# NEOGEO MVSX Arcade Cabinet Review & Deep Dive! **Source:** RetroRalph **Type:** video **Published:** 2020-09-14 **Duration:** 11m 58s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSSEsGH-OrY --- ## Analysis Retro Ralph reviews the Neo Geo MVSX, a three-quarter scale home arcade cabinet featuring 50 Neo Geo games with adjustable display settings, save states, and customizable controls. He praises the game selection, build quality, and emulation performance, but criticizes the tinny 2-inch speakers and viewing angle brightness variance. Overall recommendation is positive at $500 with the included riser. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Neo Geo MVSX includes 50 games, more than any comparable three-quarter scale home arcade system — _Direct observation during review; explicit statement: 'We haven't seen that quantity of games in any systems like this, these three quarter scale systems really'_ - [HIGH] The cabinet uses 2-inch speakers which produce tinny sound lacking richness and deep frequency response — _Direct audio assessment: 'The two inch speakers are a bit tinny so you're not getting the you know richness of sound'_ - [MEDIUM] Display viewing angles remain consistent left-to-right but brightness increases when viewing from elevated position — _Observed during testing but difficult to capture on camera: 'it is a step brighter and the contrast is a little bit better when you're elevated a bit looking down at the cabinet'_ - [MEDIUM] Joysticks and buttons are one step down in quality from Arcade1Up but comparable to AtGames Legends Ultimate — _Hands-on comparison: 'They feel maybe a step up from Arcade1Up' then later 'kind of like what you'd get out of the AtGames Legends Ultimate'_ - [HIGH] The cabinet offers per-game customizable button layouts and resolution settings that persist independently — _Feature demonstration and settings verification: 'you have four save states per game'_ ### Notable Quotes > "They said we couldn't do it. Oh well, next time." > — **Retro Ralph**, mid-review > _Indicates review unit had contractual restrictions preventing disassembly to identify component manufacturers; reveals limitation of review access_ > "I'm getting married in seven days so I gotta like finish this up and send it off to the next reviewer" > — **Retro Ralph**, final thoughts section > _Personal context explaining why review had time constraints; also indicates review unit is being passed to other reviewers in rotation_ > "With the price being $500 for the bar top with the riser, I would suggest you buy it that way" > — **Retro Ralph**, final thoughts > _Clear pricing recommendation based on display performance assessment_ > "I'm looking forward to getting my production unit so I can open it up and do all those fun things" > — **Retro Ralph**, final thoughts > _Indicates reviewer will have different access level with production unit compared to review unit_ > "We've got that USB port on the back. It's rather mysterious right now. I know it's going to be for system updates, but can you add games later? I don't know, but we'll see." > — **Retro Ralph**, final thoughts > _Identifies unconfirmed future capability; suggests potential for game library expansion_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Neo Geo MVSX | product | Three-quarter scale home arcade cabinet featuring 50 Neo Geo games; subject of review | | Retro Ralph | person | Content creator and arcade hardware reviewer; reviewer of Neo Geo MVSX | | Arcade1Up | company | Competing three-quarter scale arcade cabinet manufacturer; used as quality and feature comparison baseline | | AtGames Legends Ultimate | product | Competing arcade game compilation system; used as joystick/button quality comparison point | | SNK | company | Original Neo Geo developer/publisher; manufacturer of arcade cabinets being emulated by MVSX | | Metal Slug | game | Neo Geo game showcased during gameplay demonstration in review | | King of Fighters | game | Neo Geo game series featured prominently in game collection menu of MVSX | ### Topics - **Primary:** Home arcade cabinet hardware quality and construction, Emulation performance and display settings, Audio system quality and speaker specifications, Control panel design and joystick/button quality - **Secondary:** Game library variety and selection strategy, Pricing and value proposition in home arcade market, Comparison to competitor products (Arcade1Up, AtGames) - **Mentioned:** Viewing angle and monitor brightness variance ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.75) — Favorable overall assessment with genuine praise for game selection, emulation quality, and build construction, balanced against specific technical complaints (speakers, display viewing angles) that are framed as minor compromises rather than deal-breakers. Reviewer explicitly recommends purchase at the stated price point. ### Signals - **[community_signal]** Retro Ralph soliciting direct viewer feedback on purchase intent and target audience (hardcore Neo Geo fans vs. casual buyers) (confidence: high) — Direct