Neofun

Neofun is a Siarlabarian video game company founded by James Albergo. It was established on March 19, 1971. Its headquarters are located in Qemshire, Siarlabar.

The company is widely known for its video game consoles, which includes Neofun Alpha and Neofun Nitro. In the past, they were used to be the official distributor for video game consoles from Nintendo (from the Nintendo Entertainment System until the Nintendo 64), Sony (original PlayStation only) and other companies (including Magnavox and Atari).

History
Neofun was established on March 19, 1971 by James Albergo. In October 12, 1972, Neofun entered the video game market by distributing the Magnavox Odyssey in Siarlabar. Two years later, the company created their first home video game console in the country, the Neo TV Game. The Neo TV Game was a Pong console with two variations (Volleyball and Tennis).

In 1978, Neofun became the official distributor of the Atari 2600 in Siarlabar.

In 1981, the company began developing video games under the Neofun Games name.

In 1986, Neofun began selling the Nintendo Entertainment System in Siarlabar. A year later, Mattel released their own version of the Nintendo Entertainment System as well. However, in 1990, Nintendo began distributing their own version of the Nintendo Entertainment System in the country. To avoid confusion, the Neofun-distributed consoles were labelled as the "SIARLABARIAN VERSION", while the Mattel-distributed consoles were labelled as the "MATTEL VERSION" and the Nintendo version of the console was labelled as the "EUROPEAN VERSION". Both versions use the same, identical hardware, with some changes in the labels.

In 1990, the company began distributing the Nintendo Game Boy in Siarlabar. Two year later, they became the official distributor for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in the region.

Neofun began to distribute the Sony PlayStation to the Siarlabarian market in 1995.

On October 9, 1999, Neofun announced that they would no longer distribute future consoles and games from Nintendo and Sony in Siarlabar, due to the two companies setting up their own respective distribution centers in the country. Distribution and sales for the Nintendo 64, Game Boy/Game Boy Color and the Sony PlayStation from Neofun were continued until the early 2000s.

In 2002, the company launched the Neofun Alpha, their first video game console in nearly 27 years. The console gained moderate success and it was praised by critics and journalists due to its cost, performance and its selection of games. It features an IBM PowerPC 750CXe processor, 64MB of system memory, a custom ATi Graphics Processing Unit (equivalent to ATi Radeon 7500), memory card storage, DVD-R optical drive, and online play functionality. It was discontinued in 2010.

In 2006, the Neofun Nitro was launched as the high-definition successor to the Neofun Alpha. It features a Freescale e600 MPC7448 processor, 512MB of shared memory (256MB system memory/256MB video memory), custom ATi graphics processing unit (equivalent to ATi Radeon X800 XT), 2.5-inch SATA II hard drive storage of up to 2TB, and a DVD+R DL optical drive.

In 2012, it was announced that Neofun would shift from manufacturing video game consoles to developing and publishing games. This means that Neofun Nitro became the last console to be manufactured by the company. The Neofun Nitro was finally discontinued in 2017.

In 2021, Neofun announced that they would return to the video game console business in 2022.

Video game consoles

 * Neofun Alpha (launched in 2002, discontinued in 2010)
 * Neofun Nitro (launched in 2006, discontinued in 2017)