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[camineet]

was browsing google images and found this:

Via well placed sources close to the developement team working on the
next generation of SNK cartridge machines, information and an
artist's impression has been given for what the next machine to be
launched by the company could look like.

The machine is being considered to be called the Neo-Star, and is a
much bigger system than the one we have all become familiar with for
these past three years. The main differences are obvious from the
artist's impression, showing clearly the new dual CD-1/CD-ROM drive,
able to play special Neo Geo games.

The next major improvement of the machine is the wire-less, Infra-Red
joysticks, allowing the player to sit well away from the machine but
still able to control the action on screen. The other feature is the
new larger capacity memory card, which is a specially created card disk
storage device able to hold 20x more information, and rumoured to be
used in the planned new Home-banking service that would be available
for Japanese users.

The last major external change to the machine is the inclusion of an
Expansion Port that will allow the system to be plugged into a number
of new add-ons due to follow the release of the machine.

The specifications of the unit are still shrouded in secrecy, and will
undoubtedly change as SNK up-grade or down-grade certain features to
keep the machine at a certain price point, but the rough out-line has
been made exclusively to our reader.

The Neo-Star is proposed to be a 32-bit system, against the original
16-bit of the Neo Geo, and will use RISC central processing units, and
is claimed to have a clock speed of around 14.5 MHz, that will make is
seven faster than any of the competition.(five times faster than the
Neo Geo).

The machine is meant to be capable of a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels,
and uses a new Super-Scart system to increase the resolution of the
normal displays it is connected to. No details on the number of colours
or the speed at which it will be able to move sprites around, but we
will have to wait for that information as other manufacturers will also
be keen to know it.

The big news is that the machine is aiming to be able to do polygon
graphics and there is speculation that the Neo-Star could be the first
3D games machine that will be able to create truly interactive virtual
reality style games. The CD-1 Features allows for movie quality
sound/graphics to be played with video game interaction via the
cartridges. The CD-Rom dual feature allows for bigger games to have
extra graphics or information stored on special CD's.

The machine has Infra-Red joystick controllers, as well as sockets for
normal joysticks meaning that four players could take part in one game.
The new joysticks are made to be lighter and more comfortable than the
original with a new "palm grip", and a head-phone socket built-in.
Special surround sound sockets are also included on the machine
allowing it to be plugged into a stereo Hi-Fi to offer mind blowing
sound.

The expansion Port must be the one feature that has the most potential,
with suggestions of a new cable-TV/Modem connector that would allow
multi-player gaming, as well as home-banking features, buying goods off
the TV. Along with a 3D goggles system, and best of all a keyboard
facility, (possibly to be used in-conjunction with the home-banking
features).

For all you Neo Geo owners that do not want to give up their machines,
there is a speculation that SNK are talking about creating a Neo-CD
unit that will allow existing Neo Geo's to be plugged into a kind of
CD drive unit, offering some of the features of the Neo-Star. The unit
is being considered to be launched before the replacement system."

Sounds similar to some of the hype for Nintendo Project Reality :lol

That reminded me, SNK had several, entirely different generations of home & arcade hardware in development that never came out at all, and one that remained arcade-only. The NeoStar was the first of the totally unreleased SNK consoles that I am aware of.


16-bit:
NEO-GEO MVS/AES, NEO GEO CD. SNK's main platform which outlasted all other 16-bit & 32-bit consoles, as well as SNK's own handhelds & 64-bit 2D/3D arcade board.
The original NEO-GEO arcade/home platform was 16-bit, but POWERFUL 16-bit because it had truly arcade quality hardware thanks to powerful custom chips that supported the fast CPUs. Was always hyped as a '24-bit' system which was just silly. Think of NEO-GEO as "industrial strength, arcade-level 16-bit".