call-to-action: 'Put your comments below is this something you want to get are you a super neo geo fan so you'd get it anyways no matter what is this neo geo or is this a pass for you' - **[market_signal]** MVSX pricing at $449-$500 establishes competitive pressure in three-quarter scale arcade segment; reviewer positioning USB port as potential future game expansion avenue suggests manufacturer may be planning post-launch updates (confidence: medium) — Reviewer speculation on USB capability: 'can you add games later? I don't know, but we'll see. Maybe that'll be a possibility and that could be a really cool thing in the future' - **[announcement]** Neo Geo MVSX officially launched as new competitor in three-quarter scale home arcade market with $449 (bar top) and $500 (with riser) pricing (confidence: high) — Structured review of released product with retail pricing; indicates product is available or shipping imminently - **[product_concern]** Display viewing angle produces variance in brightness and contrast depending on elevation; monitor appears significantly brighter when viewed from above than from eye level (confidence: medium) — Subjective observation with technical difficulty capturing on video: 'it is a step brighter and the contrast is a little bit better when you're elevated a bit looking down at the cabinet' - **[product_concern]** 2-inch speaker system identified as technical limitation producing tinny sound with insufficient low and mid-frequency response (confidence: high) — Direct assessment: 'The two inch speakers are a bit tinny so you're not getting the you know richness of sound that maybe you expect out of you know, a real full size arcade. But, uh, so I just need to bring that up. So you're not going to have really deep lows or really deep mids.' - **[technology_signal]** Introduction of 50-game library on single three-quarter scale cabinet represents significant increase over previous competitor offerings (confidence: high) — Direct quote: 'We haven't seen that quantity of games in any systems like this, these three quarter scale systems really. So that's really cool. It'll probably put some pressure on others to maybe put more games in a single system.' --- ## Transcript Yeah! There's a new entry into the home arcade space, the Neo Geo MVSX! But does it live up to the hype? In this episode, we're gonna find out! Yeah! Let's do it! All right, here it is, the Neo Geo MVSX. Let's take a look at that side art. The side art looks nice. It's definitely a throwback to the original big red cabinet. Now, let's take a look at the lit marquee. It's very well distributed. The light and the quality of the print is good. The control panel looks nice. It has this nice acrylic top, so no need to have any kind of protector over it. If we scroll up on the side of the cabinet, you'll see that MVSX logo. I think they did a really good job at that. Now, they added these little covers that go over the screw holes. This is awesome. It hides those unsightly screw holes. This is something we haven't seen in the three-quarter space, and I welcome that very much. These LED credit indicators don't actually function, but they look cool. And then as far as the front of the cabinet, you have these two speakers, and then you have that faux coin door in the middle. That doesn't really do anything but it looks kind of neat. Then you got this edge molding on the side, it's about a half inch. The wood quality seems fairly good and it's substantial. But let's go on a little field trip because I want to compare this control panel to an original Neo Geo control panel and I happen to have one in my storage unit. So let's go real quick on a field trip. There it is. Let's take it home and take a look. So how does it stack up to the original control panel? Obviously the button layout is not the same. This is a four-button layout, which is traditional Neo Geo, and this is a six-button, but I think they captured the essence of it, so good job, guys. I'm very impressed by this. They could have added the memory card slot and then got rid of this faux coin door, but I won't be that picky. As far as the screen goes, it's 17 inches diagonally from corner to corner, and we'll talk more about that later. And then as far as the control panel, it's 19 1/2 inches, so two players should be able to play pretty comfortably with this setup. As far as the sticks and buttons, they feel maybe a step up from Arcade1Up, better Sanwa clones. They're not bad. They're concave buttons versus the convex ones on the Arcade Stick Pro. But who cares? Let's just open it up and we'll see exactly what they are. No problem, right? We'll open this sucker up and... No, dude. Ralph, Ralph. Stop, stop. They said we couldn't do it. I'm sorry. They said we couldn't. Oh well, next time. Here's a quick comparison to the Neo Geo Arcade Stick Pro. I feel like the Arcade Stick Pro is a step higher quality than what we're getting on this Neo Geo MVSX as far as the buttons and joysticks. But if you prefer these, you can always swap them out, right? They're not going to be exact to the