Yesterday, Plaion and SNK announced the Neo Geo+ AES, a revival of the original 1990 home console that cost an absolute fortune back in the day.
In fact, many existing AES games have ballooned in value since the system launched in the '90s, with prices often hitting thousands of dollars. Many AES games were produced in small quantities and have become incredibly collectable as a result.
As part of the Neo Geo+ project, Plaion is re-releasing ten Neo Geo games in physical form, with each cart costing $89.99.
While this doesn't instantly seem like good value when you consider that you can pick up digital versions of these games for under $10 on most modern systems (not to mention as part of the excellent Evercade collections), when compared to the cost of the original AES carts, it's something of a bargain.
Exactly how much of a bargain it is has been (roughly) worked out by Reddit user RGB2C02N.
They've estimated that if you buy all ten games at $90 each, you're 'saving' over $92,000 US compared to what brand-new copies of these games would cost in 2026.
"I took the prices from Price Charting for AES US games other than Twinkle Star Sprites since that is a Japan-only release," says the Redditor. "The 2 italicised values for Metal Slug and Garou are the CIB prices since the New price was N/A. The value proposition for today’s announcement is absolutely UNREAL!!"
Even if you're only looking to compare them to complete-in-box second-hand copies, the Neo Geo+ AES Ultimate bundle represents a saving of over $57,000 US.
It's worth noting that this figure is solely based on the value of the ten games purchased on their own, and doesn't factor in the fact that you get all the games, the Neo Geo+ AES console and a bunch of accessories in the $999.99 cost of the Ultimate Edition bundle.
Of course, all of this assumes you have no issue with your cash partially benefiting one of the most controversial regimes of the modern era – something that a great many SNK fans aren't particularly happy about, and for good reason.
