Every neighborhood in the 90s had that kid. The one whose existence subtly reshaped your understanding of social class. For most of us, wealth wasn’t an abstract concept; it was tangible, like a pool in the backyard or a second story on a house. But then there was the Neo-Geo kid, and their wealth felt different. It wasn’t about having more—it was about living in a completely different dimension of existence.
To own a Neo-Geo was to casually declare, “Money? Oh, we don’t even think about it.” This wasn’t like having a Sega Genesis and a Super Nintendo, which was already insane. No, the Neo-Geo was an entirely different league. The console itself cost $650, which in 1990s dollars felt like the GDP of a small country. But the games? Each cartridge could set you back $200 or more. And these weren’t just games—they were literal arcade boards stuffed into a cartridge the size of a VHS tape. Owning a Neo-Geo wasn’t just about gaming; it was a flex so outrageous that even rich kids with tennis courts and family ski trips couldn’t quite fathom it.
I only saw a Neo-Geo in the wild once. It wasn’t even at my friend’s house—it was a friend of a friend, which might as well have been a friend of a mythical creature. His house had this quiet opulence, the kind where the carpet was so thick it felt like walking on memory foam. We weren’t there for long—just enough time to gawk at the console, which looked like it belonged in a glass display case at an electronics expo. The controllers were absurdly large, like someone had ripped them straight off an arcade machine and forgotten to scale them down for human hands.
We played Fatal Fury for maybe ten minutes, but it was ten minutes that defined an entire childhood. The sprites were massive and moved with a fluidity that felt lightyears ahead of my humble Genesis. It was as if someone had bottled the essence of an arcade and brought it into their living room. My Sega games suddenly looked like cave paintings.
But the kid who owned the Neo-Geo? He was nonchalant about the whole thing. He didn’t seem to understand that the rest of us had to rent consoles from Blockbuster on our birthdays. His Neo-Geo sat in his living room like a Ming vase—impressive, yes, but just one of many treasures.
What’s funny is that, for all its prestige, the Neo-Geo didn’t even make you want it. It was so unattainable that it didn’t inspire jealousy. It inspired disbelief. Like seeing a Ferrari parked outside a grocery store—it’s cool to look at, but you know it’s not meant for you. Even the games were ridiculous in their excess. Who could convince their parents to drop $200 on one game when Blockbuster was charging five bucks for a weekend rental of Sonic the Hedgehog?
Owning a Neo-Geo was less about gaming and more about existing on a different frequency. It wasn’t practical or necessary—it was aspirational, like a Rolex for kids who didn’t know what a Rolex was. And the rarity of it only added to the mystique. You didn’t meet many Neo-Geo kids because there weren’t many Neo-Geo kids. They were as rare as a solar eclipse, and just as captivating.
I sometimes wonder what happened to those kids. Are they CEOs now, or did they peak too early? Did the same parents who dropped a grand on a console also buy them a car at 16, or did their early extravagance lead to financial ruin? Maybe it doesn’t matter. What mattered was that for one fleeting moment, they held the grail.
Looking back, the Neo-Geo wasn’t just a console; it was a symbol. It represented an era when video games were still wrapped in mystique, when rumors about secret levels and hidden bosses felt like insider knowledge. And the Neo-Geo was the ultimate rumor—a console so expensive and so rare that most of us never saw one outside of a gaming magazine.
So, to the Neo-Geo kid: thank you. Thank you for letting the rest of us glimpse a world we couldn’t touch. And thank you for the ten minutes of Fatal Fury that became a permanent fixture in my memory. I hope you’re doing well out there, wherever you are. Just don’t tell me you have a PS5 and a Steam Deck now. Let me keep believing your Neo-Geo was the pinnacle of gaming decadence.