Official SNK Neo-Geo Book: NEOGEO: A VISUAL HISTORY ネオジオ〜目で楽しむ軌跡〜 (Publisher Bitmap Books)

VirtuaNEStor

Caught Flipping., Deal With At Own Risk.,
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27
Here's the deal, ace. Members here are VERY wary of people buying things on the forum, at forum member prices, and then running to eBay to flip them for a lot more than they paid here. People here like to sell low to trusted members at lower than market prices. It's a nice thing to do. It feels good. It's like selling to friends.

You have shown that you are a profiteer. You bought a pretty limited item, put a HUGE mark up on it, and are now crying foul when people here don't like the practice. Sellers here deserve to know how you go about business.

  • Members can still sell to you if they like.
  • You can (try to) still buy here if you like.
  • Did you do anything illegal? No.
  • Have you been kicked off the site? No.
  • Is your access here restricted? No.
  • Did you do a douche thing that impacts how you are viewed here by our membership base? Yes.

You did a thing, and now you live with the repercussions of that thing. That's life. You don't have to like it. And, to be honest, that you are surprised by the reaction here tells me you really don't know how this place works.

I never bough in this forum any game and i joined 6 years ago. I wanna buy on ebay. Is better for me. I prefer to pay more and have best service and paypal.

By other side i'm not crying, i dont wanna sell or buy nothing on this forum. I only wanna be a normal member. I read the rules and there is no place in the rules where reads this... Why i need to have those marks?? who knows
 
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RyoGeo

Global Moderator, Voice of Reason, Member #13
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I never bough in this forum any game and i joined 6 years ago. I wanna buy on ebay. Is better for me. I prefer to pay more and have best service and paypal.

By other side i'm not crying, i dont wanna sell or buy nothing on this forum. I only wanna be a normal member. I read the rules and there is no place in the rules where reads this... Why i need to have those marks?? who knows

Well, that's good news then! Your special icon won't really impact you!

Given that you have been here for almost 7 years, and have a grand total of 26 posts (many of which are within this thread), you should have no problem continuing to lurk (nothing wrong with that), and enjoy the site just as you have for the better part of a decade.

Best to you, and enjoy.
 

VirtuaNEStor

Caught Flipping., Deal With At Own Risk.,
Joined
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Posts
27
Well, that's good news then! Your special icon won't really impact you!

Given that you have been here for almost 7 years, and have a grand total of 26 posts (many of which are within this thread), you should have no problem continuing to lurk (nothing wrong with that), and enjoy the site just as you have for the better part of a decade.

Best to you, and enjoy.

This thing is not about impact or not impact on my activity. It's about justice. When you made the rules you didn't wrote anything like this. You are inventing the rules by the way. I have one forum, and i will never make one injustice like this because the rules are to respect them, but who will respect the rules if the global moderator can unrespect them and changue them by the way...? Write again the rules, put this new rule and them, the next time, when i flip again you can put me the marks.

Read this again please

OK... I've been thinking about this... and here are my thoughts...

1. VirtuaNEStor has strictly done nothing against forum rules... he brought the stuff and yes... he's flipping it...
2. I agree this sits poorly with me... he brought and is flipping a copy of the Mega Edition and it could've gone to someone else...BUT... first come first serve...
3. The price point is sorta LOL...

The only real question is it within the remit of the mod team to be the moral arbitrators over something like this...

xROTx

You know what? i didn't have this mark when i was triying to sell the book. The real problem of everything is when i SOLD the book. Yes, i sold the book for 500 fucking euros. Is fucking great man. But please, respect the rules and respect your forum. Take the good side of the story; everybody knows that mega edition is a priced item, great collector gem. And everything starts with my flip!!. Who knows, maybe in the future this books rise 1.000 or 2.000 euros. And everybody will laugh about my poor selling. Bah... it's part of the game. :lolz:
 
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RyoGeo

Global Moderator, Voice of Reason, Member #13
Joined
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Posts
2,495
Ok, smart guy. Since you're into the rules, here are the rules.

You're now passed fun, and shitting up what was once a cool and celebratory thread. If you want to continue to talk about your fate, you can do so in the War Room.

If you post about your plight in this thread again, you will be War Room locked. Them's the rules.
 

Rot

Calvin & Hobbes, ,
Joined
Jul 8, 2003
Posts
11,441
:keke:

xROTx

PS. TECHNICALLY... is a weird word...

Technically... no forum rules have been broken...
Technically... I decided in favour of the lads who don't like massive gouging...
Technically... there was some funstering upon my part...
Technically... I just sat back and watched it go to shit...
Technically... I am drunk as fuck...
 

xsq

Thou Shalt Not, Question Rot.,
Joined
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Posts
7,414
VirtuaFLIPtor handled right.


