This has always been a touchy subject for me but I'll try to lay it out in the light of both ends.
*thinks
Ok !Arcade! came around in the scene about a littler over a year ago. This of course was around the time Shawn's site was finally starting to move up from 2nd rate *heh* to something of a united scene as a whole.
At the time Dion Dakis & Chris Ray were 2 people more or less well known in the scene who did conversions of Neo*Geo carts and charged ungodly high prices
AND tried to tell everyone they were official SNK guys and had ties ins with the now defunt company.
This continued on for many years in this scene with Dion running around saying I AM NEOGEO, talking down to people, screwing people over*Too many people to name at the moment* and overall being an ass to everyone who knew who him.
SNK sadly is a loopy company that never had it's wheels on straight so in the end a lot of games which SHOULD have been on home cart never made the transition. Of course I more than willingly say yes converted Neo*Geo carts are not legal in the sense that SNK never approved of such conversion and thus should not have been done.
Now Jeff Kurtz at one time or another has done his own conversion of carts which his usual requirement is the person wanting the conversion would have to supply the original MVS cart & the sac cart to do this.
He's been doing just as long as Dion but one thing that always made him widely accepted is the fact he doesn't charge high ass prices for these conversion jobs.
Moving on to !Arcade! now at the time I knew these were around in the scene but never really got into any ventures with the Neo*Geo as a possible business choice.
The main factor which made !Arcade! widly accepted was the Phantom-1 convertor which they had created to allow people to play MVS games at home
inculding encrypted home carts which normally would not work on an AES syetem.
I'm sure seeing as you've been around in the Neo for awhile you knew about the older side loading convertors and whatnot that tho nice was unable to play newer SNK games.
Now jumping ahead with !Arcade! and conversions of their type. One thing NGman that chaffs a lot of people in the ass is the saccing of home carts to create these conversions.
Usually people are not hardassed about them in reagrds to older titles because there was a buttload of home sac carts made like Samurai Shodown II for example. This of course was ok for some people while others still frowned upon the issue.
Of course later Neo MVS games which had encrypted coding on them usually required 2 sac carts instead of one due to the amount of work. Ala Prehistorice Isle 2 needs a Slug 3 top board and a KoF 99 bottom board to do the conversion. *I think <IMG SRC="smilies/tongue.gif" border="0">*
!Arcade! decided with the release of Strikers 1945 Plus to develop their own custom board which would allow them to only sac MVS carts and they would no longer have to worry about killing home carts to make the conversion.
The issue was visited before with this and it's been said that seeing as !Arcade! paid for the original MVS cart, SNK got their money.
This also hold true in that SNK never made plans to release this as a home cart and thus never lost any money either due to them never really concentrating on the home cart market anymore.
I do agree about the issues with the art and I cannot refute that point in anyway seeing as it's copyrighted material but this once again goes back to them being loopy.
I mean afterall if SNK didn't care about Dion they sure as hell don't care about !Arcade! either.
This of course was quoted a long time ago by the Gamelord Chad Okada who worked originally for SNK USA when their offices were still active.
The main issue he said at the time SNK just didn't care to pursue any legal action on Dion or anyone else regarding the converted carts. He also mentioned that of course if Dion or anyone else tried to undercut their MVS market then SNK would most truly act on the issue.
Overal in the end, yes the conversions are illegal. SNK also said they didn't care about these conversions either so that's basically saying it's A-ok which of course even I roll my eyes at.
Just a short note on Romz tho. It's already been said by most people about selling romz on egay so I won't say much expect I agree with the issue.
Anyone can get Roms and you & I both know a chunk of people who play Neo games on the Net never even owned or seen a Neo*Geo system before.
I hope this clears up a few things in regards to conversions. I'm not under any illusions or false light about what they really are.
!Arcade! for the record also has never said they were official SNK made games and I will give them credit for their being honest about what they sell.
[ October 09, 2001: Message edited by: BonusKun ]
