More from JAMMA! U.S. distributors Jerry Marcus, Jon Brady and Peter Betti join SNKers John Barone and Tim Jackson in Japan for the annual product show.

explained that the new platform's 64-bit memory brings four times the data storage capacity and much greater speed than the original Neo-Geo, along with 16 million colors! A custom RISC chip is built into the PCB for fewer commands and greater speed, resulting in 2D and 3D images at 60 frames per second. In 2D mode, NeoGeo 64 can display 1,536 sprites per frame. In 3D mode, texture memory is 16 megabytes and vertex memory (polygon count) is 96 megabytes.

FIRST NEO-64 GAMES

Road's Edge gives the player a choice of four sports utility vehicles or trucks, a choice of colors, a choice of manual or automatic transmission, and a choice of four background music tracks. Music and point-of-view perspective (first-person or "above & beyond") can be changed continuously throughout the game. Three dif

ferent continents provide the tracks - America, Asia and Europe   as players drive on asphalt, off-road, and through all weather conditions. Graphics are 3D polygon, texture-mapped, photo-realistic visuals. A new level of realism comes from the vehicles themselves: SNK licensed model names and appearances from such as Land Rover, Toyota and Mitsubishi.

Samurai Shodown 64 is a two-player fighting game with new and familiar characters. Ultra-realistic movements, graphics, and backgrounds take full advantage of the new system's expanded capacity and hi-tech.

Behind all this is an experienced U.S. sales and marketing team, plus a 30member R&D team that's based right there in San Jose to learn what American players want ... and design games specifically with the U.S. player base in mind.

According to John Barone, "We've made a commitment and investment in this marketplace, to ensure that we give our players what they want. We are looking forward to having our sales and marketing team working side by side and in close cooperation with our R&D staff, to create product which is specifically geared to this market. I'm confident the results will show up the cash box and we're very proud and excited about this approach."

EXPANDING PRODUCT LINE

Beyond Neo-Geo 64, SNK is also expanding its product line to embrace the photo sticker machine market and other unique types of "entertainment vending" machines. "It's amazing how many calls we get about the success of our Neo-Print photo vender every day," John revealed. "People want to have franchises; they want to operate it or distribute it; locations that never had coin-op equipment want to place this machine, like Hallmark stores, pet stores and music stores. There is very strong interest from many surprising sources. At the JAMMA Show, SNK planned to show a new novelty vender that records the customer's voice and makes it playable on a keychain. Another unique vending product, which will be laser-based, is also in the works. SNK may even establish a new vending division to handle this type of product."

"Diversity is the key to this everchanging market," Tim Jackson pointed out. "Let's face it, the American customer is pretty fickle. We don't want to be locked into one type of product; we don't want to find ourselves simply reacting to last month's hit and making metoo products. Our goal is to offer innovative, unique, fun machines which take advantage of hi-tech to please the players and earn money for the operators."

SNK'S GOAL: INNOVATE!

As readers know, John and Susan Barone returned to SNK this summer after four years in the gambling industry. "Stepping back from coin-op amusements a bit has proved very useful and given me a new perspective," John mused. "We are a change-resistant industry in many cases. Even when change is needed and available, there is great reluctance to take that first step. We've defi

Page 154

October 1997

RePlay Magazine