Now let's get back on topic:
Hello everyone,

as mentioned, I've been in Japan in the last weeks, and had a couple of meetings with SNK (both Tokyo branch and Osaka HQ) to talk about the book.

First of all, I'd like to share how enthusiast the company is about the final result "beyond our expectations" quoting the head of marketing division.

Again, kudos to the whole team I had the privilege to work with, Sam, Frazer, Brian and all who contributed.

Here some pics I hope will delight all fans (despite the usual constrains I had in terms of taking shots), it has been quite a long year of hard work, but the enthusiast comments all around socials and here are the greatest reward...enjoy!

(main entrance of the Esaka HQ)
View attachment 47210

Entrance showroom:
View attachment 47211

..with the book placed right in front!
View attachment 47217

Here with Nishikawa-kun, who has been the person in SNK working with us, providing all the exclusive content and fact checking
View attachment 47213

Tokyo branch
View attachment 47214

with Adam L. overseas Marketing manager, an old friend from the time of the interview I did almost 10 years ago!
View attachment 47215

View attachment 47216

Will get a development team coral pic with the book (including Oda sensei) in few days, will post hopefully soon.

...we had the chance to talk about upcoming projects, and while under NDA, I can tell you there is a lot of good stuff coming and definitively a team of passionate people working on it.

Later with more updates!

Massimiliano
Thanks for the post, quite nice to see those pics! Great the SNK guys dig the book as well, that must be very gratifying. Well, you guys should celebrate it ;) Looking forward to those other updates....
 

RyoGeo

Global Moderator, Voice of Reason, Member #13
Joined
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Posts
2,495
Mas, this is a fantastic post, and I love the pictures. So awesome that SNK was happy to contribute to the book, but even better that they are so pleased with the result. You've written yourself into the history, my friend, which is pretty great.

PS . . . ALL, please observe the Spartan, pictured below. Italians do so enjoy their tight shirts. :D

Here with Nishikawa-kun, who has been the person in SNK working with us, providing all the exclusive content and fact checking
View attachment 47213


Massimiliano
 

Rot

Calvin & Hobbes, ,
Joined
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Posts
11,441
Here with Nishikawa-kun, who has been the person in SNK working with us, providing all the exclusive content and fact checking
View attachment 47213


Massimiliano

OK OK... why is the Azn bloke holding his hand over his crotch while Massi needs to cover his with a massive book?

...these are the questions that keep me awake at nights...

xROTx
 

massimiliano

ネオジオ,
20 Year Member
Joined
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Posts
3,224
OK OK... why is the Azn bloke holding his hand over his crotch while Massi needs to cover his with a massive book?

...these are the questions that keep me awake at nights...

xROTx

haha, well..we were all excited, but not *so* excited!
(btw I was wearing the same shirt from 2008 but I blame all the burgers I had since I moved to the US)
 

massimiliano

ネオジオ,
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especially when you consider one of the people behind this book (NeoTurfMasta) has spent thousands over the years on freely giving to the NeoGeo community. I'm going to highlight Dark Seed here as a prime example.

I would just add, both me and Brian (which I brought in the initiative) didn't ask for any kind of compensation, far from few copies of the book, when asked to join the collaboration, which we gladly accepted moved by passion and which eventually did last a year.

The three of us, put all our assets available, some of them includes *very* expensive stuff which took more than 20 years to gather...far from obvious rare hardware pieces (on my side, my SC-19 cabinet, Kizuna 4-P board and more) the amount of flyers and magazines needed to write a *fact-checkable* history as required by SNK (or even just for the many captions) can be easily quantified in the order of thousands dollars...and that's just one thing.

I really hope people will enjoy the contents (mostly graphical on purpose, as Bitmap books tradition) indeed because of the work and effort behind the book.

Fingers crossed, looking forward to a Japanese release!
 

Razoola

Divine Hand of the UniBIOS,
Staff member
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4,662
I would just add, both me and Brian (which I brought in the initiative) didn't ask for any kind of compensation, far from few copies of the book, when asked to join the collaboration, which we gladly accepted moved by passion and which eventually did last a year.

The three of us, put all our assets available, some of them includes *very* expensive stuff which took more than 20 years to gather...far from obvious rare hardware pieces (on my side, my SC-19 cabinet, Kizuna 4-P board and more) the amount of flyers and magazines needed to write a *fact-checkable* history as required by SNK (or even just for the many captions) can be easily quantified in the order of thousands dollars...and that's just one thing.

I really hope people will enjoy the contents (mostly graphical on purpose, as Bitmap books tradition) indeed because of the work and effort behind the book.

