Hey ReynardFox are you from Adelaide? Yeah I remember those three arcades, they were on hindley street right? Twilight Zone, Timezone Meridian and Tilt. Man I loved the lock-ins till the early hours and started my love for Street Fighter 2 in those days.

Don't know exactly why the government didn't want them there anymore, maybe something to do with drugs, or asians fighting (for real). I remember seeing a fight between asian gangs at Leisure Zone in salisbury once, one guy grabbed the Leisure Zone sign in front of the arcade and smashed it over someones back, ouch!

They closed those small arcades in surrounding suburbs as well, only bloody TunzaFun left with just the most popular games, not much for the hardcore arcade crowd.

Steam isn't the only option. You can also find them on GamersGate (which also has games that DotEmu didn't) and there is also a retail disc with the collection.

Yeah, Hindley Street! I spent so much time across those three arcades. I loved lock-ins at Tilt. :D

Though my personal love for Street Fighter started at the video store down the road from me who had a dodgy bavkroom full of arcade games. One day SF2 appeared, not inside the darkroom, but out in the main store... it felt important. It sure was. Good times.

Though is it weird that my fondest memories are from the arcades that were dives? A dingy, poorly lit, smoke filled backroom immersed in a cacophony of arcade bleeps... for me that was home.

Though that is possibly one of the reasons they started to vanish, probably a lot of drug dealing and other shifty activity went down in those dimly lit corners.
Oi, don't forget Pulstar, Sengoku 3, Real Bout Fatal Fury Special, Ninja Masters and especially Metal Slug 3!

I am now starting to regret buying this bundle. The games are fine, but the emulator is such shit. No graphics options (fullscreen or windowed does not count), the controller does not work half the time, no game options (difficulty, coins, etc.) and no rebindable keys, but they did make sure to slap three splash screens onto it before the game starts. I wish I could re-allocate my money, SNK and DotEmu don't deserve a cent for it. If downloading a ROM off the internet and a free emulator gives me a better experience than a paid product it plain sucks.

That would imply anyone even cared about it. They probably just look for an emulator they could use, slapped some overlays on top of it and called it a day. Sure, GOG does the same thing with DOS games but at least they don't cripple DOSBox or the games and they give you all the extras that used to come with the game.

Absolutely!

I'm in no way a Genesis collector or enthusiast, but that's a landmark of a console. I suppose the best way to play those Mega Drive/Genesis classics without owning one (and without emulating/piracy) is through Wii's Virtual Console and through the Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, available on the ps3 and x360. Also, if you wanna play selected games, there's the xbla Wonderboy/ToeJam & Earl/Alex Kidd and friends releases, too.
Heck, for a superb experience, get some nitpicked 3d Classics on the 3DS and enjoy the show.

Probably all of the games included in this Sonic's Collection are on Steam/were available on DotEmu (grabbed a few myself/got some for free!) so it's a good way to showcase classics to new gamers alike. Of course, the variety of games available on the Virtual Console is a lot cooler than just SEGA games.

To date I can't think of a single instance where a commercially emulated game is as good as what can be done with free, dedicated emulation software.

If it helps, in buying these you can now use the roms in MAME legally.

If you count DOSBox as emulation then GOG is offering a better experience. It's pre-configured to run, it includes CD audio which a lot of abandonware versions are often missing and you can still tweak it to your liking. But yeah, that's about it.

Uh, the games DO have options. They're in the main menu, outside the game.

And yes, the emulator is shit. Whatever codebase they got, it's really ancient and has lots of issues. I'm having speed problems (the games run slightly fast) and I can't even do a Kooh-Ken in Art of Fighting 2. :(

Played Metal Slug 2. On an i7 and GTX840m, it should be playing with no hitch, which is not exactly what I see, as the game often slows down when there is a lot of action... hmm, could use this to my advantage in order to beat Metal Slug 2 actually...

Metal Slug 2 is inherently rife with slowdown, as this is quick and dirty emulation and not a port, you're going to have to live with it. Yes it was that bad on real Neo-Geo hardware.

Of course if it was a competent emulator like MAME they could have overclocked the CPU.

I remember playing the same game on PS1 with the same "NEO GEO" intro, and it was fast enough and not rife with slowdown?

Oh, I missed that. The other points still stand though.

Ah, thank you as always, knowledge cat is once again there with great info!
The problem I have with virtual console or other console-based emulation is that it is so tied to the hardware. If the hardware dies, so do the games. What I'd love is if companies would just sell drm-free licenses to these games and BIOSes and let us choose whatever emulator we'd like to run them in. This way I can pay for a game once and be able to access it legally and forever on all my current and future computers and android devices.

Because that was a source port, not emulation. Plus on PS1 it would have been Metal Slug X you played, which was already an overhauled and optimized version of MS2.

Oh yep, absolutely. Read a russian article some years ago and the game dev in question was saying pretty much what you just stated something like "my recently downloaded wii games were blasted during the past storm; now I have to purchase another expensive console and re-purchase (damn you Big N!) the games all over again" bla bla bla.

The same doesn't happen with PC although you can see that, in a specific case like total hardware failure, some games -like XP games only, peculiar ones et al- are doomed to be "ghosts" in some machines out there :P
But yes, drm-free for games like that (and all the rest, c'mon) is a must. That's why I say AWESOME, SNK/Humble Bundle!