arcade. You have to use something like a Happ competition or an IL stick to get the same experience. But again, for the price point, they're decent and they get the job done. All right, let's boot the system up and check it out. You're greeted with the MVSX splash screen and then you're brought directly into the user interface, which is actually quite nice. As you select the games below, you'll see they're in collections. The King of Fighters collection is first, and then the box art for those games will show up above, and then you'll go on to the next section of games. Now, if you're a super hardcore fan, there may be some titles here that are absent that disappoint you, but I think it's a decent variety for the 50 games that are included. And we haven't seen that many games really on these three quarter scale units, except for the AtGames Legends Ultimate, but these are really good high quality Neo Geo titles. So I'm pretty impressed by that. And if you're brand new to the Neo Geo, this is a ton of variety for you to get exposure into the library. And I think you'll be happy with the game selections. But let's get into the settings because there is a lot of them. All right, let's check out the system settings real quick. So the first one you're greeted with is the language setting. There's 10 different languages, so no matter where you are in the world experiencing this cabinet, you should be pretty well covered. Game mode is going to be MVS mode and AES mode. MVS is the arcade version of the game, and the AES is the home version. There's some slight differences because obviously the MVS one took credits or quarters where the other one was more like a traditional console. When you go to game image, these are actually resolution settings. My favorite one is pixel perfect, or what's called pixel scaling, that will maintain the original aspect ratio of the game. It looks great. It is going to reduce your screen size a little bit, but it is the best way to experience it, in my opinion. Then there's system, which is system update. This doesn't do anything right now, but in the future you can use the USB port in the back to update the system. And then there's factory reset. Be careful if you do this because it will wipe out all your save games, your custom button layouts, and any resolution settings you have on a per game basis. And we'll get to that in a little bit. All right, let's play a couple games real quick. So the first one I'm going to select is Metal Slug. Okay, because I'm in MVS mode, I'm going to need to put in coins, and then I'm going to hit the start button. When you're here, it shows you how to play the game. That's typical for Neo Geo MVS, which is really cool because it tells you how to play. So you can adjust the button mappings if you want in the game. So that is an option of the system. So you can go to controller setting, and actually this maps the left one and this maps the right one. And it gives you options. Like if you don't like the standard Neo Geo button layout, you can actually change it. So that is something that's a per game setting. And again, if you reset the factory settings, these per game settings will actually go away. The other thing you can do is when you're in the game, you can adjust all those resolution settings we talked about. I like the scaling setting again, that's pixel perfect. And there is an option to do it with scan lines as well. I'll show you right now. You may not pick this up on the screen, but there is actually a border on the top, the bottom, and the sides in order to maintain the original aspect ratio of the game. So as far as the overall emulation is concerned, all the games that I played seemed to emulate great. There wasn't any issues here. It actually plays very well. There's no input lag or anything like that. Sometimes you can have things like screen tearing and all sorts of issues when it comes to emulation, but I'm not seeing any of that on any of the games that I played, so that's good. And all the sound emulation seems great too. The only comment I'll make on the sound is in my final thoughts, I will talk a little bit about the sound. The sound could be better. It's a little bit tinny, and I think it's because of the fact that it's only using 2-inch speakers in this system. But if I want to change the options in the middle of the game, if I want to change the way it's displayed, I can go to the scan line setting. Now this sometimes is a little hard to see on camera, but I'll see if hopefully you guys can make it out. And if not, I'll sort of zoom in so you can see it a little bit better. So you can kinda see there's scan lines in the image now, and I'll zoom in for ya so you can see those. Now some people may say, "Hey, I want all my screen real estate. I don't care about original aspect ratio and stretching the image and all that." So if that's the case, then you can hit the option button yet again and you can go to game image and go to smooth scaling. So this is gonna put a smoothing filter on it. I don't really love the way this looks, but some people