Minimum Print # of Home Carts

A lot of people have been saying, that the minimun # of home carts that SNK prints is 10,000. I find this kind of hard to believe.

If the minimun they make is 10,000 then how come games like Ninja Masters, Metal Slug, and Kizuna Encounter are so hard to find. I mean if there were 10,000 Ninja Masters floating around, wouldn't you see them for sale much more often? And even if SNK only made 1/4 of those Ninja Masters in US form, that would still be 2,500 US Ninja Masters floating around. So where are they? We know that SNK made 10,000 copies of KOF 2000 and you can't go on eBay or a forum without seeing a couple dozen copies for sale at a time.

I don't think it's correct when people say the minimun # of a certain cart that SNK prints is 10,000. I think on some games, it's much less than that. Any thoughts?

Ryan

I believe these games are distributed worldwide and not just U.S. or Japan. I bet you that 85-90 percent of all Ebay sellers are from the US. That leaves a lot of European and Asian countries that have Neo Geo console and games and are not exposed to Ebay.com. While some games are released in smaller quantity. Some games are probably produced in excess of 15,000 copies, like the first 10 games are so released with the system (i.e Player’s Golf, Nam-1975, League Bowling..ect)

One thing I was curious about was converted carts. If you have to sacrifice a cart (such as Fatal Fury) how many of the carts that were in circulation that were sacrificed are there? If there were 15,000 fatal furys made and say 1000 were used to convert into a home cart. that means there are only 14,000 now and 1000 MVS carts less too. Just some food for thought....

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The fire burns in my soul.

Well I don't see why not. SNK made around 350 to 400 thousand home cart systems. I dont see that many people in these neo clubs. Nor that many for sale anymore. I reckon the vast vast majority of Neo owners are not active on the internet. I'd also bet the vast majority of Neo fans that are on the net are posting in non-english forums. SNK sold world wide. just a thought.

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-nick_th_fury

hey rstreck,you said and i quote:

"A lot of people have been saying, that the minimun # of home carts that SNK prints is 10,000..."

a lot of people?

well i never said that and i do believe thats bullshit

if they actually printed 10000 kof 2000,
and thats likely,
then we all can easily assume that only 4 or 5000 copies of motw were made

its easy to see,just take a look around

probably 1000 or even less for ninja masters or neo turf masters or kizuna us

the bullshit is when someone jumps up all of a sudden and claims
there are only 100 copies of this rare gem,
and i have em !

and then you see em everywhere
neo store,e-bay and the lot

thats bullshit

100 is fuckin laughable

or -me current fave-,this one:
there are only 50 copies of aero fighters 3,
and i once saw it but didnae have enough cash with me so i went back home but when i
came back it no longer was there...
but a mate of mine had it and unluckily enough,sold it the other day...do not fear though,for hes got proof of that,but he just cant find that picture where he was warmly embracing his aero fighters 3 cart,
he lost it cos he had that said pic in his wallet and it got stolen today

and you're like
yer pushin it !!
now thats bullshit

in my not so humble opinion,
the MINIMUM amount is something between 500 and 1000

this is my truth,now tell me yours

Originally posted by Fran:

in my not so humble opinion,
the MINIMUM amount is something between 500 and 1000

this is my truth,now tell me yours

Click to expand...

I agree with you Fran. That was the point that I was trying to make. I find it very hard to believe that the minimum number is 10,000. I have seen several posts on this forum saying that the minimum number of a particular home cart that SNK would produce is 10,000. The reason they give is anything less than that would be unprofitabe. I think that is ridiculous. I think your right when you say games like Ninja Masters were probably only produced in the low thousands.

Ryan

In france it's very hard to find new games so and i think that it's the same case in the whole europe .10000 is a big number for me.

Hmm maybe this will bring some info about this.
This came from a very good source, and i dont mean NGF.
Metal Slug was produced only a 1000 copies each.(1000 japanese and 1000 US= 2000 total)
Explains why it is so expensive and hard to find.
But there are rarer carts on the Neo Geo market like Twinkle Star Sprites?
I heard the production run of this game was only 300.

Brings us to Aerofighters 3, it does exist.
I have seen it, and i have a second witness for this. Now why is this game so rare?
Maybe because Aerofighters 2 didn't sell enough in Europe? No word on the production run of thisone though. One thing is for certain, extremely limited. Only seen it once then never again. Will try to find one to prove it exists though.

Ninja Masters, Kizuna Encounter, ... all very limited production runs.

LastResort

They might base their home cart production number off of the popularity of the game in the arcades. That could explain why games like Samurai Shodown II had so many units available (for it was popular in the US as well as everywhere else), while games like Kizuna Encounter and NinjaMasters were so limited (games in which almost never saw the light of day in arcade form in the US).

Just food for thought. 10,000 sounds like a small number as well, but doesn't seem too far off the mark when it comes to some of these obscure Neo titles.

500 carts produced of any game are just not cost effective. These carts are not handed made production line itself would not turn a profit for company. Neo Geo games were sold worldwide and not just Japan and US.
Think about what your saying for a minute. If you saying that only 500 carts were produced in the US, that means only 10 carts were available to each state (I doubt that). Another example, Samurai Showdown 4 US released is a rare cart and pushing $300+ on auction on Ebay. Well I know for sure that there were more than 500 of these produced. How do I know, because I had over 80 of this game 4 years ago and sold some of them without the case for $200 each. Now, I am left with about 40+ SS4 cases with no games.

Um...why would you sell the carts w/o the cases? That's horrible.

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-RyoGeo

Pichai you dumbass why would you sell your games and keep the cases?

You practically ruined 80 games that were supposedly out of 500..think about it..you alone destroy about 20 percent of the United States copies of Samurai shodown 4...you should be burned AT THE STAKE BITCH!!!!!!!!!

i finally found someone with a I.Q. lower than our President