Four Neo Geo CD Exclusives That Never Left the Disc

The Neo Geo is coming back, and it is coming back as a cartridge machine. PLAION REPLAI and SNK’s NEOGEO AES+ “natively plays game software from both new and old game cartridges”, and it ships on 16 September 2027. That leaves out a small group of games that were never cartridges at all: titles SNK’s own catalog lists with a Neo Geo CD release date and nothing else — no MVS arcade board, no AES cartridge.

This guide covers four of them that, as far as we could find on 19 September 2026, you still cannot buy in any form except the original Japanese disc: ADK’s Crossed Swords II, ADK World and Oshidashi Zintrick, and SNK’s The King of Fighters ’96 NEOGEO Collection. For each one: what it is, the product code on the spine, and which search finds it in a Japanese shop.

• Crossed Swords II: クロススウォードII · ADK · 2 May 1995 · ADCD-102 · action RPG, the sequel to a game that is on modern consoles
• ADK World: ADKワールド · ADK · 10 November 1995 · ADCD-103 · a collection of minigames built from ADK’s own characters
• Oshidashi Zintrick: 押し出しジントリック · ADK · 22 March 1996 · ADCD-104 · a puzzle game where the pieces are pushed in from the side
• The King of Fighters ’96 NEOGEO Collection: ザ・キング・オブ・ファイターズ’96 ネオジオコレクション · SNK · 14 February 1997 · NGCD-229 · not a fighting game but a disc of character interviews and story material
• One CD exclusive is missing on purpose: Saurus’s shooter 超鉄ブリキンガー is on sale today as IRONCLAD on GOG and on Evercade’s NEOGEO Arcade 1 cartridge, so it is not “still unplayable”
• Codes as shops read them: Suruga-ya finds the three ADK discs by code without the hyphen (ADCD102 and so on); the KOF disc is easier to find by its Japanese name

Why were some Neo Geo games only ever released on CD?

Most Neo Geo CD discs carry games that were already sold as an arcade board and a home cartridge. A few went the other way. In the title catalog SNK published in 2010 — reproduced in the source code of MAME, the arcade emulator — Crossed Swords II, ADK World, Oshidashi Zintrick and The King of Fighters ’96 NEOGEO Collection each have exactly one release date, and it is a NEOGEO CD date. MAME’s own Neo Geo CD software list gives the same four product codes and the same four dates.

Two of the four are not ordinary games. The catalog files ADK World and the KOF disc under “Variety” rather than under a game genre. And all four share the thing that makes them hard to bring back. Re-release lines such as Hamster’s ACA NEOGEO are built on arcade games, and these four were never arcade games.

What is Crossed Swords II, and why is only the first game playable today?

The first Crossed Swords was a 1991 arcade and cartridge game, and it has had the full modern treatment: Hamster’s Arcade Archives lists its ACA NEOGEO edition for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Windows PC, iOS and Android. The sequel was made only for the disc. English Wikipedia describes it as “a 1995 action role-playing video game developed and published by ADK exclusively for the Neo Geo CD”, and adds that “it was never officially released for either Neo Geo MVS (arcade) and Neo Geo AES (home) platforms.”

It is a third-person hack-and-slash for one or two players. You pick one of three fighters — the Japanese catalog site Piko Piko Daihyakka lists them as a swordsman, a female warrior and a ninja — and cross the kingdom of Belkana to stop the demon warlord Nausizz over twelve acts. What the sequel adds, per Wikipedia, is “experience points”, “a new button dedicated for jumping and dashing”, and a shopkeeper between acts who sells recovery items and new magic; there is also a survival mode.

It was released “exclusively in Japan on May 2, 1995”, but “the game will display English text if played on non-Japanese consoles.” The only cartridge versions are unofficial: Wikipedia records a 2015 homebrew conversion to MVS and AES by Neobitz, and MAME lists a set it describes as a “bootleg of CD version”. Neither is a release by ADK or SNK.

What is ADK World, and who is Nightingale?

ADK World is ADK looking back at itself. Piko Piko Daihyakka describes it as a ミニゲーム集 (minigame collection) using characters from ADK’s games, including a card game called 「超絶最強選手権」 and a shooting game, 「19YY」, starring Brocken from World Heroes. MAME labels the disc “ADK World / ADK Special 1995 ADK (CD only)”.

Your guide through it is a character called ナイチンゲール (Nightingale). Japanese Wikipedia’s World Heroes article calls her a character cut from World Heroes 2, who never appeared in the series proper but 「ネオジオCDオリジナル作品『ADKワールド』では案内役として登場する」 — appears as the guide in the Neo Geo CD original ADK World. Piko Piko Daihyakka also calls her a ボツキャラクター, an unused character, without naming which game. We have not seen that confirmed in ADK’s own material, so read “cut character” as what those sources say rather than as settled history.

How does Oshidashi Zintrick play?

Sideways. 押し出し means “pushing out”, and Piko Piko Daihyakka describes the game as an action puzzle on a horizontal screen where pieces are pushed in from the side — 「落ちものパズルとはひと味違うシステム」, a system with a different flavour from falling-block puzzles. The main mode is a series of matches against the computer, and two players can play each other.

