The Reveal

The Source - The Reveal Part 1

Let me start off by introducing myself; my name is David Garrett, I’m 47 years old, I currently reside in Ontario Canada and I used to work for SNK. The purpose of this reveal is to set the record straight and answer the questions that most people have been asking. This reveal was meant to be much longer than it will be today, but based on extenuating circumstances I’ve had to hasten matters. Some information have been omitted either for security reasons or they will be disclosed in the near future.

I originally wanted to show everyone all that I have in my possession, to not only show you the entire picture but also help you reach your own unbiased option. A lot of rumours circulating about me are untrue. I ask that each and every one of you read what is in this reveal and come to your own conclusion based on my facts, not the false rumours being spread.

For the record, I do have tax documents in hand and I can confirm my employment with SNK. I have gladly invited Shawn as well as many others to my home to view this information.

I have been a victim of identity theft in the past, and it has taken me years to clear my name and get rid of that nightmare. As much as I do not wish this on any one, there is NO WAY I will ever compromise my personal information for anything or anyone. For this reason I will not be placing sensitive information online.

Regarding my place of employment: I ask that you understand that we’re dealing with a place of work over 20 years ago. Since then, Random questions like “what are the colors of the furniture and carpet” simply won’t cut it. I have worked with many different companies and met a lot of great people over the years. I remember many things – but not everything.

A little about me:
I grew up in Calgary Alberta Canada. I started as a computer programmer with Cobol, Assembler, Pascal, C and C++. I also don’t mind admitting I did some very nice patterns in Apple Logo back in the very old days. I spent a long time doing computer programming and had a great future ahead of me.
At one point I found myself slowly starting to lose the appeal of it and over time I no longer wanted to continue with it.

After my choice to change professions I never looked back and still do engineering to this very day.

I can say that after a long time in the software programming field all I remember today is <include stdio.h>. I also have a very sound understanding of code when I look at it but to sit down and code again is long lost to me.

In the 1980’s we were just going into what I like to consider the tech boom. For most of us having a phone in your car was about as cool as you could be when it came to the tech end of things. As I was finishing school there were not a lot of places a new engineer could go and find work. Back then a lot of us from almost all fields would move north to the rigs where new people were always welcomed in the energy business. This has not changed much today as there is still a great demand in Alberta with the discovery of the oil sands up north.

For those of us not wanting to move up north we had a choice to make. We could move to the two largest cities which were Vancouver or Toronto.

My friends and I made the choice to move to Toronto, Ontario. I ended up taking a co-op position for Ontario Hydro. A friend who was out of school a full year before the rest of us moved to Los Angeles instead. He was able to find work in the movie industry as a technical assistant. He informed us that the industry needed more workers so the group of us moved down to the US. Once there I found the work to be very difficult and not along the lines I was trained for. I ended up going with an employment agency to find a new job. After several interviews with different companies I was hired to work for SNK in the research and development department.

A little about my early role at SNK:
At that time not many video games were doing well. SNK made a choice to produce coin op games for the arcade and that paid off much higher than anyone expected. Surplus cash flow was off the chart and SNK being a young company in the field ran with it and hired a lot of us to work on new hardware. Most of us were very new and just out of school. We all had great ideas and we had the freedom to really experiment. After a short time we were divided up based on what fields we were best in. I ended up going with the development team for new microchips and spent most of my time working on the foundation of the SNK banded chips you find in the NEO GEO. Back in the day it would cost $250,000 to millions to make one surface mount custom chip of average size. It always amazes me to think that one $5 CPLD (programmable logic device) today can completely replace any one of those chips and only requires one person to make, but I digress.

I worked on more than one chip during my time at SNK, the most popular one being the NEO ZMC2.

The NEO GEO:
The very first prototype of the system that resembles the hardware you think of as a NEO GEO - looked a lot like the Metal Slug 5 PCB. It was a first generation MVS board with the game in sockets on the board. It didn’t have a cart slot.

The very first NEO GEO board to match what you know of today - didn’t start the first time it was powered up. It took a few days to work out the problem.

