The Proto Age - By V. Trieu

When I was younger (this was ages ago), I always thought having the newest pair of shoes before like the Nike Air Jordans was the coolest thing. Walking around the school campus getting stares from all the on-lookers made me feel cool. Little did I realize it didn't do much for my game, just the thought of having it before anyone else made me the "cool" kid. Oh well, story of my life....

Today, what I would say is like owning a new pair of Air Jordans would be owning a Proto Cart for one of my favorite gaming systems (The NEO GEO MVS). Now, this is not an article of "I have this and you don't" but I like to express my thoughts on how important it is for people to share their knowledge of the rare items. Why is this so? Well, first of all, sharing is good (as long as it's within the legal boundaries, of course) and it most definitely captures the imagination and interest(s) of the gaming community of what could've been of a particular title.

Top Cut Out View

As we already discussed in a previous article written by Billy Pitt for Ghostlop, the significance of this game is huge. Why? To reiterate, "lost" knowledge is a terrible thing and for a long period of time, this is the position that Ghostlop was in. Unlike like most protos, Ghostlop is a 100% finished, complete proto, with no glitches and final endings. The discovery of Ghostlop accomplishes a few things. First, it cures the mystery of gamers/fans throughout of "I wonder what this game is all about?" Secondly, SNK Playmore themselves are well aware of it's existence and the cosumer's response to such a title, maybe, just maybe, if pushed enough, this game would be published.

Chip Set of BBS2 MVS

On a short note, I've played Ghostlop for quite a few hours and it is the finest puzzle game that the Neo has had to offer (with MD3 closely behind or next to it at least). It's a shame if Ghostlop never sees mass production, because everyone should be able to enjoy such a gem. ROMs are not the solution, so please don't even bother with such a thing.

Baseball Stars 2 MVS has had many rumors during it's course of production, and simply one of the ways of unraveling it's many mysteries is to test out the proto.

Now, exactly, what were some of the rumors flying around with Baseball Stars 2?

One of the rumors was that SNK was thinking of licensing official MLB teams, which we know today didn't happen, but still, there was a possibility that it existed in the proto cart. From what we tested so far, MLB teams in the BBS2 MVS Proto is a no, no.

The second and more desired featured rumor was the Team Edit Mode. For those old enough to remember SNK's version of Baseball Stars for the Nintendo Entertainment System (8-bit NES), you would pretty much recall it was the best Baseball game made for that system hands down. One simple feature it allowed that put the other baseball games to shame was none other than the team edit feature.

This feature allowed gamers to create each team, down to each player's ability, speed, power, stamina and charisma to whatever you wished. Simply cool and really no need to keep upgrading your BB purchase every single year when a new version was out. In fact, during this time, team edit feature was unheard of, but SNK came through big with one of the few cartridges that had an onboard battery to back up your team's data.

We haven't tested the BBS2 MVS Proto enough to know if the Editing feature exists, but given time, we'll definitely find out. It would just be quite a thrill if this was part of the proto, as well all know current home and MVS versions do not implement this feature.

What we do know is our next news project:

Last Resort MVS Proto

It has been confirmed many times that two versions of Last Resort exists. Like Baseball Stars 2, we haven't tested this game in depth to reveal the differences, but there definitely is. One of the main differences we noticed is the speed of the game. More details to follow in our next Proto update.

For now, keep your eyes open for protos, as it can help all of us gamers solve the curiosities and what could've or should've been, but wasn't. I'm intrigued by all this proto stuff, are you?