Why is Kizuna Encounter (European version) so rare?

Tempest

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I think the last years Maro was the only store that did sell Neo-Geo carts in Germany, i stopped buying them in 2000 because Metal Slug 3 and King of Fighters where 1000 DM each and that was a lot money.

That's insane. Was it because of the game size? Neo Geo truly was a rich persons hobby. :)
 
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Neo Alec

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The MVS version isn't easy to come by anymore. Mine was cheap from yaton years ago. It's in a real shell now, but I still haven't found one with a real label that I'm willing to pay for.
 

oliverclaude

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Is there a list of AES/MVS production numbers somewhere? That would be interesting to see.

Ask Smith to break into Shawn's mind, eventually it'll crack, his alpha patterns will change and when they do, he'll tell you anything you want to know.
 

lithy

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frazer99

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Actually i remember quite well that Maro ( German Store back then ) did offer me a Kizuna, but i did not want it.
I actually thought well that Savage Reign i have on CD was not really great, so i pass up the cart and wait for a CD release.
Keep in mind in Germany we had not great arcades, where you could go and test new SNK titels and videogame magazines often did not even test em or very late.

Actually i was also buying games for my NTSC N64, so i had to choose where my money did go.

Why its so rare ? I dont know, i can say that the Maro store often only had a few copys of Neo-Geo games later. While the main store was in Stuttgard there where also a few franchise partners.
For that reason i got my Shock Trooper 2 cart not from the Maro Store in Stuttgard ( because they didnt had it/ had it anymore ) and i had to buy it from a partner shop.

If you ask me because Savage Reign was not great a lot ppl didnt buy Kizuna on cart. Could also be that Maro only had a few copys for sale, mostly for loyal Neo-Geo customers, because usually not many ppl in Germany could afford a Neo-Geo and its games or wanted to spend that much money.

I dont know where Maro got the games, i guess from SNK in the UK or/and somewhere else but i can say all games i bought from them where legit. Aside from that fake games wherent a thing back then.
Makes also no sense to do so at that time.

BTW afaik Maro never got Ultimate 11, i was asking them about it and they also didnt offer me one later.

I was offered an english Ultimate 11 in Telegames (UK), in 1998. I visited their shop and it was £399.99. Their games were always way over priced and I wasn't interested in another football game at the time. I did end up buying 3 copies of Voltage Fighter (English) when they had a sale and dropped them to £199 a piece. Telegames pretty much had every english release and were one of the distributors for SNK their games in the UK. I believe Kizuna and Ultimate 11 to be genuine and I would expect that SNK shipped a small amount to the distributors in Europe (Germany, UK, possibly Italy/France) to test the market for those titles. Effectively sale/return basis. If no-one bought them (and they clearly didn't) they returned them to SNK and they were re-purposed for the Japanese market. Production runs around 1996 I would expect to have been around 500 carts but that is just my estimate (not fact).Given the cartridges themselves were universal it was only a matter of printing an insert, manual and sticker to make an 'english' copy.
 
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Rot

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Not sure if this was directed at me or not (apparently I've been a member longer than you have), but yikes!

OOOHHH... we're going for the join dates shit...

Let me make this clear to ya'... I joined here when I felt like it... no fucker tells me what to do...

Nothing more... nothing less...

xROTx

PS. I never gave a shit about join dates... what I DO CARE about is your contribution...
 

Tempest

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OOOHHH... we're going for the join dates shit...

Let me make this clear to ya'... I joined here when I felt like it... no fucker tells me what to do...

Nothing more... nothing less...

xROTx

PS. I never gave a shit about join dates... what I DO CARE about is your contribution...

Chill. I wasn't pulling date rank, I was just pointing out that I wasn't a 'n00b' who just joined yesterday.

Not sure what your objection is to this thread as other than a few troublemakers, the conversation has been interesting, and even produced some new info. You're always going to have people spouting off about stuff that turns out to be incorrect but just point it out and move on. Not sure what all the anger and ranting is about. You'd think we were discussing politics or something.
 

Rot

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Chill. I wasn't pulling date rank, I was just pointing out that I wasn't a 'n00b' who just joined yesterday.

Not sure what your objection is to this thread as other than a few troublemakers, the conversation has been interesting, and even produced some new info. You're always going to have people spouting off about stuff that turns out to be incorrect but just point it out and move on. Not sure what all the anger and ranting is about. You'd think we were discussing politics or something.

Let me put it this way...

This thread was put in General of the Ng forums... and all i've seen is mainly bullshit...

SURE... I could've posted something along the lines of "You fuckin' n00bs know nothing and spreading misinformation to other gullible idiots is dumb..."... but I stayed out of it until now...

Why go over shit the forum has gone over before...

I aint even got a hard'on for you... it's the general ignorance of it all....

For example.. you mention join dates... BUT... infact you know little to nothing about stuff...

There's a REASON why i'm mod.... and it aint because I drink a lot...
 

RAZO

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Chill. I wasn't pulling date rank, I was just pointing out that I wasn't a 'n00b' who just joined yesterday.

Not sure what your objection is to this thread as other than a few troublemakers, the conversation has been interesting, and even produced some new info. You're always going to have people spouting off about stuff that turns out to be incorrect but just point it out and move on. Not sure what all the anger and ranting is about. You'd think we were discussing politics or something.