may not care. And if you do this, you now get the full screen on both the top, bottom, and right and left. But you can also see it's got kind of a stylistic look to it. I'm not really a big fan of that. It almost reminds me of like a bilinear filter or something like that. I'm not a fan, but you know, some people don't mind this kind of thing. So what about save states? If I hit my options button while I'm in the middle of the game, I can save my game. So I have four save states to choose from. I can hit the A button and save it there. Now I'm going to go back into the game and then I'm going to load that so you guys can see how that works. So I'm going to go back in game. I'm going to sort of jump down here. And you remember I was up high. So I'm going to go to options, load, and I can load that save state. And I'm right back where I was before. So that's pretty cool. And those four save states are per game. So you have four save states for every single game on the system, which I think is really cool. Now, I think it's important that we discuss the viewing angle of the monitor. So if you look over to the left or the right, the brightness stays the same. The contrast stays the same. It looks totally fine. However, when you're looking at it in a bar top mode, it is slightly darker than when you elevate yourself. Now, I tried to capture this on the camera, but I just couldn't do it. The camera just didn't pick it up. Now, they didn't give me the included base, but if you buy it with the base, you're probably not even going to notice this. But it was something that I just wanted to bring up because I did notice that it is a step brighter and the contrast is a little bit better when you're elevated a bit looking down at the cabinet. All right, guys, it's final thoughts time. So what do I think about the Neo Geo MVSX? Does it live up to the hype? Let me tell you a couple of things I don't like about it first and then I'll give you my overall summary. So the two inch speakers are a bit tinny, so you're not getting the richness of sound that maybe you expect out of a real full size arcade. So I just need to bring that up. So you're not going to have really deep lows or really deep mids. It's more of a higher sound. So just wanted to throw that out there. And the other thing too is on the monitor. The viewing angles are fine, but it does seem to be a step brighter when you're above it playing down, like on the riser. With the price being $500 for the bar top and the riser, I would suggest you buy it that way if you're interested. Otherwise, you end up spending an extra $100 on the riser. I think it's going to be $449 versus $500, and then you'd have to pay an extra $100, so you'd end up going in at $550 versus $500. So it's best to buy the riser up front with it. And I would definitely suggest it. With the riser, the system has a ton of great options. Like the save states are cool. All the different scan line features are there. I actually missed a couple of them and I'm sorry about that. I'm getting married in seven days, so I gotta like finish this up and send it off to the next reviewer. But the only bummer thing is I wanted to really see what the sticks and buttons are. They feel like better quality Sanwa clones, you know, somewhere in the middle, like kind of like what you'd get out of the AtGames Legends Ultimate. They did a good job with their sticks and buttons. I feel like it's kind of similar quality. But they wouldn't let me open it. That was a stipulation, and I agreed to it. So, hey, they said if you want to review it, you can't open it up for right now. But, you know, I'm looking forward to getting my production unit so I can open it up and do all those fun things and see what other capabilities it may have. We've got that USB port on the back. It's rather mysterious right now. I know it's going to be for system updates. But can you add games later? I don't know, but we'll see. Maybe that'll be a possibility and that could be a really cool thing in the future. So that's kind of it. That's really all I have to say. I will say the game selection is very good. There's 50 games. We haven't seen that quantity of games in any systems like this, these three quarter scale systems really. So that's really cool. It'll probably put some pressure on others to maybe put more games in a single system. But I think it's a good value for the price of the overall unit. That's kind of all I got, everyone. So hey, if you like the video, give us a thumbs up. Consider subscribing to the channel if you enjoy content like this and definitely turn on notifications so you can be informed of future videos as I publish them. That's really all I got, guys. Put your comments below. Is this something you want to get? Are you a super Neo Geo fan, so you'd get it anyways no matter what? Is this a Neo Geo win or is this a pass for you? I want to know. Put it in the comments below. That's it. We will see you on the next one. _(Acquisition: youtube_groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: d53ac282-0e37-4896-a67a-5c157cc161c1*