The Neo Geo AES is one of the most powerful home consoles of its era — and one of the most exotic to program. No background layer. A sprite-only video system. 64 KB of working RAM and a Motorola 68000 at its heart.
This book shows you how to harness all of it, in C.
Starting from a blank project with ngdevkit — the open-source toolchain for Neo Geo homebrew — you will build a complete shoot'em up from scratch: sprites, parallax scrolling, palettes, input handling, collisions, sound effects, chiptune music, and a final boss. Every concept is introduced when you need it, demonstrated in runnable code, and reinforced with exercises drawn from the real constraints of the hardware.
What you will learn:
- The Neo Geo hardware architecture: video system, sprites, palettes, sound
- Setting up a modern C development environment with ngdevkit on macOS, Linux or Windows
- Building a complete game step by step: from Hello World to a full shoot'em up
- Fixed-point arithmetic, sprite animation, collision detection, game architecture
- Optimization on a 7.67 MHz 68000 with 64 KB of RAM
- Running your game on a real AES console via flashcart
No prior console experience required. If you know C — pointers, structs, a while loop — you are ready to program the most powerful home console of 1990.