Fingers crossed, looking forward to a Japanese release!

:buttrock::buttrock::buttrock:
 

kevlo9

New Challenger
Joined
Nov 27, 2016
Posts
53
I would just add, both me and Brian (which I brought in the initiative) didn't ask for any kind of compensation, far from few copies of the book, when asked to join the collaboration, which we gladly accepted moved by passion and which eventually did last a year.

The three of us, put all our assets available, some of them includes *very* expensive stuff which took more than 20 years to gather...far from obvious rare hardware pieces (on my side, my SC-19 cabinet, Kizuna 4-P board and more) the amount of flyers and magazines needed to write a *fact-checkable* history as required by SNK (or even just for the many captions) can be easily quantified in the order of thousands dollars...and that's just one thing.

I really hope people will enjoy the contents (mostly graphical on purpose, as Bitmap books tradition) indeed because of the work and effort behind the book.

Fingers crossed, looking forward to a Japanese release!

AMAZING JOB!!! Thanks for all the hard work!!!
 

suicidekiller

Host for Orochi,
Joined
Feb 3, 2003
Posts
1,595
After I've been working myself through the whole book I would like to give some feedback to the creators. First of all: Thank you! for your efforts and the obvious hard work you have put into creating this book. The outcome is great and I've been enjoying it entirely. The whole book screams quality from page 1 to 400 and it received a special place on the shelf next to all my other SNK memorabilia. Finally we can all enjoy an English language anthology to one of our favorite companies SNK.

However, as it is human nature to nag about every piece of published work (a.k.a. the critics) there are some points I would like to raise that came to my attention while reading (or yet to say exploring) the book:

  • I was pretty disappointed not to see a single English AES release in the whole book. Sure, there is some mentioning here and there mostly in regard to the Dog-Tag releases, but I would have wished to see at least some of it in a possible "SNK bible". Also the choice of two collectors which are known for their Japanese collections (frazer/massi) may have lead to the missing English section.
  • The hardware section is way too extensive in my oppinion. Over 70 pages just pictures of a stick and another stick and another CD unit was a pretty boring part of the book. I would rather had the hardware section trimmed down a lot to include every AES game box art released because that was the much more interesting part. Also the deck unit was featured way too much. I know it's a rare item but even a niche for most of us Neo Geo collectors.
  • The Pocket section... I mean come on. 6 Box Arts and 6 pixel arts? You could have left that out completely and go for the full AES set for example. Still interesting of course but rather unnecessary in the marginalized way it was presented IMO.
  • I didn't like the name inconsistencies. Why no straight use of either the English (preferable) or the Japanese names? The name for Samurai Shodown II was even crippled to Samurai Spirits 2 which doesn't even apply for either the Japanese (Shin Samurai Spirits) nor the English (Samurai Shodown II) release name.
  • And finally the Master list. Why not alphabetically? The way it turned out it gets a pretty hard to read ressource going by the release date.
Yeah, but enough of that nagging. Now to the good stuff :)

  • The paper quality and the binding screams quality and is pure awesome. Thanks a lot for putting so much care into this. I really like the way it turned out. Also the gold foil stamp fits perfectly.
  • Thanks for putting in the "early years". I know the book is mainly about the Neo Geo but it was a nice read and I was hoping for it to see some of the old stuff.
  • The presentation of the box art (with the colored borders) and the style of the photography is great. Especially the box art is put in a way different perspective that way which is a good thing.
  • The pixel art and artwork sections also turned out great. I just love to gaze at the amazing SNK backgrounds to find one more detail after another. To fully enjoy this without the hectic of a game to play is truly magnificient and does justice to the hard work put in by SNK.
  • The interviews were also very enjoyable. Especially the SHA-V interview catched my interest as I'm an avid SNK soundtrack fan ;)
  • All the small details like the mega cartridges in the index round out the great quality of this publication.

Overall the book is a great publication and it was about time someone put out something like this. Does it serve as the ultimate Neo Geo bible? No, I don't think so. But maybe that wasn't even the approach. It is rather a great ressource for people interested in the system and the games be it a newcomer or a veteran. And that's something we should be grateful for. Kudos gentlemen!
 

massimiliano

ネオジオ,
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Thanks for your feedback Suicidekiller, it is really appreciated.

I'll try to comment on few of the points you made, as hopefully will clarify something (I invite Fraz/Brian of course to bring their point of view as well)

-about the missing US carts, my understanding that the project was born following the SuperFamicom book, which was basically had JPN-only content. Also, we had constrains about how many pages we could use, and basically duplicating the carts with US doubles would have kept out other things. Anyway, I understand your point, let's say at least there is room for other initiatives, in case someone wants to fill the hole left it would be nice to see a US-only book.

