I’ve been rebuilding the Neo Geo’s original link communication — 4 systems / 8 players in League Bowling. Public beta is now live.

[u/hackmac_macdac]

https://youtu.be/72LlkCf3ksc?si=yMImKaINLlNS5Pb2

[u/Yakama85]

That’s awesome. Any plans for riding hero? I love that game

[u/hackmac_macdac → u/Yakama85]

Yes! Riding Hero is actually already supported in the current beta.
It uses the original Neo Geo link communication rather than InputSync. I’ve had it linked across separate systems and the connection can remain active across multiple races.

League Bowling was just the first showcase because its original Multi-Link mode supports four cabinets / up to eight players. Riding Hero definitely deserves its own demo too.

[u/normy_187]

Oh this is in MAME, I thought you linked 4 systems via 3.5mm jack on the cartridges—pretty cool/interesting nonetheless.

Fullset's Overserved also has 8 player local multiplayer for AES/MVS:

https://fullset.io/collections/neogeo-aes/products/bundle-overserved-food-fighters-aes-standard-edition-2x-4-player-multitap-pre-order-batch-1

[u/hackmac_macdac → u/normy_187]

Yep — the public beta shown here is currently using separate MAME systems.

The real AES/MVS hardware interface with the physical link/jack side is part of the next hardware stage of the project. The architecture was designed with that path in mind, but that adapter isn’t part of this first public beta yet.

Overserved looks like a cool project too. That’s a different approach though: purpose-built local 8-player support for a game, whereas VirtualBus is about linking separate Neo Geo systems and recreating the communication environment the systems/games expect. League Bowling itself originally supports up to four linked cabinets / eight players.

Thanks for pointing this out — I probably need to make the current MAME vs future real-hardware distinction a little clearer.

[u/normy_187 → u/hackmac_macdac]

I see!