Once the NEO GEO was completed and production began, a lot of us who were hired to do development no longer had an active role. We were expecting to move onto a new system (since development of new hardware takes several years). However, most of us were moved to technical support for the new NEO GEO platform. It wasn’t long before many were let go and those who did stay slowly trickled away for one reason or another. I ended my employment with SNK after being offered a position with NEC to do the same research and development of new hardware.

A little about my later role at SNK:
The NEO GEO was a big success in every way. Projections were well above what had been set for the system and the company was very happy with how it turned out. Again this was the time to begin work on a newer and more powerful system set to be released in another 5 years or so, but SNK wasn’t interested in going that route. With very little work to do, many of us found ourselves tasked with researching why some chips on the system board were failing.

Note: almost all the chips failed due to a power spike on the 5v line. I had never found a single chip that had a design flaw due to some ones internal design that impacted the system or function. The NEO CTO and ZMC2 both have internal issues (however, they were not enough to cause a problem and could be worked around.)

Problems at SNK:
One problem SNK had was being a young company - with a lot of money. Many choices made were made on the fly.

One great example was when a MVS board came in as nonworking. It was placed on a shelf with a sticky saying it was not working. It was set to be looked into a day or so later. After it was placed there, someone from sales needed the same board to send out to another customer, went in and took the sticky off the board and sent it out as new and working.

Well we got the same board back as nonworking for the exact same problem. At the time with the system being that new having two exact same boards having the same problem is a major concern. When we went looking for the first board it wasn’t anywhere to be found. When the first board came in a tech had taken a few minutes to look over the board and did notice one of the chips pins were bent as if another object had hit the chip. This exact problem in the same spot was seen on the second board. It was clear that sales had sent out a clearly marked defective board to a customer. A classic example of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.

SNK’s problems and poor choices have been well documented over the years and sadly I honestly believe that if they had made better business choices they would be around today, dominating the market.

Rare Games:
To answer the question of how such rare games came into my possession you must first understand the process a developer had to follow to bring a new title from concept to market. We will use ABC Company for this example.

This is my account of how a NEO GEO game is made from concept to production. These are facts based on what I’ve seen and what I’ve been told during the time I worked for SNK. Many times some of these steps were skipped... which would account for wrong stripe colours, logos not being centre and so forth.

So, ABC Company has the idea to expand its video game market to include the newly released NEO GEO by SNK Corporation.

ABC makes contact with SNK and makes a request for a full developer kit as well as a general license to produce for the system. Once this fee is paid and the kit is delivered ABC can now begin making a new game.

When the new game has reached a point where it can be shown to the media ABC will once again contact SNK and request an NGH number for their new title. Once they have paid for it, they can complete the title. It is also at this time (once the NGH number is given) that SNK will include your game in future publications as coming soon (if you wish).

Once your game has reached a point where it’s complete but requires further testing, it will enter the demo stage of development where several carts are made in both AES and MVS formats. Some of these will make it into the hands of reviewers (who take images for the media) while other carts will make it into arcades to gather a number of statistics.

ABC will now use this feedback to make any required changes to the graphics, sound and program codes.

At this stage when the game is about to enter mass production - the code for the game is sent to be made into mask roms. While the roms are being made, the artwork, story lines, screen shots and sometimes videos are sent to SNK to begin making the MVS art kits. It is also at this time that a fee is paid. This fee includes the cost to do both the MVS and AES artwork, samples and a per cart fee for the total number of MVS carts you want to make.

You need to understand that, at that time; even the best computers had small monitors and ran very slowly when dealing with higher resolution pre-press applications. SNK used QuarkXpress on the Macintosh line of computers to do most of the art packs. QuarkXpress did have the option to view all images in full resolution however it would slow your system down to a standstill. This was common for the day and it was but one
of the many problems desktop publishers had to deal with. Seeing your entire piece on screen with 15” monitors being the norm was a challenge on its own.