-about too much hardware, I understand/agree that some of the content eventually seems redundant, but the idea was to represent at least once every peripheral/console. While I'm personally happy that the Deck could make it in the book, I see how its controller, looks basically the same of the CD/later AES, which have been reported as well.

-name inconsistencies. While we had to keep out US carts, the idea was to keep names recongnizable for non-JPN fans as well. Personally, you know me, I would have preferred a 100% JPN nomenclature, but *if* there will be a JPN release, I can assure it will be quite hardcore with regards to that ;)

-Master list. The chronological criteria has been always the same in pretty much every document we found, including All About SNK and other prints. It made things easier, when we started going through all the publications, like Gamest and Freaks, which reported the actual publication release date of a game through the issues (Btw, many thanks to Gemant, who basically went with the team through documenting every release, with specific proof, including many bounce back and forth with SNK's staff).
Personally I think representing data in this way it is bringing a further "timeline" info which somehow adds value to the search, but indeed making games lookup more difficult.
 

sr20det510

Guerilla Warrior
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Posts
1,730
In my honest opinion i think this book is not to read, it's only to see pictures after pictures. Very few interest content.

And the T-Shirt has very bad quality, not to use one time in the washing machine if you wanna conserv the picture.

Washing 101
Wash your shirts separate from jeans, towels, or rocks.
Don't use bleach, acid, goof off, or paint thinner in your wash.

How the fuck are you going to lose the picture after one wash?
 
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supergoose

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4,042
I would rather had the hardware section trimmed down a lot to include every AES game box art released because that was the much more interesting part.
A book that included all NGH game box art sure would be nice. In fact, I would like to see (and buy) at least two more books. One about all the Japanese releases and another one with the English ones. They could also include CD games and MVS flyers of games that were not released as home carts. Would be nice, if they could somehow show the complete insert and not just the front, though.
 

oliverclaude

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Does it serve as the ultimate Neo Geo bible? No, I don't think so. But maybe that wasn't even the approach.

This reflects my opinion, too. Let's not get carried away by slogans that are impossible to fulfill by one single book. For me personally, this publication's main purpose is to open up the way for other future official volumes and therefore I wish it to become a full success.
 

Takumaji

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The only real question is it within the remit of the mod team to be the moral arbitrators over something like this...

No, I don't think so. We have to make sure that things run more or less smoothly on ng.com, what people do outside this place is out of our reach and quite frankly I don't give a flying fart about who sells overpriced crap to whoever as long as noone got scammed. I'm a mod on a vg forum, not a member of some sort of video game scene price control squad or anything.
 

massimiliano

ネオジオ,
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This reflects my opinion, too. Let's not get carried away by slogans that are impossible to fulfill by one single book. For me personally, this publication's main purpose is to open up the way for other future official volumes and therefore I wish it to become a full success.

Far from the obvious enthusiasm we shared through the months preceding the release, I think the final result is a worthy companion for everyone's collection, an easy to consult *visual* book, able to give your guests a quick overview of what neogeo has been.

Nobody wanted to use the word "Bible" indeed, as a complete opera like that may only be achieved through a digital media I guess, not in a 400 or even more pages book.

Also, we had to face the constrain of not being able to put certain (most) of the 3rd parties games/contents/cart pics, due to IP issues with SNK...something other people may not care about when doing an unlicensed book.

As stated at the beginning of the thread, I personally think there is plenty of room for other initiatives, including the French one, which I'd like to see happening, if it could bring something new/fresh on the panorama.
 

Takumaji

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Nobody wanted to use the word "Bible" indeed, as a complete opera like that may only be achieved through a digital media I guess, not in a 400 or even more pages book.

That was a wise decision. Remember the All About SNK DVD from a few (few more) years ago? It was claimed that it would cover each and every game and artwork and whatnot but in the end, it was a compilation of more or less interesting interviews with (then) current SNKP employees and short uncommented clips of every original game, hardly the all-encompassing super documentary that it was announced as before. Sold my copy a month after purchase.

Anyway, good job, great to see so much enthusiasm still alive in the scene, something that is badly missed in this day and age.
 

evil wasabi

The Jongmaster
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Book arrived today. It’s great. Filled with a lot of nostalgia. Top marks, boys.
 

Dampfwalze

Armored Scrum Object,
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625
hardly the all-encompassing super documentary that it was announced as before. Sold my copy a month after purchase.

And I gladly bought it. :)
But then again, I bought nearly everything with SNK printed on it back in these days.
You are right that as a documentary it is a bit disappointing. :(
 
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