32-bit:
NeoStar (mid 1990s, unreleased) At first was the codename for a CD-ROM expansion/upgrade for existing 16-bit NeoGeo but then discovered to be a successor platform with new chipset

64-bit:
Hyper Neo Geo 64 ( 1997 or so, arcade only) SNK's only new hardware beyond NeoGeo MVS. had impressive specs on paper but was SHIT compared to Sega's MODEL 3 board that launched roughly a year earlier. Was somewhat better than PlayStation and perhaps on par with MODEL 2 created in 1993. but ultimately a flop with only a handful of games made.

handheld:
Neo Geo Pocket, Neo Geo Pocket Color

'128-bit':
SNK Millennium ( very end of the 90s, early this decade, 1999-2000. This console had super high polygon specs from apparently a Matrox graphics chip, like the peak theoretical polygon & pixel fillrate specs for PS2 and Xbox, only higher. unreleased)


'256-bit'
(SNK Playmore President hinted at the possibility of a Neo Geo system of the same generation as Xbox2, PS3 but nothing more was ever uncovered

 

[evilromero]

I thought the original NG was 24-bit.

 

[ScrabbleBanshee]

We need another platform for more multiplatform comparisons.

 

[mollipen]

I remember seeing stuff about this back in the olden days of EGM.

Gotta say... a console that absolutely mammoth, I'd totally buy it.

 

[camineet]

I thought the original NG was 24-bit.

lol. yeah. and before SNK claimed the 16-bit NG arcade/home system was 24-bit, they tried to claim, via EGM, that it was 32-bit.

Anyway if NG is '24-bit', then so was Genesis since both systems had the same 16-bit 68000 + 8-bit Z-80 processors. So then that makes Genesis w/ SegaCD a 40-bit system
( 16-bit + 8bit + 16-bit ) :lol

hahaha, no. What really, actually made NG more powerful than Genesis and other consoles of the time, are the same things that made 16-bit arcade systems (even older ones) more powerful: supporting custom chips that allowed for more colors to be displayed at once, from a larger color palette, more sprites of larger sizes, more tiles allowing more background layers (in software), faster clockspeed of the main processor, more sound channels and very large game ROMS. All of those things combined is what seperated NG from Genesis, TurboGrafx and even SNES in many ways, dispite SNES having some effects in hardware that NG lacked, NG more than made up for it with brute CPU processing and co-processor power.

 

[twingloxx2]

Found this on insertcredit.com last year, I assume it refers to the "SNK Millennium":

Today at the Austin Game Developers conference (that's my excuse for the slow updates) I met with a friend who used to work for SNK in Japan. I can't say his name, but his information is certainly reliable. You may recall some time ago that SNK, pre-Aruze purchase, announced that it was working on its next hardware - everyone assumed this was the Neo Geo Pocket 2, or something to that effect. I asked this fellow about it, and he told me that wasn't quite correct. SNK poured a lot of money into the development of a new chip - and this chip was to be used as the foundation for next-gen arcade hardware, as well as a next-gen home console. As time wore on and money got tighter, development slowed, and other next gen home consoles started to come out, and the new SNK chip looked "a bit silly" in comparison. The chip could have also been used in a handheld device, which was probably the last thing they considered once the home console market looked like it had moved beyond them.

"Much better than Neo Geo 64," is what he said to me. Development was abandoned entirely when Aruze took over, but it was meant to compete with other consoles within the 1999~2000 timeframe. Apparently the chip itself looked very good, and at the time it was conceived, it was the absolute top of the line. I'm sure documentation and prototypes exist within SNK's home office in Osaka - one can only imagine what it would've become.

http://www.insertcredit.com/archives/002002.html

 

[sixteen-bit]

I thought the original NG was 24-bit.

Sure, just as any technician.

 

[camineet]

Found this on insertcredit.com last year, I assume it refers to the "SNK Millennium":

Today at the Austin Game Developers conference (that's my excuse for the slow updates) I met with a friend who used to work for SNK in Japan. I can't say his name, but his information is certainly reliable. You may recall some time ago that SNK, pre-Aruze purchase, announced that it was working on its next hardware - everyone assumed this was the Neo Geo Pocket 2, or something to that effect. I asked this fellow about it, and he told me that wasn't quite correct. SNK poured a lot of money into the development of a new chip - and this chip was to be used as the foundation for next-gen arcade hardware, as well as a next-gen home console. As time wore on and money got tighter, development slowed, and other next gen home consoles started to come out, and the new SNK chip looked "a bit silly" in comparison. The chip could have also been used in a handheld device, which was probably the last thing they considered once the home console market looked like it had moved beyond them.