This is where a colour proof enters the picture. The colour proof has been around for a very long time, way before the computer was mainstream. Simply put, you should see what it is you’re paying for before you spend a lot of money on a print run. They had several types of colour proofs the most common being the Kodak Colour Key which was 4 pieces of clear film each one representing the four offset ink colours (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). The result was a very accurate proof. It was generally not used for 100% colour accuracy but it was close enough.

Damn, thought I was first.

Here is a early version of Fatal Fury 1 US Insert:



Here you can see all 4 pieces of film overlapped to show a full color image. This piece is over 20 years old so the film has tinted, the colors have changed a little and the four pieces don’t line up perfectly anymore.

Here is what it looks like with the top Black layer lifted:



Here is what it looks like with the top Black and Cyan layers lifted:



Finally here is what it looks like with just the yellow layer left:



From the bottom white board they had these as Yellow, Magenta, Cyan, and Black in that order. On the 4 colour image it looks fine but on the back cover where it says “Revenge by Death!” it should be green but looks a little bluer. This is due to the yellow sheet being at the bottom which has faded and has to now get through 3 more sheets of tinted film for you to see. If you move the yellow up so that it’s CMYB the title on the back is nice and green but you now lose some of the other colours in the screen shots. The best way to make the colours shine like they did 20 years ago is with a light table with no paper backing like this:



Here are some close ups of the insert on the light table. The light table used here is very old and instead of glass it uses a old piece of plastic which has a great deal of scratches. These won’t harm the piece but you can see them in the close ups behind the film.





You can see in the last image above that the black layer is a little off so you can see a gap around the meg count box. Over the years the film has moved a little but the quality is still equal to if not better than the original print.

With this colour key process one can see the entire piece in the highest quality possible. If you need to make changes to colour or to simply add in something you missed this is a great way to save money rather than finding out after it has gone to press.

This process was done for the MVS side of production first, once approved it went to press then the MVS kits rolled out into the market. Once the MVS kits are finished SNK would start on the AES version of the art for both US and Japan. I’ve found that US Dog Tag inserts are listed as “Type 2” with US/Euro with a NEO GEO logo is listed as “Type 1”.

A major change to the piece of art will move the revision number up by 1.0, while a minor change such as a missing trademark or a change of colour in a word would only move the revision up by 0.1. The highest revision insert I have is 12.3 which shows they tried it many different ways before they settled on the final one you see today. The insert with the highest revision number is KOF94. Due to the limited speed of the computers of that day and the size of the monitors these proofs were the best option available.

The next step to the production of a game by ABC is a meeting with SNK to demonstrate what the AES version is going to look like. For third party games full production samples were made such as Power Spikes II.

For most first party games normally this step was skipped and the approved colour overlay was enough before going to press. Please note that the fee to make any samples was paid in advance by ABC before anything was done.

ABC has about 3 months between the MVS release and a home release. Generally any game with a home option menu had art produced but for one reason or another wasn’t approved for mass AES production.

Now that you know the basic steps of how a game goes from idea to the arcade I can move on to how I got some of these titles.

Once you have paid all your fees and your game is done now comes a per cart fee. I can’t speak for all game companies but many of them who made game carts had a per cart fee. The custom chips on the boards left developers little choice in the matter because trying to reverse engineer them and making their own carts would cost too much and would end up in a law suit. It was in every ones best interest to just pay the fee and move on.

At this stage it is in SNK’s best interest to push for as many carts to be produced as possible. The more games are sold the more is made so, the sky is the limit. Any game that sold very well was used as an example when pushing cart production numbers. Samurai Shodown 1 was one game that was used many times. With the MVS sales data in hand it was now time to have a meeting to decide if you’re going to make a home cart run and if so how many. You may not like the intention but money is on the line and those going into that meeting It was all about the numbers. Games with poor MVS sales were hyped by saying the home version will sell much better due to more time to play, better surroundings, etc. But lets face it, if a game isn’t any good... no one is going to buy it - end of story. Again, the goal here is to sell.

