Top Hunter on Neo Geo AES: SNK’s 1994 Two-Lane Brawler, and Why the Cartridge Is So Hard to Buy

Top Hunter: Roddy & Cathy is a side-scrolling brawler SNK put in arcades on 18 May 1994, and a month later it came home. On 24 June 1994 the same game went on sale as a Neo Geo AES cartridge, product code NGH-046, at 28,000円 before tax — the Japanese title spelled トップハンター on the spine.

This is the second entry in a series about games that were good enough to earn a second part and never got one. Top Hunter is the harder kind of case: it was liked, it charted, it kept being re-released — and on the day we looked, you could not buy the 1994 cartridge from Suruga-ya at all, and Buyee had none either. This guide covers what the game does that other brawlers of its year did not, what the code on the cartridge means, what the thing costs now, and what your options are when the object you want is not on any shelf.

• Japanese title: トップハンター, developed and published by SNK (株式会社エス・エヌ・ケイ)
• Neo Geo AES (home cartridge): 24 June 1994 · product code NGH-046 · 28,000円 before tax, as recorded by the Media Arts Database
• Arcade (Neo Geo MVS): 18 May 1994 · board number NGM-046 · 110 megabits, one of the larger Neo Geo games of its year
• Two lanes, two players: you hop between a foreground and a background lane, and Roddy and Cathy can play at once
• Neo Geo CD: 29 September 1994 · 6,800円 before tax — the same game on a disc, at a quarter of the cartridge price
• No second part: what followed were re-releases — the Wii Virtual Console in 2007, SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 in 2008, and Hamster’s ACA NEOGEO edition on 7 December 2017
• Hard to buy: on 18 September 2026 Suruga-ya’s own copy was sold out and the only cartridge on offer was a marketplace listing at ￥350,900; Buyee had no cartridge at all

What is Top Hunter, and what does the two-lane system do?

You are a galactic bounty hunter. The English Wikipedia article sets it up: space pirates called the Klaptons, led by Captain Klapton, have taken four elemental planets — Forest, Ice, Wind and Fire — with a high-ranking Klapton holding each one. Roddy and Cathy go and take them back, and a second player can take the other one.

The part that makes it its own game is the lane system. Wikipedia describes “a plane-jumping system: the game field is divided in two lanes between the background and foreground”. Hamster’s own description of the 2017 re-release says the same thing from the player’s side: a side-scrolling action game in which you move freely between the two lines in front and behind, using jumps, gunfire, throws and command-input special moves. So a fight is not a line of enemies coming at you; it is a small piece of ground with a back row you can step into, and enemies who can step out of it.

The rest of the move set leans on the fighting games SNK was known for. Wikipedia notes that “the characters can also execute special moves, done by moving the joystick in certain directions and pressing the attack button”, and Hamster lists jumps, gunfire and throws alongside them. Four planets, two lanes and a command list is a lot of structure for a 1994 brawler, and it is part of why the game is remembered.

It was received well. RePlay reported the arcade version as the sixteenth most popular arcade game in North America at the time, and the later Nintendo Switch release sits at 80% on GameRankings. It was not a game nobody wanted.

Which release is the Japanese cartridge, and what is its code?

Neo Geo games carry two numbers with the same digits: NGM- for the MVS arcade board and NGH- for the AES home cartridge. For this game the pair is NGM-046 and NGH-046; MAME’s entry is titled “Top Hunter - Roddy & Cathy (NGM-046)”, naming the board, and the Neo Geo Master List gives the cartridge side as 046.

The Master List dates both the Japanese AES release and the English AES release to 24 June 1994, and the Neo Geo CD to 29 September 1994. So a US cartridge of the same game exists, and it shows up in Japanese shop searches as 海外版 — same game, different box and manual. Kataban’s catalog tracks the Japanese releases: row M752241 for the cartridge and M752242 for the disc in the Agency for Cultural Affairs Media Arts Database.

That database has no product code for either row — no schema:productID, no schema:gtin. The code in this guide comes from two sources that agree: the Master List, and Suruga-ya’s own 型番 field on the cartridge’s product page, which reads NGH-046. We added it to the catalog on 18 September 2026 from those two sources, so the card for the cartridge now shows the code. Two is one fewer than we had for the first entry in this series, where MAME’s title supplied a third; here MAME names only the board. One thing the two databases do agree on is the size: the Master List column says 110 megs and the Media Arts Database records 110 as well — a big cartridge for 1994, and part of why it cost what it did.

What was the list price, and what is it now?

The Media Arts Database records the cartridge at 28000円 (税抜) — tax-exclusive, as the database says. Suruga-ya’s product page for the same cartridge shows 定価：￥30,800, which is the same figure with tax: 28,000 × 1.1 = 30,800. The shop’s field applies the 10% rate in force today, not the 3% of 1994, so the number to quote is 28,000円 before tax.

It was expensive when it was new. Neo Geo cartridges were, and 110 megabits put this one at the top end: 28,000円 in 1994 was the price of a games console and then some. The Neo Geo CD version that arrived three months later cost 6,800円 before tax — a quarter of the cartridge — which is the whole argument the Neo Geo CD was built to make.

