OK. I’m ready to break my silence and put to rest this Atomiswave cloud that has been lingering over my head. I’ve waited far too long for some kind of update from my contact and have received absolutely nothing. So I’m done looking like the bad guy here.
The Atomiswave library is 100% complete. A complete Atomiswave collection breaks down as follows:
28 officially released cartridges + 5 unreleased protos = 33 games. The 5 unreleased protos were: Force Five, Kenju, Chicago Chase 1929, Premier Eleven Soccer, & Sushi Bar.
All 5 protos have been found, located, sourced, contributed, and dumped. This was accomplished fairly recently through very positive cooperation among the proto owners & a special contact we have in Japan. I myself was one of those proto owners. I provided Chase 1929 and I also helped with Premiere Eleven as well.
The intention was to then make a run of reproduction physical carts of all 5 protos (just like the bootleg carts that were sold for a few years of the released games) with normal sized boards used in normal cartridge cases. In fact, as terms of the negotiation, myself (as well as the other proto contributors) were all promised one complete set (all 5 carts) immediately & first off the assembly line as part of our agreements. However, this all happened years ago & we are STILL waiting for them! Since September 2016 to be precise! We have received NOTHING!
In fact, NOTHING has happened yet for that matter. Other then a few photos I was sent showing the initial prototype repro carts, no carts have been produced or sold. Everything has been held up in limbo. Initially, when I asked my contact for an update and an explanation as to why we have not made the carts yet, he informed me that the memory chips used by the boards he chose for the design were the same as those used by Nintendo for the switch games. And since Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on purchasing these chips in bulk, it made the production costs per cartridge prohibitively expensive.
And sadly that’s all the information I have at this time. My contact hasn’t ever even bothered to reach out to me with another update since then. But the truth is I just simply lost interest anyhow.
I was never really an Atomiswave fan. I mostly got into it out of boredom & a serious lack of anything else left to collect. I originally paid 3K for that Chicago 1929 proto back in September of 2012. I then tried to ransom it as a hostage in the hopes of a possible trade for a neogeo proto. But there simply wasn’t enough interest & its value wasn’t on par with a Neo proto. So I gave up on the idea & agreed to dump it under these certain conditions. Then subsequently sold it for 4K after dumping it. Once that happened my interest level kind of died.
I don’t think we got ripped off, per say, in that I don’t think this was a scam or whatever to trick us into dumping our games, but I do think the guy in charge (our contact) is a little unprofessional & certainly discourteous in how he has handled not only this negotiation with us, but more significantly the communication with us. I mean dude, we the proto owners, should be constantly updated & informed as to what is going on & why. Even if it is just saying: “nothing new to report this week” for week after week. Zero communication is unacceptable. Extremely poor business practice. But again, I already sold my proto and got my money back so at least I can’t get burned financially if/when the rom data gets released publicly. So I just lost interest after that.
But my biggest gripe was moreso the fact that I really wanted all of this to happen JUST so that I could finally silence my critics who call me a rom whore, in that I never dump or share my protos. But yet here we are, 5 years after agreeing to share, and yet still nobody can enjoy these games?
Anyhow, so that’s the story behind the Atomiswave protos! All of them have indeed been “shared” and “dumped” already. It’s been over 5 years for that matter. And some of them even leaked and were hacked to run on the Naomi. So imagine that; just adding more insult to injury to the Atomiswave fans. And at this point, an Atomiswave multicart or SD cart would probably make more sense anyways.
I do feel confident that we will all eventually be able to see & play these games, the way they were intended, on the Atomiswave. But for now, they remain out of the general public’s reach.