Power Spikes II:
Video Systems was a new company and Power Spikes II didn’t do very well in the arcade. They made a very short run of MVS kits so to move forward with a home release would mean a new mask rom production run which could cost millions of dollars. As stated above in the example of how a game is made; the fee to make a test run was always prepaid. If you say yes to making more games, great. If you say no to making a new run, nothing lost. Is it a waste of money to do a small run of samples - yes but SNK didn’t pay for it and if they agree to make more you stand to make a lot of money.

Video Systems had a hard choice to make. I don’t think they had the money to produce more Power Spikes II carts because they lost a lot on the MVS run. They also had Sonic Wings 2 in development at the same time as Power
Spikes so they were stretched very thin. People from all over SNK would attend these meetings because it was easier to sell the idea when you have many people pushing how great the idea is. I will go on the record as saying, “If Video Systems had said yes to any amount of home carts in any language those carts would be on ebay today for $15 and Video Systems would have been out of business before making Sonic Wings 3/Aero Fighters 3. I think they made the right choice”.

Once the meeting is over, normally, the company will take the samples and use them as promotional material, for events, media feedback or contests. When the samples are left behind they are normally put on a shelf and later tossed out.

I had the opportunity to take the samples and that is how I have them today. I had no idea they would be worth as much as they are today. I am sure they did make a Japanese version of this game however I wasn’t made aware of it. I also know that there may be more copies (then the ones I have) around.


Aero Fighters 3:
At the time Sonic Wings 3 was being made for production, I had already ended my time with SNK. I did keep in contact with many of my friends and colleagues. I also requested to be called when any new games come out for purchase. I got the call saying Aero Fighters 3 was available and I bought several copies (as I did with many of the games I bought). I didn’t think anything of the title at the time because if I got the call, the game had to be selling in retail locations. I never questioned it or did I double check to make sure, it wasn’t anything different from any other release. I got the call in late December 1995 and took delivery in January 1996. I remember playing one of the games for a short time before putting it back in the box. It was kept at my house for a while before moving it to storage. When ng.com came around with its master list is when I first noticed the title wasn’t there. I have been told it was once on the list but I don’t recall ever seeing it there and I will be honest, I never really looked closely. During a move I did come across AF3 again and this time I did do some research on how much the game would be worth and I came to the conclusion it was $800US. At the time this was a very high cost of a home cart but I wasn’t in need of the money and I didn’t want to part with anything in my Collection... so I let it be.

Regarding the allegations about “the source” allegedly buying all his games for $10 under some sort of employee discount program... that is not only false but laughable! Seriously!?! I never thought Shawn would stoop this low and actually lie about something so asinine, but I guess I was wrong.

Let me set this straight, I NEVER purchase my games for $10 with an employee discount.
Here is exactly what i mentioned to Shawn during our conversation:

I did pass on Metal Slug when it was offered it as I was slowing down on collecting in general. I don’t have a lot of games from 1996 to present. It has been stated before that I only have $30,000 AES carts. I have several large boxes of 96 AES carts per box of low end common carts. Many of these I paid top dollar for and have lost a lot over the years.

My example of the box of Samurai Shodown 2’s was to show how I got a large box of carts. For Samuari Shodown 2, I was called one day by a business contact looking to move a large number of SS2 AES. He asked for $100 each which I had to say no to because the game has only decreased in value since its release. I had no need for them at all and I knew if I took them I would be sitting on them forever. I value the lowest neo game to be worth $20 on the open market. I offered $10 per cart and the call came to an end. I lost nothing and life moved on. I did get a return call from the same person who agreed to the price of $10 each. This is where the story ended. Here is a picture of the box of SS2’s:

VICTOLY!!

Thanks for finally stepping foward David.