No official version exists outside the disc. MAME carries a cartridge set named “Zintrick / Oshidashi Zentrix (bootleg of CD version)” and notes that it “appears to be a bootleg made from the CD version, not a genuine” prototype. If a listing offers Zintrick as an MVS board, that is what it is. English sources spell the name several ways — Zintrick, Oshidashi Zintrick, Zentrix — so the Japanese title is the reliable one to search.

What is on The King of Fighters ’96 NEOGEO Collection?

Not a fight. The fan archive RQ87 puts it plainly: “It’s not exactly a game, but is more of an encyclopedia of game lore. Its main feature is the character profile mode, where you can interview any of the 29 characters featured in KoF ’96.” It also includes “a couple of different intros which explain the story of KoF and Orochi.” SNK’s catalog files it as “Variety” and dates it 14 February 1997.

“This game was only released in Japan”, RQ87 adds, and the only English version is a fan translation commissioned from Shmuplations. Because it is not a game in the arcade sense, the usual way back — an arcade re-release — does not apply to it; we did not find it in Hamster’s ACA NEOGEO line, on GOG, on either of Evercade’s NEOGEO cartridges or on the NEOGEO mini. Its product code, NGCD-229, sits in the ordinary SNK Neo Geo CD series, unlike ADK’s own ADCD- numbers.

Where can you buy these discs today?

Only second-hand in Japan, and each one answers to a different search. We checked both shops on 19 September 2026.

Suruga-ya: the code without the hyphen for the three ADK discs. ADCD102, ADCD103 and ADCD104 each returned one listing, and each was the right disc. With the hyphen, ADCD-103 also brought up Crossed Swords II, because the shop splits the code at the hyphen. NGCD229 is different: with in-stock items only, it returned nothing. The Japanese name, キング・オブ・ファイターズ96 ネオジオコレクション, returned one listing, the right disc; with sold-out items shown, it gave results: 5 (this disc: 5). Suruga-ya’s own regular used prices as of 19 September 2026: Crossed Swords II from ￥12,300 to ￥21,100 depending on condition, ADK World ￥8,550, Oshidashi Zintrick ￥22,700, and the KOF disc ￥8,610.

Buyee: it depends on the disc. Buyee searches sellers’ own wording, so the precise search is not always the code. クロススウォードII ネオジオ showed results: 8 (this game: 7; flyer: 1); the code ADCD-102 returned just one. ジントリック ネオジオ showed results: 5 (this game: 4). For ADK World the code is the only clean search: ADCD-103 returned one listing, the disc, while ADKワールド ネオジオ showed results: 101, mostly World Heroes items and posters. The KOF disc is the hard one: NGCD-229 returned nothing, and the full Japanese name showed results: 11 (this disc: 3). The rest were KOF ’96 itself on cartridge, arcade board and disc, bundles, a promotional flyer, and a different コレクション on cartridge — so check for ネオジオコレクション and CD in the title.

Read the listing, not the headline. CD-ROM in a Suruga-ya title means the disc itself; 説明書のみ is the manual on its own; チラシ is a flyer. On Buyee, a Zintrick or Crossed Swords II offered as an MVS board or AES cartridge is one of the unofficial conversions above, not a 1990s release. Prices and counts are what they were on the day we looked; with a handful of copies on sale, they move in steps.

Why search Kataban for these?

Because the names are slippery. Crossed Swords II is クロススウォードII on Suruga-ya’s shelf and クロススウォード2 in many listings, and the KOF disc shares most of its name with KOF ’96 itself. Kataban’s catalog comes from Japan’s Media Arts Database, which has a row for each of the four discs, and a search puts the Neo Geo CD disc next to everything else that shares its name.

The codes are a way in as well. None of the four database rows carries a product code of its own, so on 19 September 2026 we added ADCD-102, ADCD-103, ADCD-104 and NGCD-229 to the catalog from MAME’s software list and Suruga-ya’s shelf. Each code now returns one result, the right disc, written with the hyphen or without it.

Crossed Swords II · クロススウォードII · Neo Geo CD, 2 May 1995 (ADCD-102) · ADK

Where to buy: Suruga-ya.jp — code without the hyphen (ADCD102) · Buyee — クロススウォードII ネオジオ
See it on Kataban →

ADK World · ADKワールド · Neo Geo CD, 10 November 1995 (ADCD-103) · ADK

Where to buy: Suruga-ya.jp — code without the hyphen (ADCD103) · Buyee — code with the hyphen (ADCD-103)
See it on Kataban →

Oshidashi Zintrick · 押し出しジントリック · Neo Geo CD, 22 March 1996 (ADCD-104) · ADK

Where to buy: Suruga-ya.jp — code without the hyphen (ADCD104) · Buyee — ジントリック ネオジオ
See it on Kataban →

The King of Fighters ’96 NEOGEO Collection · ザ・キング・オブ・ファイターズ’96 ネオジオコレクション · Neo Geo CD, 14 February 1997 (NGCD-229) · SNK

Where to buy: Suruga-ya.jp — キング・オブ・ファイターズ96 ネオジオコレクション · Buyee — the same Japanese name
See it on Kataban →

A new AES+ can play a new cartridge and an old one. It cannot play a disc, and none of these four was ever anything else. Until someone makes them into cartridges — or a download — the 1995 to 1997 discs with ADCD-102, ADCD-103, ADCD-104 and NGCD-229 on the spine are the only way to own them.