"This product can only be used on the NEO GEO Rental System."

[ericb]

On page 16 (the last, warning page) of the manual of my copy of the US Baseball Stars Professional, it says the following as the first bullet point:

"This product can only be used on the NEO GEO Rental System."

Now, comparing that to my DT Alpha Mission 2:

"This product can only be used on the NEO GEO." (with a blank line specifically where the Rental System was on the BSP manual).

My question is... were there different manuals/releases for rental carts as opposed to purchase carts? Or were all the low NGH # games referring to Rental Systems? Moreover, if it was a change, when did it change? I'm sorry, those are the only 2 US releases I have to compare, so I couldn't check it out, and I'm curious. Thanks in advance!

 

[Freelancer]

Most of the older system manuals reference the AES as being a rental system.
What happened was early on SNK intended the AES to be strictly a rental system due to the price of the hardware and software. I'm guessing at some point consumers demanded that the hardware be sold for home use, to which SNK listened.

 

[DanAdamKOF]

The memory card manual refers to the AES as the "Neo-Geo Home Rental System", and on the other page of the manual says "Neo-Geo Home System will be released in the later date".

 

[ericb]

Ok, yeah, I assumed that they just released the AES as a rental-only first. I'm still wondering, however, just out of curiosity, does anyone know the offical US/JPN release dates for the AES? It would be interesting to find out sales figures for those first couple years as well, but that info is long gone, I'm sure...

Thanks for the responses, gentlemen.

 

[Garlic Butter]

It would be interesting to find out sales figures for those first couple years as well, but that info is long gone, I'm sure...

That would be interesting, but I'd guess the sales figures would be even worse than the average amount of Xbox's sold in Japan on a weekly bases

 

[Shito]

Neo-Geo first JPN release was rental. You can recognize it by the package: the rental system had the 'white & green stripe' package. Supposedly, the 'white & red striped' package was intented to be US-rental? Maybe.