My return to the neo scene:
I used to be heavy into games and at one point; I gave up playing all together. It wasn’t easy to give up my MMO’s or to put down the controller... but I did and I moved on with life. I don’t recall when, but at some point I didn’t even bother to return to my favourite internet sites one being ng.com. It wasn’t until 2010 (after many changes in my life) that I did a google search. I clicked on the images tab and saw SvC for MVS. You can always tell a neo geo game and I was under the impression that Metal Slug 4 was the last title. I happen to be a fan of Street Fighter and I love the neo geo, so SvC was looking very interesting. The image brought me to a post on ng.com which went into detail about how it doesn’t work with the Phantom-1 converter. This also was a shock because last time I checked it was 100% and shouldn’t have a problem. I bought a blue version Phantom-1 (when they came out) and I tore mine apart. Although it did have a few minor flaws... based on my understanding of the system, it should work regardless of what SNK does to the cartridge.

Being very curious, I made a new account and bought SvC, MS5 and KOF2003 MVS. I went to my storage unit (which I have not bothered with in many years) and began to pull out my systems and my Phantom-1 converter. When the games arrived I was very sure they would work and the first game I tried was KOF2003 on a first gen system. The game started and began to play the intro. Case closed, it works and I looked forward to playing KOF which I have not in a very long time. I Pressed start...it worked, selected a player... it worked, saw the stage... it RESETS. No biggie, looks like a connection problem. Reinserted the game, and tried again... Same problem as before. I tried MS5 and it won’t even boot past the neo logo. SvC resets at random but I was never able to get past the intro.

Being even more curious now I opened the carts. I already know based on how the game ran the graphics board is fine and there is something on the program end of things causing a problem. Sure enough on just the games with the problem is a new encryption chip. People on the forums were saying the chip was made to stop the converter - which is false. Since I agreed to take on the project to fix this problem... I also took on the Phantom-1’s scaling problem. It had been reported since day one but I had never seen the problem first hand. On my 55” LED the problem was blaring.

Being a little full of myself I thought I could fix this problem within a day or so, one week max to fix both issues.

It took me 8 months to finally nail down the problem and most of that time was due to ripping the Phantom-1 apart and fully reverse engineering it. I ended up doing just about every test you could think of including making my own converter out of a home cart by hand.

I call this the NEO Train Wreck:

I forgot to get this picture today, I will post it tonight for all of you.

I made that one night and the funny thing is it worked without any graphic problems. It is wire for wire a Phantom-1 so it was very odd why both are the same but one doesn’t work.
On a side note, the Neo Train Wreck converter also works fine as a normal graphics board so it may look bad but it wasn’t killed for the test.
At the same time I saw a post by Billkwando about a Pranslation converter and a upgrade to make it work with all games. All converters run the same at the core so I reached out and had him send it to me which I agreed to fix for free. We got it to run everything the Phantom-1 could which was amazing for its age. I also fixed another
Pranslation and offered a complete guide in the tech forums on how to upgrade yours if you have one.

I ended up fixing the Phantom-1 graphic problems and later found out why it wouldn’t run the last few SNK games.

Then I was asked to get Fast Striker to run on it. I took that project on because I knew at this point it could be done... and thankfully it was done quite easily. SNKorSWM then decided he would make my life hard and asked if I could make his FastStriker v1.0 work on his AES with a Phantom-1. Version 1.0 of this game will not run on any AES due to how it was programmed, you will need to patch it to version 1.5. He wanted to play it as a version 1 and didn’t want to upgrade it. With my background with the neo, yes, the AES and MVS are different but anything made to run on MVS hardware can be made to run on AES. It’s a bold statement which took almost a year to prove that it could be done as seen here (a personal note to SNKorSWM, sorry again for such a long delay in getting that game back to you):

The fix for the Pranslation converter is free for the community and can be found here:

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showt...n-(MVS-gt-AES-adapter)-Info-and-Compatibility

The graphics fix for the Phantom-1 was posted here for free and the mod will cost you $0.50 to do and can be found here:

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?220033-Phantom-1-Graphics-Board-Fix-for-SS-LB

How to upgrade your Phantom-1 to play Metal Slug X on a 9v or higher system can be found here:

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?227533-Metal-Slug-X-Fix-for-9v-12v-Neo-s-All-converters

How to fix your Phantom-1 to play every game ever made requires a much larger mod that could be done by hand but would drive anyone mad doing it. I made a new board to cut the install time down. Here is the link on what it is and how to install it.