"Much better than Neo Geo 64," is what he said to me. Development was abandoned entirely when Aruze took over, but it was meant to compete with other consoles within the 1999~2000 timeframe. Apparently the chip itself looked very good, and at the time it was conceived, it was the absolute top of the line. I'm sure documentation and prototypes exist within SNK's home office in Osaka - one can only imagine what it would've become.

http://www.insertcredit.com/archives/002002.html

Yup that would've been the SNK Millenium or '128-bit' generation. The last hardware from SNK that can be semi-confirmed to have been in development.



badly translated into english, mentions the various SNK hardware developed
http://neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?p=515603

1º. _ Neon Geo MVS, was the recreational console of arcade, more
impressive of the generation of the 16 bits. Today nevertheless it
goes very behind the new machines like: Cps-3, Naomi, Game Cube, or
Ps-2. SNK developed later, new Neon versions Geo more outposts than
MVS: (Neon Star -32bits -, Hyper Neon Geo 64, and SNK-Millennium -128
bits -). But they were not able to leave ahead in the market
recreational arcade. Why.

_ For when it designs SNK-Playmore, a new Neon version Geo, more
outpost than its present system MVS/AES, in the next years. It could
be, along with similar Sony Ps-3, and Microsoft X-Box 2, and other
systems, for the next generation of 256 bits.

supposed SNK Millenium specs:

SNKs next generation Neo Geo console, the SNK Millennium looks like will be powered by a Matrox 3D graphics chip pumping out 450 million polygons and 30.2 GigaPixels per second. Neo Geo mailing list revealed :
SNK MILLENIUM
CPU INTEL PENTIUM LOGIC INOVATION IV TO 900 MHZ
Graphic card 3D MATROX CHIPSET GPUN (G800?)
Polygons 450 million Polygons per second
Textures 30.2 GigaPixels per second? damn high!
Memory 128 Mb to 300 Mhz
Speed DVD and CD DVD TO 6X AND CD AT 32X
Sound Stereo with 128 channels
S.O. Microsoft C.E. or SNK Control Panel
Modem 128 Bps.
Matrox G800 Rumour Details :
Pin compatible with G450
Double fillrate of G450 (450 million polygon/s?)
Support for 250MHz DDR FCRAM
Support for Hardware T&L
Support for DirectX 8.0 Shader and fully functional DX7
New DX7, 8 IDC drivers
Mass production : Sept. 2000.
Dual G800

 

[abstract alien]

WOW

 

[Zombie James]

Anyway if NG is '24-bit', then so was Genesis since both systems had the same 16-bit 68000 + 8-bit Z-80 processors. So then that makes Genesis w/ SegaCD a 40-bit system
( 16-bit + 8bit + 16-bit ) :lol

Funny thing is, that's the method Atari used for the Jaguar.

 

[camineet]

Funny thing is, that's the method Atari used for the Jaguar.

really? I thought Atari counted a 64-bit data path/bus or register or something like that. Otherwise Jaguar would be more than 64-bit if they added the two 32-bit Tom & Jerry chips and the 16-bit main CPU, etc.

 

[evilromero]

I just remember every ad in my old magazines claiming "24-bit".

 

[Actiss]

Day one. Can't wait!

 

[HUELEN10]

That thing is a fucking BEAST.

 

[camineet]

I just remember every ad in my old magazines claiming "24-bit".

of course, but that didn't make it true.

What NeoGeo was, was a fairly powerful 16-bit arcade board put into a console, more or less pretty equal to Capcom's CPS board that powered Final Fight, Strider, SFII and many others. Same configuration of CPUs plus powerful custom coprocessor(s) for graphics.

Day one. Can't wait!

NeoStar, canceled 14-15 years ago. woulda been so cool. at least to look at the massive bulk of the thing :lol

 

[RaidenZR]

It looks like an ATM!

 

[diddlyD]

Funny thing is, that's the method Atari used for the Jaguar.

no you're wrong. the jaguar did have 2 custom processors in it, both with 64 bit wide registers and data paths. if they would have done neo-geo type advertising they could have said something like 144 bits (with the 16 bit motorola it had in there too).

 

[Ninja Scooter]

what a bigass piece of shit

 

[camineet]

no you're wrong. the jaguar did have 2 custom processors in it, both with 64 bit wide registers and data paths. if they would have done neo-geo type advertising they could have said something like 144 bits (with the 16 bit motorola it had in there too).

Yay, so I was right, or at least partly correct.