ForeverSublime said:
I can respect that. Still, I think if you're going to toss around the idea of pooling together for a rom dump... toss around the idea of "make your donation or leave the community". Otherwise, none of those people are doing anything to make the community "greater".
I'm a little confused by what you mean (I admit I'm a pretty tired reading this), but I think I get the gist.
My position on this is actually a reverse of my previously held opinion of previous dumps. Usually, the dumps bothered me because, mainly, they were harming the mother-company and the overall industry.
However, times have changed. SNK has nothing to really do with the Neo anymore. Nothing is harming SNK. Now were faced with a situation where there's a developer with a price system that was designed to take the dump's inevitability into account. The collectors are out there, and they'll pay the exhorbirant price
But let me step back and put this into a broader context: we've hit the point where any new game for the Neo is going to come from one of two channels, protos and homebrews/stuff-like-this. The prior is much more complicated, but forms my opinion on how to handle any new situations.
I currently am persuaded by the view that protos are inevitably going to be very expensive. However, I also think having the chance to play these protos is a very positive aspect in our community. Realistically, this means a dump. I've learned that communities like the Atari community create pools of contributions so that a trusted person in said community can go forward and snap-up any such protos as soon as they appear on the market. I don't think we need (or could produce) such a ready "emergency fund" in our community, but I do think there are people willing to move quickly to donate to a purchase if something truly amazing like a bonafide proto surfaces somewhere. In a perfect world, such a game would be purchased with community funds, dumped by a competent source, and as a carrot, those monetary donors would get the dump at a fixed amount of time before the general release.
I take this same position and apply it to the situation with this cart. It's just too rare an object to treat any other way. Granted, there will be many people who would not contribute. However, my interest is in building interest for the Neo that will continue on.
I, myself, am curious to see all that's offered for our system. At the same time, I don't believe in hording secrets. If there's any trivia or info about the Neo that I know, I consider it community property and will try to share it (the guiding principle behind the Neo Glossary, the reviews I wrote, and my contributions to things like Wikipedia). While the free-flow of ideas is great, that alone won't help people here. I think the greater good is to share this game with everyone.
Man, I'm sleepy. Need sleep now.