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Hello,
Having received all the questions and reactions from the Neo-Geo community through the normal means of communication, we realised that we have not kept our customers up to date as much as expected and that this is damaging our project.
We have therefore decided to change tack and share with you what happens day-to-day in our studio. We are keen to make you a part of the final steps in the conception and industrial production of the CPHD cartridge.
We would also like to remind you that the advantages of this CPHD are double, as we have always hoped: not only to give some background to our mascot NINJA PONEY within a game on a dead console, but also to design an industrial process for the production of NEW cartridges and an SDK for the community. In short, we wanted to revive support, or, at least, to allow the community to benefit from new games without destroying the existing heritage.
Here, then, is a short history of the cartridge since February 2014, the initial launch date for the games cartridge.
-February: Production of the first prototypes starts in Ireland, then the first series in China.
-March-April-May: Testing of received cartridges. The models show both “standard” design problems and “non-standard” problems in the quality of the components. This is the start of a series of exchanges with the manufacturers. Given the difficulty of dealing with engineering problems on the other side of the world and the quality of the cartridges, we decide to relocate production to within Europe.
-June: After contacting various European factories, a facility in Orleans is finally chosen. Manufacturing quality is good and the engineering service allows various difficulties to be thoroughly examined.
-July-August: The first examples for testing are received. CPHD is an excellent benchmark for the stability of the format, with game sessions lasting longer than a “one credit” play on a shmup. Design quality, circuit dilatation, endurance of components, everything passes the tests. Other problems are resolved.
-September: Debugging continues. We want to ensure top quality production, which takes time. We know that we have chosen to make things harder, but we are sure it will be worth it to offer the Neo-Geo community an industrial-quality format for their homebrew projects.
We apologise once again for the delay in delivering the format. We are as impatient as you are to finally deliver your cartridges to you. We know that we are not the most punctual and we are not the most “chatty”. However, we are putting all of our energy and our drive into finishing this project, to be able to guarantee delivery before Christmas 2014.
In this spirit, we are therefore going to try, each week, to keep you up to date with the final stages of production of the CPHD cartridge, both on our website and on Facebook.
In particular by creating a photo album, which should bring you a bit closer to our projects. Let’s go, go, go