Plaion and SNK caused a stir earlier this year when they announced the Neo Geo AES+, a modern remake of the classic 1990 platform that gave us Metal Slug, Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, and King of Fighters.

Pre-order demand massively surpassed expectations, and it seemed that the AES+ was all set for a successful festive season – until it was confirmed that it would be delayed by almost a year due to component issues.

Plaion hardware and software director Ben Jones has been speaking to our friends at VGC about the delay, and reveals how close the whole venture came to being cancelled entirely.

Jones explains that when Plaion entered the production procurement phase, its partners in the Far East told it the chips it needed were unavailable. "It’s the first time I’ve ever been refused ordering chips, and I’ve worked with Plaion for nearly 20 years in this field," he says. "I was like, ‘What do you mean you can’t get these chips? Oh, AI.’"

The chips in question are Parallel NOR flash, and their unavailability forced Plaion the rethink its approach. "I actually flew out to Taiwan to see these companies to basically see if there was any way that we could procure it, and it was a six-month wait to even see if we’d be considered,” Jones tells VGC.

Thankfully, Plaion was able to find a solution – and it didn't have far to look. "We had already made the two ASIC chips in the cartridges that kind of deal with the memory chips, and then send the message to the machine itself. We had thousands of these chips ready for the cartridges,” says Jones.

"With that in mind, we tasked ourselves to try and see if there was some kind of a workaround with using what’s called Serial NOR flash, which is basically the same as parallel, but because the Neo Geo only uses parallel flash, you have to do a conversion that lets you use serial flash, which is in easier demand and you can basically get them."

It was this shift in approach which resulted in the delay on the console's release, Jones explains. Without this solution, there was a very real danger that the entire project would need to be cancelled, says Jones:

"If you hadn’t had the solution for the flash, I think everything was dead. But that’s the journey. And remember, we’ve been working on this for years as well, so it was a bit of a ‘nothing stops this train’ moment. I had to go to Taiwan, I had to speak to everyone, we just had to exhaust all options and be 100% focused. We had to deliver."

You can read the full discussion with Jones from the Tokyo Game Show here.