Now it is expensive in a different way. On 18 September 2026 Suruga-ya listed the used cartridge at a trade-in price of ￥156,000 — what the shop pays you — and had no copy of its own to sell. The one cartridge on offer through the site was a marketplace listing at ￥350,900.

Why was there never a sequel?

The honest answer is that nobody made one, and the record shows what came instead. SNK went on making Neo Geo games until 2004 and gave several of its 1990s properties long numbered runs; Top Hunter got none. What it got was ports: the Wii Virtual Console in 2007, a place on SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 in 2008, and Hamster’s ACA NEOGEO release on 7 December 2017 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One — 823円 including tax on Switch and PS4 — with a mobile version in 2022.

That is a game the publisher kept selling for thirty years without ever building on it. The lane system it introduced did not come back in a second Top Hunter; SNK’s later output went into the fighting series that were paying for the company. Being remembered and being continued turn out to be different things, which is the whole subject of this series.

Can you actually buy the AES cartridge today?

On the day we looked, barely. This is worth saying plainly, because a guide that sends you to a shop with nothing in it is worse than a guide that tells you the shelf is empty.

Suruga-ya, 18 September 2026: the shop’s own stock of the cartridge (product 163000058) was 品切れ — sold out. The listing still appears in search, because the site shows one marketplace copy alongside it: one used cartridge at ￥350,900. With sold-out items shown as well, the code search returns four listings, all of them this cartridge in worse condition — missing manual, water-damaged packaging, damaged box and manual. Those are the records of copies that have passed through, not things you can buy today.

Buyee, the same day: no AES cartridge at all. The title search returned sixteen listings, and seven of them were this game — six Neo Geo CD copies and one MVS arcade item — plus two flyers for it. Not one cartridge.

So what can you actually get? The Neo Geo CD version, which is the same game and was a quarter of the price when new. It is the one format of Top Hunter with real supply right now: Suruga-ya lists it, and most of what Buyee shows is discs. If you want the game, that is the way in. If you want the 1994 cartridge specifically, the honest advice is to watch rather than buy: one marketplace copy at ￥350,900 is a single seller’s asking price, not a market, and a cartridge that thin on the ground moves in steps rather than on a curve.

How do you search each shop for it?

Suruga-ya: use the code without the hyphen. NGH046 and NGH-046 both return exactly one listing in the default view, so at first glance they look identical. Ask the shop to show sold-out items as well and they separate: NGH046 returns four listings and all four are this game, while NGH-046 returns eleven of which only four are — the rest are Viewpoint, Ninja Combat, Magician Lord, クイズ大捜査線 and an overseas Disney cartridge. Suruga-ya splits the code at the hyphen, so the hyphenless form is the precise one. This is the same lesson as the first entry in this series, but you only see it if you look past the first page.

Buyee: use the title, not the code. The code fails badly here. NGH-046 returns nothing at all, and NGH046 returns two listings, neither of them this game — a Fatal Fury Special cartridge (NGH-058) and a Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer (NGH-094), because Buyee searches sellers’ free text and those sellers wrote their own codes into the title. The Japanese title with the platform, トップハンター ネオジオ, is the best search available: sixteen listings with seven of them this game, which is the highest purity of anything we measured on Buyee. The bare title トップハンター is a trap — 2,122 listings, almost all of them Hunter × Hunter desktop figures and HUNTER-brand bags.

Read the titles, not the counts. The words that matter are the format ones: ROMカセット is the AES cartridge, CD-ROM or NCD is the 1994 disc, 基板 or インスト or MVS is arcade hardware, 説明書のみ is a manual on its own, チラシ is a promotional flyer, and 海外版 is the overseas cartridge. Note also that the arcade items carry the full title トップハンター -ロディー＆キャシー- while the home releases are filed as plain トップハンター, so searching the subtitle alone finds the arcade material and misses the cartridge.

Why search Kataban for this one?

Because the English title is not a way in, and the catalog shows you why. Checked in a desktop browser on 18 September 2026, Top Hunter returns nothing: the Media Arts Database rows for this game carry no English title, so there is nothing for the English search to match. トップハンター returns four results — the 1994 cartridge, the 1994 Neo Geo CD disc, the 2007 Wii Virtual Console release and the 2017 download edition — which is exactly the set you need to tell apart when you are reading a listing.

The product code, on the other hand, is a way in. NGH-046 returns one result, the 1994 cartridge, and NGH046 without the hyphen does the same — the catalog strips punctuation before it matches, so both spellings land on the same card. That is new as of 18 September 2026: the database rows carry no code of their own, and the field was filled in here from the Master List and Suruga-ya’s 型番 field. On a Japanese shop shelf the kana to look under is ト.

Top Hunter · トップハンター · Neo Geo AES, 24 June 1994 (NGH-046) · SNK

Where to buy: Suruga-ya.jp — code without the hyphen (NGH046) · Buyee — title and platform (トップハンター ネオジオ)
See the four releases on Kataban →

A game can be liked, charted, ported four times over thirty years — and still leave you with nothing to buy on the day you go looking. If you want the object, it is the 1994 cartridge with NGH-046 on the label, and you will probably be waiting for it. If you want the game, the disc from three months later is sitting right there.