If you like success stories, you'll applaud SNK's Neo•Geo System. Launched onto the market at last year's ACME show, the multi-choice video game concept marked its first full year in the biz at the show just concluded at the Sands, putting five more "game candles" on its cake and impressing operators with a speedy bookkeeping card to chart its earnings back in the shop.
The firm bowed five new game cartridges at ACME 91, which added to those already introduced, number close to 20 brought out within roughly one year's time. Original skeptics who thought they'd slacken off on software follow-through are pleased to admit their mistake, although the firm can rather comfortably slow down game releases now and let it all sink in.
New games shown at ACME were: Sengoku, King of the Monsters, Burning Fight, Alpha Mission II and Ghost Pilots. All are good, the first three (in the words of SNK America's President Paul Jacobs) are "stone winners." Previous titles like Ninja Combat and Baseball Stars Professional (the latter is back in production) have made hot marks. They do know how to design fun product back there in Japan!
As if these weren't enough, Jacobs said "some excellent titles are coming, many geared to the adult location market." He revealed that games themed on basketball, football, boxing and soccer are in design. He also admitted that this "rush" of software they've been running out will downspeed a bit,
t "but the play quality will always be there."
Play appeal was obviously the rea
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Front liners at SNK America (left to right) Kerann Christopherson, Sales VP John Barone, President Paul Jacobs, Product Manager Susan Jarocki & Sales Rep Tracy Tate smile the smiles of success.
son this multi-game system scored. But other elements played their part in this product's success. SNK markets three versions of Neo•Geo: a large "arcade" cabinet offering players a choice of six games, a more convention-sized cabinet with four games and a 2-slot item in a smaller woodgrain cabinet for bars and lounges.
Both the 6-slot and 4-slot cabinets have 25" monitors, but thepreferred model by far is the 4-slot. Jacobs estimates that SNK sells five times as many 4-slot cabinets as they sell 6's and 2's combined. (Romstar has a separate deal with SNK Japan to market 1-slot kits.)
Jacobs believes that SNK has sold more full machines than any other video game this past year, "that is, if you consider Turtles to have come out beforehand." He refers to complete cabinets shipped and sold, not
to game cartridges, which are obviously far larger in sales numbers.
Neo•Geo cartridges sell to operators (through SNK distributors only) at a cost just under $400 a pop. "You're talking roughly one quarter the price of a regulation kit and that's another key reason the system has been successful," Jacobs declared. (He said the factory is careful to test games on an individual basis, not in competition with their other games, in order to get true field feedback on their merits.) He added that the Neo•Geo games, while also available on their home system, are coin-industry engineered, referring to the fact that they run quicker than some competitive home games.
Graphics, as readers know, are solid (many bits here drive many colors and character movements). They also offer players a memory
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