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showt...-1-Upgrade-board-Install-For-P1-users-Revised.

The main problem, now, was the large number of request I was getting from members who were very happy about the work I had done, but couldn’t find a converter to mod, and wanted a new one. After several request to make a new converter I looked into the possibility. Firstly, I have already spent almost a year fixing every converter in the market (yes I did look into the SMVS2 as well). Secondly, the SMVS2 can be fixed by swapping the graphics board. Why swap the board? Well, flashing the core chip wasn’t an option since I couldn’t tell what chip the one I had was using (as there are several versions of this).

After looking into the possibility of making a new converter, and I currently have a large supply of new old stock games that were worth next to nothing on the open market, all I really had to do was spend 4 hours designing the PCB’s and find a way to cut the hole for the cart slots in the case. I had also spent a lot of money gathering MVS carts, parts and boards to complete my research into the Phantom-1 reset problem, it seemed making a new converter was a great choice.

I also completed the first ever memory card add-on for the MV1B at the same time. The MV1C is not perfect... but I’m very close to making it work.
Here is the link:

- I need to find this link, I will update it soon.

I returned to the neo scene to play some new titles. This lead me to a challenge that took me well over a year to see completed. I took on several long standing issues and did all of the work for free with no intention of making or selling anything. After it was all sain and done I was down a very large sum of money and I had an upcoming wedding to fund. I made the choice to bring out the new converter with the goal to break-even on the long research and development time spent to date.

TonK and the unreleased games:
I already touched on how I got those games but it has been asked many times why TonK?
Well, since the day I registered on ng.com, leading up to the day the new converter was released I tried to reach out to the site owner and/or the mods. There is a list of moderators for every forum and many of the names listed simply don’t login. In the entire time I was here I never saw Shawn online once. Many times at work I would have the Neo Store up on one of my screens and only once did the live chat go green before it closed down shortly thereafter. I have sent Shawn 3 different emails with the goal of opening the lines of communication. All emails went unanswered.

I have spoken to Shawn in the past week. Shawn admits that he did get one of the three emails and he didn’t respond because he simply didn’t feel like it. Shawn says he always receives soliciting emails from a bunch of “randoms” on this site and assuming it was one of them, he simply couldn’t be bothered. Fair enough! My point is... I did try to reach out to this guy. Even a simple “No” would have been a chance for me to introduce myself and establish a line of communication. With no answer from “top management” I looked for the next best person who would care for the information I have. As far as I know, TonK has been around for as long as the site itself. He is a valued member...
almost upper management... Anyway, I knew that if anyone would know how to proceed with this, it would be him.

Over time, since registering on ng.com, I have taken many hours to read up on previous topics. NG.com has not changed much (if at all) since it went online years ago and it has a great amount of information archived. Getting caught up on events was only a matter of time.

The first game:
It has been 10 years since I last saw Aero Fighters 3 and games went from $500 to being as high as $25,000 each. I didn’t know just how much Aero Fighters 3 would be worth today...but I was willing to give it shot, as I had no use for them anymore.

At this time, the converter is now on the market and I know there will be growing pains with the first run. My goal was to focus all my time and effort to make sure all 100 customers are 100% happy with their purchase. I already knew (from my past days here plus what I have read) that the AF3 release will bring a lot of drama - it’s expected.

My goal was to let TonK take that project on while I spent my time with the converter and my job. The general public doesn’t know this but the first run of the converters were not working properly. This was due to a last minute change to its design for Metal Slug X. I did all that I could to locate the problem and make it right. I don’t offer a traditional warranty with my products. If you purchase a converter from me and it stops working at any time - I will fix the problem. If you happen to break the case or connector - if I have the parts, I will fix it at the cost of parts only. If I ever upgrade the converter to a newer and better version - all those with a current model can upgrade for free, just send yours back. If years go by and the core graphics chip dies/fails - as long as I am around (and I have the parts) I will fix the problem at cost.

