SNK Neo Geo CD Console

I've been collecting shooters for years now and own pretty much every one that I want.
Eventually my attention turned to the more obscure consoles and games available to the shmup enthusiast and I started to look into the Japanese developed consoles of the late 80's and 90's and the gaming genre's that I'd only ever experienced through emulation.
I picked up a Neo Geo AES with two games and was very impressed with the sturdyness and build quality of the AES- the cartridges, if you've not seen one are similar in size to a VHS video cassette- ie- HUGE!!!- they also carry huge price tags for some of the games I wanted to play such as Pulstar and Last Resort.
So, I decided to get a Neo Geo CD.
The Neo Geo CD has a standart CD player, it plays CD's at normal speed- so the loading times can be quite slow depending on the game. On a standard shooter, this really isn't a problem since the game loads a level in and then plays the level and it doesn't really affect gameplay. However, i've heard on various forums that this can be a problem on some games such as 'fighting games' -so, do your homework before shelling out for any particular game to avoid frustration and disappointment.

I could list the stats for the Neo Geo CD and lets face it, you could just google and get the data for yourself- what I'll just mention is that I was very impressed with the Neo Geo's display and sound. Of all the games i've so far played, each games has a real 'arcade' quality to it- this is probably due to the fact that a lot of Neo Geo games are arcade ports of their originals.

I'll just sum up by saying that If you like retro gaming, it can be expensive to buy old consoles such as the Neo Geo CD- the games are available on the internet and on discs with emulators- that how I got to play them to start off with- but nothing comes close to playing the games as they were intended.
Emulation is only that... emulations- i prefer the real deal.