convert . Lines are extremely blurred often times. I assume that’s what you were asking.. sorry if not.

The conversions are fine but I think most who pre ordered the AES plus want those expensive original SNK classics for $90

I'd say nostalgia will be the deciding factor.  If you grew up with Street Fighter on the SNES, it will always be a SNES game.  Being able to play Mario 64, Star Fox 64, Ocarina of Time on the 3DS doesn't make them 3DS games, they are N64 games you can play on a 3DS.  Unless your first experience with them was on a DS or 3DS, then they are 3DS games.  If your first experience with Zero Wing is for the Neo Geo, then it is 100% a Neo Geo game.  Whether a game is a Neo Geo game or not will depend on the person and the game.

I think the Mega Drive is a great example. Its games have a distinctive sound and look. Compare the Mega Drive and SNES versions of the same game, and you can often tell which is which straight away. I feel the same way about Neo Geo. To me, big, detailed sprites, rich backgrounds, and great animation are part of its identity. That’s what I associate with the platform, not just the hardware running the game. So when a game is ported from 8bit or another 16bit system without much being changed, you can still see and hear where it came from. It runs on Neo Geo, sure, but that doesn’t automatically make it feel like a Neo Geo game.

I guess I just wish they’d adapt the games to the hardware rather than simply get them running on it. The best ports made the most of the platform they were coming to. When bringing a more demanding arcade game to a 16-bit console, developers would cut back on detail, simplify the color palette, and so on. And when the target hardware offered more, the best ports took advantage of that too. That’s what I’d like to see here.

I’d love to hear Nalua Studio’s take on this. To me, their Gley Lancer: Overdrive is a perfect example of how to upgrade a Mega Drive game to look and feel like a Neo Geo game. It’s closer to a remake, sure, but that’s exactly the kind of approach that takes a game from another platform and immediately makes it feel like a Neo Geo game.

I've been saying this. If you're going to bring it to the Neo Geo, it needs to be elevated. I would prefer Zero Wing Neo over the vanilla 'port,' which is a step down from every other Neo Geo game. I agree with the Gley Lancer comment. They took the Mega Drive version of Gley Lancer, and brought it to the future, taking all the capabilities of the target platform and taking advantage of that. Gley Lancer is going to single-handedly get more Neo Geo AES+'s sold. Mark my word.

Ok for P.O.W but no golden axe, shinobi or super Mario..😅

Personally, i don't really care what exactly is considered "a Real Neo Geo Game"" and what isn't.  People seem to want to put a definitive  complex label on everything. For me, it doesn't matter.  Real Neo Geo game, the upcoming Gley Lancer Overdrive and the 1:1 port of Zero Wing,sure there are differences in execution but it's all cool.  I have an AES and  i think it's great being able to get some new games for it without paying insane money for it. I think it's interesting to see Gleylancer getting a real Neo Geo treatment,but also interesting to see h0ffman getting a cps-1 game ported over to the Neo Geo. It's nice to have options.

If I’m being 💯on feels alone.. there are certain games around the time the NEOGEO came into its best years , games on the arcade platform that never got conversions that belonged on the NEIGEO console, those games off the top of my head are Gunforce II,  In the Hunt, and holy I forgot the name it’s a beat em up…. Undercover Cops! Since they were developed by IREM geniuses that went on to create metal slug, their art style is synonymous with the NEOGEO. Those games belong perfectly and have in my opinion the utmost right to be there. It makes me wonder if SNK had plans to port them at any point. The disc based systems couldn’t handle them, at all. In the Hunt was absolutely battered.

They are AES+ games! That solves it!

Uh-Oooooooh!! That's the "No-No"word to use in the 90's-00s Neo-Geo community folks. But then true conversions use 100% SNK  parts. If it uses counterfeit parts, then its a bootleg.  

Anthony..

I think it should be a straight arcade port or upcoversion from megadrive not 1:1

In the 80s and 90s, I always read in magazines about ports of arcade games. These would then come out on my beloved Schneider Amstrad CPC, C64, or somewhere else. Yeah, they were basically always downports. Now, bringing arcade games from the 70s–90s to modern consoles so that they run smoothly is no problem at all. Even the original Xbox from 2001 could handle some of them without any issues. But if, for example, an SNES Zelda comes to the PS5, for me, and it always will be, it’s a port and not a PS5 game. And if a CPS game comes to Neo Geo, it will always remain a CPS port for me. That said, I’d still buy it immediately. Even just to rub it with the Neo Geo modules 😂—different scent every day. Perfect. 🤗 But that’s just my opinion. I also think the CPS library is better than Neo Geo 🤐. In the end, you should ask yourself if you like these games and are willing to spend that much money. After all, there are better arcade sticks and cheap downloads of the games.

