The Neo Geo hardware was an evolution of an older SNK/Alpha Denshi M68000 arcade platform that was used in "Time Soldiers" in 1987, further developed in the SNK M68000 hardware platform as used for "" in 1988. Contrary to other popular arcade hardware of the time, the SNK/Alpha Denshi hardware used sprite strips instead of the more common tilemap based backgrounds. The Neo Geo hardware was essentially developed by Alpha Denshi's Eiji Fukatsu, adding sprite scaling through the use of scaling tables stored in ROM as well as support for a much higher amount of data on cartridges and better sound hardware.