In the end all 100 owners of the Daedalus converter will have support for as long as I am here to support it. This also extends to those who bought them used. The goal was to resolve all the issues then come forward with this reveal. However the issue that MSX caused wasn’t so easy to fix and another issue did come up even more difficult to locate. it took an insane amount of time to build a solution for this problem.


Prototypes:
In the neo community when someone says a prototype it normally means a unreleased game. Because I was not a game programmer or a game tester, I never had a chance to see any lost titles. However, everything you know of in the neo world from AES/MVS boards to the system itself had at one point a prototype made. Not many companies can go right from the on screen concept to production without first making a prototype run.

To date no one has ever shown what any internal pre-release board for any neo product looks like.
Here is what the common NEO AES 256B and AES BK1F looked like before it went to production:



As you can see with this BK1 board wires are used to correct the errors which is the sole reason why we do a proto run before making a million boards.

Once a board is confirmed ready for production it’s design is given to a professional who will reroute the board to optimise its design. The more efficient the design the less failures they will have during production. Every PCB shop has a percentage of failed boards so on a million board run even 5% is going to cost you. This is why many of the boards like the CHA MVS and AES 256x boards are two layer but many parts are single layer such as the rom slots.

Once a board is complete and approved for production a small run is made using the final files. One is built and tested and if it’s correct then many more are made. Here is one of the very first 6 slot boards before mass production. As you can see this board has no parts installed.



One of the major delays in bringing this reveal to all of you was the hunt for what I feel is the most important piece of hardware ever made. At one point in SNK’s history the idea came around to push the MVS hardware beyond 6 slots. The idea was the introduction of the 8, 12 and 16 slot boards with a line up of games that would push the concept of two side by side cabs for 1-4 players at the same time. Prototypes of these boards were made and later scrapped (mainly due to the size, cost and power requirements). The 16 slot board required two power supplies to operate.

I have not seen this prototype for a long time and I don’t know for sure which of the three models I have. Making a guess I would say it was the 8 slot version but the 12 is also possible. I know I don’t have the 16 since the original prototype didn’t fully work. However I can say confidently that he one I have did work.

I wanted to make sure that this reveal was done 100% the first time, however, I will find this MVS prototype and post a new topic about it later on the moment it is found.

NG Dev - Gunlord AES
To all the people who pre-ordered the NG Dev’s Gunlord AES. This has been delayed several times now due to the pending deal for the AES snaplocks and cases. I’m sorry for the delay but there have been several delays beyond my control. The cases will get here and moving forward you will not see any more delays for parts on this side. The cases and shells are 100% SNK stock.

Ray Young and !Arcade!:
Let me start off by saying: I am NOT Ray Young, or have I ever worked for Ray or !Arcade!.

Yes, I know a lot about the Phantom-1 because I just spent a huge chunk of my time (8 months to be exact) fixing it.

The Daedalus converter was designed from the ground up, to be better than anything out today or whatever may come out tomorrow. It was also designed to outlast the AES - Only time will tell if I am correct.

I’ve been asked “Why the Phantom-1 and not the SMVS2 to fix?”
Ok, there are three converters, the Phantom-1, SMVS2 and the Pranslation. I worked on all three, fixed two of them and I have a working solution for the SMVS2. From the time I registered up to this point only two people asked me for a SMVS2 fix. It has been deemed not worth fixing at this time. However that could change in the future.

I will now bring this reveal to a close.

I did plan to address the review post based off of Shawn’s conversation posted not too long ago. We did have a long 5 hour conversation; Almost everything I’ve told him has been taken out of context.

Here are some images of other pieces of art that I have.

Stoney Creek is awfully close to Mississauga.

You won't let people near your storage container. You won't take pictures of it.

Why?

aria said:

Stoney Creek is awfully close to Mississauga.

You won't let people near your storage container. You won't take pictures of it.

Why?

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I'm surprised you asked this, really.

If people get the assumption of the high value of the contents, what's to say they won't try to steal anything from it?

Xian Xi said:

I'm surprised you asked this, really.

