It’s great to have NG DEV.TEAM supporting the Neo-Geo. The developer is from Germany after all which is where many renowned products originate, from fast cars to elite appliances, and now original Neo-Geo software! Keep in mind that I’m not a huge fan of shooters, yet I felt this game was deserving of a quality home cart production. Just prior to the final home cart release, Samurai Shodown V Special, I attempted to have SNKP produce this game officially in limited quantities, but they were not interested. Their plans were already set to have SSVS be the final home release.
I wish there were more options for producing Last Hope. We know that SNKP has permanently moved on from the NeoGeo system, !Arcade! is no longer in business (but still needs to
fill my order before he calls it quits for good), and that Vektorlogic is a possibility.
I definitely agree with the several posts I saw requesting that this title is released in the snap lock case. The NeoStore has plenty of new KoF 2001’s that could be used for this purpose, although I would need approval from SNKP before I could be involved. We need this kind of support to keep the Neo alive. Conversely, the best way to kill the interest is to kill the support. Hopefully that won’t be the case. Would also love to see the retail price below $400, perhaps if we can reach the numbers you need it can be done.
Mini review:
I received the prototype of Last Hope from the developer in May of 2004 and considering the unknown source my expectations were quite low. Not 11 meg Digger Man low, but I wasn’t expecting to be wow’d, no pun intended. I was immediately impressed with the graphics, sound effects, and the music. My 1st thought was that this must be some sort of port or rip from another system. No way would someone invest this kind of time into developing a game for the Neo without any solid reassurance of a release.
Last Hope is a challenging shooter, not a game you can beat in one night, not even if set to easy mode. The play style is in the category of R-Type, Last Resort, and Pulstar, requiring a strategy to progress (memorization of patterns). When you die, you are ported back to a restart point, and there are multiple restart points per stage. I also remember power ups and add-ons for your ship, but not a life bar, so there is not much room for many errors. This is definitely a game that will require a long while to master.
I also didn’t experience any glitches, which says a lot of time was already spent debugging. It’s clear that some talented programmers were involved in developing this new game and it would be a shame if it never saw some form of release.