He looked at Maya. “Tomorrow: Shock Troopers .”

Emerging from the cabinet and sprawling across the cityscape are myriad pixelated characters, each representing a different game from the 181-strong collection. You see the iconic faces of King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, and Metal Slug heroes, alongside lesser-known characters, all interacting in a lively, celebratory manner.

Leo had spent three weeks downloading the ROM set over a 56k modem. Three weeks of resuming failed downloads at 3 AM so his parents wouldn’t hear the screech of the dial-up. Three weeks of praying that the file named kof98.zip wasn’t corrupted.

NeoRAGEx was one of the first emulators to successfully replicate the SNK Neo Geo MVS (arcade) and AES (home console) hardware on PC. Developed originally by Anders Nilsson and Janne Korpela, it was famed for its blistering speed and low system requirements. While modern emulators require hefty CPU cycles to achieve "cycle-accurate" emulation, NeoRAGEx was streamlined. It ran full speed on hardware that was considered obsolete even by 2005 standards.

By sunrise, they’d sampled 34 games. They discovered a weird soccer game they’d never touch again ( Ultimate 11 ), a fighting game with a kangaroo ( Fatal Fury 3 ), and a shooter where you played as a flying medieval knight ( Viewpoint ).

Then, the familiar jingle. The metallic clang of a virtual NEO GEO cartridge slot engaging. And finally—the explosion. Marco and Tarma dropped onto the bridge, pixel-art flames roaring behind them.