If people get the assumption of the high value of the contents, what's to say they won't try to steal anything from it?

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That's a stupid answer.

A photo isn't going to steal anything.

EDIT: Shawn isn't going to steal anything, either.

not letting people near storage is understandable. Not taking pictures, however, is ridiculous.

Dear David,

Thanks for coming forward and providing some great insight into the workings of SNK. And SSII is boss!

Who was your direct supervisor at SNK USA? Can we get the name so we can reach out to that person and confirm?

aria said:

That's a stupid answer.

A photo isn't going to steal anything.

EDIT: Shawn isn't going to steal anything, either.

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You said storage container. That's what I was referring to. If you know someone's location and a picture of what their storage container looks like, people will come out of the woodwork looking for it for it's contents. That's what I was responding to, if you just meant pics of the things inside, I apologize. It was worded that way.

He also said he'll be posting more pics in the future.

Xian Xi said:

You said storage container. That's what I was referring to. If you know someone's location and a picture of what their storage looks like, people will come out of the woodwork looking for it for it's contents. That's what I was responding to, if you just meant pics of the things inside, I apologize. It was worded that way.

He also said he'll be posting more pics in the future.

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Nonsense.

Seems like an interesting story. Would have been cool to work for SNK.

The only thing I don't get is. If you didn't get these games for a dirt cheap price, what would possess you to buy 10 copies (or however many it is) of AF3 and PS2? That would be like if I worked for Sega back int he day and decided I just had to have 10 copies of Alex Kidd in High Tech World ??? Why?

Xian Xi said:

You said storage container. That's what I was referring to. If you know someone's location and a picture of what their storage container looks like, people will come out of the woodwork looking for it for it's contents. That's what I was responding to, if you just meant pics of the things inside, I apologize. It was worded that way.

He also said he'll be posting more pics in the future.

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Still a stupid answer. Shawn wouldn't steal from anyone.

Why was it that the print job for the us af3 was nothing like that of sw3, but rather, identical to the Daedalus converter?

Xander Crews said:

Still a stupid answer. Shawn wouldn't steal from anyone.

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Did I say Shawn or something? That's something you guys fabricated, don't put words in my mouth.

DavidG said:

Surplus cash flow was off the chart and SNK being a young company in the field ran with it and hired a lot of us to work on new hardware. Most of us were very new and just out of school.

[. . .]

One problem SNK had was being a young company - with a lot of money. Many choices made were made on the fly.

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You keep calling SNK a “young” company. It was founded in 1978. It developed arcade games for over a decade before the Neo (here's the list at KLOV). Why did they need a bunch of green employees to develop hardware in the US?

While I’m at it: How did you handle your work visa?

Xian Xi said:

Did I say Shawn or something? That's something you guys fabricated, don't put words in my mouth.

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You're defending his rational for denying Shawn. Don't play cute, James.

aria said:

You keep calling SNK a “young” company. It was founded in 1978. It developed arcade games for over a decade before the Neo (here's the list at KLOV). Why did they need a bunch of green employees to develop hardware in the US?

While I’m at it: How did you handle your work visa?

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TN. lol.

Xander Crews said:

You're defending his rational for denying Shawn. Don't play cute, James.

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Seriously? Just wow. I speak in generalization and you just link it to something else. Bravo.

I'm still amazed that Bobak would even think I would even be referring to that.

Xian Xi said:

Did I say Shawn or something? That's something you guys fabricated, don't put words in my mouth.

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I think it might go over better if DavidG handles his own answers. I know you believe him, and that's your prerogative and I honestly don't hold anything against anyone who believes him, but I don't think he needs any champions for him here. I'm just asking questions. It's what I do.

Xander Crews said:

Why was it that the print job for the us af3 was nothing like that of sw3, but rather, identical to the Daedalus converter?

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I would like to know this too.

Xian Xi said:

Seriously? Just wow. I speak in generalization and you just link it to something else. Bravo.

I'm still amazed that Bobak would even think I would even be referring to that.

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You are pulling for your fellow tech head way too hard, James.