NGPC Games - Regional releases

Ok, kind of a segue from my Metal Slug question over the weekend...I've been under the impression that games have been released in the following regions:

US
UK
Europe
France
Asia
Japan

My rationale for US and Japan probably doesn't need to be explained but as for the other regions, I'm definitely foggy as to how to name my releases as I go through my collection. I can't find answers on this and was hoping the mindshare here had some experience that they'd like to offer up.

For Euro releases, I'm saying that these are any game that came with the three different language manuals (and typically has the flags of England, Germany, and Italy on the back cover). It sounds like this may be wrong as some titles have Asia/HK releases and may contain these supported languages.

For UK releases, I'm saying that these are any game within the snap-case that does not have the multi-language manuals mentioned above (but these have a warning in French within a red box on the back cover).

What I'm labeling as a French release is probably a misnomer as the one game I'm saying is French (NeoGeo Cup '98 Plus Color) has both French and Spanish languages on the back cover with distribution locales in both France and Spain listed.

Is there a rule of thumb I can follow as I catalog these?

Thanks again for any help - I greatly appreciate it!!

I've been looking into these for a while and I don't think enough is known to really say anything for sure without cataloging every unique release with a picture to show for it. I would actually really love to compile such a list.

I have assumed that all NGPC games (by NEOP#) through Neo Geo Cup 98 Plus Color have multiple english releases and after that there was a japanese release, and in some cases a single Euro/Asian release.

I would like to say that all these games had a set amount of versions, however I haven't seen enough to say anything for sure. I know I have seen a couple other bilingual back inserts, but not nearly as many as trilingual ones, so I wonder if all games through NGC98+C did have the bilingual ones, or only certain ones.


If I made a website which hosted pictures of variants, would anyone help me? I only have a few of them and won't be able to do it without help.

I have 25 UK clamshell case games that I could scan to help you. This includes rarer games like Last Blade, Gals Fighters and Cotton. I'll let you know what manuals came with each game etc.

I may be off base here, but here's my take on the UK/EURO/Asia scenario.

Starting off SNK tried to do Euro releases...releasing UK/DE/IT versions and FR/ES versions. At the same time they were releasing Asia versions. This can be seen for Metal Slug which has the three language version and an Asian version with no ELPSA rating.

Then later on in the timeline of the NGPC SNK released these games and instead of using multi-language packages they instead had the packaging in English and had the colored insert inside the package for all of the additional regions being serviced. Games like Faselei and Evolution have these inserts and it is my hypothesis that they were jointly released in both Asia & Europe...with no packaging variation.

So in essense you have two waves of releases:

1) region specific outer packaging (probably more expensive for SNK to do)

2) regionless "universal" packaging w/ multi-language inserts

I very much doubt any gmae was truly UK only for NGPC.

If you look around on wikipedia you can find a list which might help.

I would gladly scan all my different cover variants if someone wants to host the pictures.
I've got approximately 60-70 different ones (All clamshells, some UK/HK, some Euro, some Fr/Sp)

It might take a while to scan them all though.

I have a couple of scans of variant packaging here:

http://www.pocketfuel.co.uk/ngpc/index.html

PlayerOne said:

I have a couple of scans of variant packaging here:

http://www.pocketfuel.co.uk/ngpc/index.html

Click to expand...

Damn, I didn't know later NGPC games had second European rated english releases. I am now thinking maybe every game with the rainbow on the spine below the words 'Neo Geo Pocket Software Cartridge' has this (s opposed to later release with the two swapped), and maybe every single release has a general english and european english snapcase version? It's so hard to confirm anything with so little info out there.

yeah, what's even more scary is that there are even more variants for some of these than what's pictured. SamSho2 has four different snapcase english variants.

Yeah, those are just the ones that have been through my hands, which must be a pretty small subset, since (except for SS2) I only ever bought duplicates when they came with something else I didn't have.

I should scan the rest of my games sometime, but, well, it's time-consuming.