Give me the full SEGA System 16 library with Arcade perfect conversion and I’ll buy them. Same as for the Capcom CPS1 and CPS2 Games

If they are being ported I want to see them improved, mainly animations.  If the Golden Axe series was ported imagine instead of having the choppy animations it has the smooth animations quality like Metal Slug.  It would be the most desired out of all the releases and I think collectors would want them, I am not a big collector but I would definitely buy them.

Doing a 1 to 1 port from Sega Genesis or games easily available to download and play on other systems for little to no costs is going to increasingly become a hard sell.  I'll probably get Zero Wing, but if they just keep releasing games I have the roms for or on Evercade carts at 90 and probably soon to be over 100 dollars each will eventually be a pass from me.

For me it's a question of style. Neo Geo Games were play tested in Arcades to see, if they can get people's attention. Are they colorful enough, the sprites big enough, the sound effects or intros catchy enough? SNK had a very unique way of presenting their games. So did Capcom, Data East, ADK, etc. But SNK was some sort of underdog against Capcom, what made them very creative. So not every arcade game is good enough in my opinion for a conversion. It has to be "special-cool"... 😂

BTW, wasn't Bust-A-Move a "conversion"? I thought it was released on other arcade-hardware before.

you have it backwards friend:

A port keeps the original game and adapts it so it runs somewhere else. Developers reuse most of the code, assets, and systems, then change what the new hardware or OS requires: resolution, controls, frame rate, memory limits, file formats, and so on. The result is meant to be the same game. Horizon Zero Dawn on PC, or a modern multiplatform release moved from PlayStation to Xbox with the same engine, is a port. “Enhanced ports” add small extras (higher resolution, a few options) without rebuilding the game.

A conversion, in the older and more technical sense, is a version rebuilt to stand in for the original rather than a direct transfer of its code. That was the norm for a lot of arcade-to-home and 8-bit computer releases. The arcade board used a different CPU, the home team often had no usable source, and the target machine could not hold the original graphics or logic, so programmers recreated the game from scratch and approximated it. Atari 2600 Pac-Man is the classic example: same name and idea, almost none of the original program. People still marketed these as “arcade ports,” which is why the words got muddy.

Yes.   Ports.  Conversions.  Whatever. All to pedantic.  If it is licensed and released for the NeoGeo AES/AES+ it is a NeoGeo game.

neo geo game is a game developed by SNK ?

I don’t see any differences between ports and conversions. If you think about it, a conversion is technically a perfected port. Every port wants to be the closest experience possible to the original, but it is rare to claim Arcade-perfection unless you’re a tech wizard like hoffman.

In any case, if you port something that’s officially licensed by the system, then yes ports are real NeoGeo games. What divides the current discussion in my opinion is the wide gap between the AES’s legacy and the AES+ revival. It is unusual to get new official ports on a retired system. It is indeed unprecedented.

The closest thing that I can relate this to is getting official new releases on dead consoles. Star Fox 2 on SNES, Earthbound Zero on NES, and those lost Virtual Boy titles. Those are real games on their platforms but we never expected them to be officially released considering the retired legacies of these consoles.

For me personally, I think it’s a fun novelty to get new ports nowadays, but I’m not really interested in games that I have already played in the past unless they’re deeply nostalgic or if I want to dabble for a session or two. Ports of games I haven’t played is something I’m quite interested in. Terranigma for example, a lost classic that is getting a new emulated port, is a game that I never played and I’m quite interested in.

If you really want to be technical, there’s a couple of situations in the modern era that consoles received Arcade-perfect ports; Street Fighter 4 is an example. I think Tekken too. But with Arcades falling out of favor and the technology of consoles matching Arcades, we didn’t really feel it.

Also an interesting tidbit here: Marvel vs Capcom 2 on DreamCast is considered an Arcade-perfect port. So we’ve seen this situation before.