Color coding on insert spines?

[jt4mtb]

So the other day, I was just staring at my shockboxes on my shelf, and just noticed the little color bar above the Neo Geo text on the top of the spines. What caught my eye was how it seemed that all of my fighting games have a red bar, while my shooters have a blue bar. So I'm wondering is there a color code on the insert spines? If so, what is what?

 

[astar617]

This is a sore area for many old-school owners.

In short: yes, there was originally a color-coding system based on genre; no, it was not always adhered to as time went on.

I'll leave the rest of the story to the warring "original" vs "corrected" factions. Or, just google "Neo Geo Freaks insert" for both sides of "teh drama".

 

[BobbyPeru]

I think reds are fighters, blues are shooters, yellow is puzzle, and green is sports.

I could have mixed those up though.

 

[Gremlin]

This is a sore area for many old-school owners.

In short: yes, there was originally a color-coding system based on genre; no, it was not always adhered to as time went on.

I'll leave the rest of the story to the warring "original" vs "corrected" factions. Or, just google "Neo Geo Freaks insert" for both sides of "teh drama".

Damn, that's pretty spiffy. Was there any word on why it never stuck? Was it SNK's decision or did developers stop caring?

 

[aria]

Damn, that's pretty spiffy. Was there any word on why it never stuck? Was it SNK's decision or did developers stop caring?

I think you can merge those two answers and say both sides stopped caring.

The sore spot comes from two con-artists who started making "corrected" inserts 10 years ago (just before this site started) and passing them off as real until people in the community caught on.

That's also why you'll see some photos floating around of people shredding inserts --those con-artists would actually do that to show why their versions were supposedly more valuable. Of course, they were wrong. Carts that ended up that way are sometimes referred to as "freaked".

 

[suicidekiller]

yellow is puzzle

Unfortunately there never was an official release with a yellow spine

 

[Gremlin]

I think you can merge those two answers and say both sides stopped caring.

The sore spot comes from two con-artists who started making "corrected" inserts 10 years ago (just before this site started) and passing them off as real until people in the community caught on.

That's also why you'll see some photos floating around of people shredding inserts --those con-artists would actually do that to show why their versions were supposedly more valuable. Of course, they were wrong. Carts that ended up that way are sometimes referred to as "freaked".

That's pretty damn lame, I mean from lurking these fourms for awhile I got the impression that NGF was pretty bad but that's just an awful thing to do.

The genre label idea was pretty cool though, especially with some Neo games with ambiguous names on the carts. Before I played them I assumed Top Hunter was a helicopter game of some sort and Windjammers was a shmup haha