The MVS (Multi Video System), as the Neo Geo is known to the coin-operated arcade game industry, offers owners the ability to put up to six different arcade titles into a single cabinet, a key economic consideration for operators with limited floorspace. With its games stored on self-contained cartridges, a game cabinet can be exchanged for a different game title by swapping the game's ROM-cartridge and cabinet artwork. The platform's popular series include Fatal Fury, The King of Fighters, Metal Slug and Samurai Shodown.
The Neo Geo system is also a notably costly and technologically uncompromised home console, commonly referred to today as the AES (Advanced Entertainment System). The Neo Geo was marketed as 24-bit, though it is technically a parallel processing 16-bit 68000-based system with an 8-bit Z80 coprocessor.
Neo Geo hardware production lasted seven years, discontinued in 1997; and game software production lasted fourteen years, discontinued in 2004.[6] As of March 1997, the Neo Geo had sold 980,000 units worldwide.[7] In 2009, the Neo Geo was ranked 19th out of the 25 best video game consoles of all time by the video game website IGN.[8] There is an amateur and professional commercial homebrew market for the system.
