Some Neo protos you may not have heard about

Digmac

Leona's Therapist
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While browsing through my copy of Neo Geo World Vol. 2, I came across the list of games in development/waiting to be released. I tend to look through these in every Neo magazine that I have or find scanned on the net because sometimes they can hold little goodies like these.

6Lxfni2.jpg


Here's a translation of the list (English names swapped in place of the Japanese, game name and developer only, protos or renamed games in bold):

Super Sidekicks 3 - SNK
World Heroes Perfect - ADK
Idol Mahjong Final Romance 2 - Video System
Kabuki Klash - Hudson
The King of Fighters '95 - SNK
Sonic Wings 3 - Video System
Metal Slug (tentative name) - Nazca
Pulstar (tentative name) - Aicom
Variety Shogi (tentative name) - ADK (Renamed to Master of Shogi)
Ironclad Brikinger (tentative name) - Saurus
Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits Bushido Retsuden (tentative name) - SNK
QP - Success
Fighting Volley (tentative name) - Video System
Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer - Technos Japan
Stakes Winner - Saurus
King of the Monsters - SNK
Warlocks of the Fates - Astec21
Ultimate 4 - Face
Ragnagard (tentative name) - Saurus
World Tour Golf (tentative name) - Nazca (Renamed to Big Tournament Golf, NTM)
All Star Volley (tentative name) - Mahou
NEO Action Game (tentative name) - Hudson (Likely Neo Bomberman)
Original RPG (tentative name) - ADK

Obviously there's some known protos on here already, like QP and Warlocks, and some will know about Neo Turf's original name being World Tour Golf. I didn't know about Master of Shogi being renamed before this, with its earlier name being Variety Shogi. The ADK developed RPG was on multiple "in development" lists in Neo Geo Freak, so I had seen that before.

The others that surprised me a bit are Fighting Volley, King of the Monsters, Ultimate 4, and All Star Volley. (I know these have been brushed on before, years ago, and are known by a few members here already)

Fighting Volley, being developed by Video System would likely have been a sequel to Power Spikes II, an absolute turd. Hopefully they would have put in a bit more effort instead of porting their existing Super Famicom volley game to the Neo Geo in the case of Power Spikes II. Power Spikes II was released before the publishing of the magazine and the magazine has a feature on it, so I'm 100% positive it wasn't an alternate name to PSII.

King of the Monsters. This list shown is referring to Neo Geo CD titles in development. With this in mind, Neo Geo Freak Vol. 2 also mentions a King of the Monsters title in development at the same time with a meg count of 55 megs. This leads me to believe that this was KOTM1 which was being converted to the CD format. This never did get a release, but King of the Monsters 2 did get a CD release.

Ultimate 4 was originally called "King of Athlete", being developed by Face. It got a quite small feature in Neo Geo Freak Vol. 1 which gives us a little info. There were four characters in the game, which is likely why the title was changed to "Ultimate 4". It was going to be a variety game with a total of 16 mini games. It was in early development when the Neo Geo Freak feature was published, and nothing was ever heard after that.

All Star Volley by Mahou is one where I have absolutely no clue. My best guess is it was going to be another volleyball game for the Neo, but I don't know what company Mahou was, and I can't find a developer by that name that was active at the time. If anyone has any more knowledge, I'd be happy to hear it.

I guess the lesson is that you never know what you'll find in the Neo Geo magazines that were published. I think they hold a lot of information that isn't widely known, and I'm sure a lot of it has yet to be translated. If you didn't already know about these, enjoy the little tidbits of Neo info. :)
 

yagamikun

Art of Typing Wiz
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An ADK RPG, eh? Ha, it probably had Fuma as a playable character.
 

Alphabet

Zero's Secretary
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Nov 1, 2020
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151
Thanks for sharing. Indeed, QP was planned for December 1995/January 1996 on NG CD - as we talk about the proto here.
Metal Slag... :D

AA3D832A-D5E2-447A-8A80-F13A84825666.jpeg
 
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max 330 mega

The Almighty Bunghole
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Uhh what is "firm guy" and what was he shooting? Lots and lots of big loads, I'd assume.
 

SuperGun

Proto Hunter
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It was “Farm Guy” in most other translations. It was actually a working title for Ironclad Brikinger by Saurus.
 

Heinz

Parteizeit
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It was “Farm Guy” in most other translations. It was actually a working title for Ironclad Brikinger by Saurus.

You're no fun! It was actually Firm Guy and meant to be a penis shooting game.
 

Capitalistix

Edo Express Delivery Guy
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Metal Slag 2>X

BIG True.

Also great work translating that scan Digmac! This is some cool info!

I also like the "horse race" genre in Alphabet's pic. Makes you wonder why it wasn't just "sports". I feel like SNK really didnt ever have their shit together as far as marketing goes. When I found out that Neo AES games in the US had different colored stripes to denote their genres, it blew me away and I thought that was so cool, a more legit implementation than what Nintendo and Sega tried to do with their titles in the 80s then eventually gave up on becuse they eventually didnt have enough control over their library, unlike SNK. Then later the more I looked it just seemed like SNK went with red on everything like they didnt GAF. I guess I can't blame them if they can't correctly place a "horse racing" game into a sports category with ease. Wonder what color stripes it would have had. Purple?
 
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