You kind of did pull a date rank. Just saying.

There are 2008 members here who probably know more Neo then 2001 Members and Vice Versa.

It's the 2010+ members that could go fuck themselves lol.
 

Tempest

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I never said I was a Neo Geo expert nor did I pretend to be (I don't even play one on TV). So I'm not sure why you're bringing that up.

As for stuff the forum has gone over before, are we only supposed to discuss something once and then never again? The board would be pretty dull if that were the case. New people join all the time, new people have new info. sometimes people who didn't see the old discussion 10+ years ago see the new one. Not seeing how this is a bad thing unless someone is making a new thread about it month after month or something.

I think you just weren't hugged enough as a kid or something. :)
 
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Tempest

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You kind of did pull a date rank. Just saying. .

Did I? Didn't mean to, honestly (part of the problem of posting vs talking in person). Like I said, it was more in response to the 'you n00bs' comment than anything else. As Rot pointed out, join date doesn't really mean jack squat in terms of knowledge.
 
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Rot

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Tempest lad...

Here's me sayin'... Shush...

NOW seeing as you joined in 2003 and have been an integral part of this site... You should be able to determine if this is just a troll post... or something more....
 

Tarma

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No I was just talking about a post in that original thread I linked but that is interesting. Especially since it shows Pulstar which did not have an English release which just shows that even 'records' can be misleading.

So did Maro occasionally sell some Japanese titles?

That's the key question with that advert - it doesn't say whether the titles are Japanese or English, and in 20 odd years of Neo-Geo involvement I've never seen any suggestion that Pulstar was even remotely mooted for an English release on AES.

Unless there's some German small print say the games listed are Euro market then they could all be Japanese "imports" advertised.
 

DevilRedeemed

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I used to play Kizuna back when it was released at the infamous Goodge Street arcades (best arcades ever) and I loved it for what it was. Having Kim in the game that way was a master stroke.
Of course I was shit at games but it didn't stop them from being fun.
 

theMot

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Tempest sounds like he could be about to have his very own Kizuna encounter.
 

SuperGun

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Yes, even MVS copies of Kizuna Encounter (again English in particular) are quite scarce. Especially the art packs & kit boxes. They are practically like English Last Blade 2 rare!

Tempest. One other thing that is often forgotten and must be taken into consideration is that Savage Reign was a complete flop. The game was released a year late, and it was outdated by the time it was available. It was over produced & sold poorly. SNK recycled & reused the Art of Fighting game engine and it was not well received. They were sitting on so many unsold carts, that they couldn’t just discard them. They had to find a way to repurpose them. And thus, Savage Reign 2 was born. (Kizuna Encounter). Heck, even Savage Reign 2: Tournament Edition was made as well. (Kizuna Team Battle mode) So that operators would buy 2 carts at a time. ANYTHING they could do to move those unsold Savage Reign mask rom chips & populated carts.
 

Gamemaster

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So did Maro occasionally sell some Japanese titles?

They did sell booth US/EUR and Jap. Mainly english versions, because japanese versions where less wanted, tend to stay in stock and sold for less later.

The question was already answered in one post of mine thought. Shock Troopers 2 got no english release, so when i buy a copy of em go figure.
 

Tempest

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Yes, even MVS copies of Kizuna Encounter (again English in particular) are quite scarce. Especially the art packs & kit boxes. They are practically like English Last Blade 2 rare!

Tempest. One other thing that is often forgotten and must be taken into consideration is that Savage Reign was a complete flop. The game was released a year late, and it was outdated by the time it was available. It was over produced & sold poorly. SNK recycled & reused the Art of Fighting game engine and it was not well received. They were sitting on so many unsold carts, that they couldn’t just discard them. They had to find a way to repurpose them. And thus, Savage Reign 2 was born. (Kizuna Encounter). Heck, even Savage Reign 2: Tournament Edition was made as well. (Kizuna Team Battle mode) So that operators would buy 2 carts at a time. ANYTHING they could do to move those unsold Savage Reign mask rom chips & populated carts.
So sort of a Breakers / Breakers Revenge kind of thing then? That's an interesting take on things. Thanks for the info.
 

Niko

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Yes, even MVS copies of Kizuna Encounter (again English in particular) are quite scarce. Especially the art packs & kit boxes. They are practically like English Last Blade 2 rare!

Tempest. One other thing that is often forgotten and must be taken into consideration is that Savage Reign was a complete flop. The game was released a year late, and it was outdated by the time it was available. It was over produced & sold poorly. SNK recycled & reused the Art of Fighting game engine and it was not well received. They were sitting on so many unsold carts, that they couldn’t just discard them. They had to find a way to repurpose them. And thus, Savage Reign 2 was born. (Kizuna Encounter). Heck, even Savage Reign 2: Tournament Edition was made as well. (Kizuna Team Battle mode) So that operators would buy 2 carts at a time. ANYTHING they could do to move those unsold Savage Reign mask rom chips & populated carts.

I thought the team battle mode was enabled when the 4player adapter board was attached?
 

Evan

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I thought the team battle mode was enabled when the 4player adapter board was attached?

Yeah, I thought it was not a separate cart either. Also, isn't there another Neo Geo game that has a 4 player board?
 
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