[Jul/14/2000]

 

    Here is all of the information I can share about this new Neo Geo dump,
    straight from the dumper's mouth. Is it a homebrew game? Is it a rare
    prototype? Long and short of it is, we don't know.
 
 |@---------------------------------::::----------------------------------------|
 |                                                                              |
 | "I finally got a chance to check out the Diggerman cart first hand, and this |
 | is what I found out:                                                         |
 |                                                                              |
 | The boards used for the game are not your standard MVS boards. There are no  |
 | custom SNK chips at all on the boards - just eproms and some logic ICs.      |
 |                                                                              |
 | Looking at the boards, NONE of the chip manufacture dates are past 1994 (on  |
 | the eproms or the logic ICs), which means that there is a very good chance   |
 | that this game is a TRUE beta/prototype, or at least it sits on old boards,  |
 | or a person is burning the game on old eprom stock.                          |
 |                                                                              |
 | The way the board is designed (and the eproms are used), you won't be able   |
 | to do a normal MVS -> Home conversion (too technical to go into here).       |
 |                                                                              |
 | The game is VERY small. If you go by what is IN the roms (not the roms sizes |
 | themselves since there is a lot of wasted space), the size is 11 Megabits.   |
 | It could be even smaller, depending on the V rom since I haven't looked at   |
 | that yet.                                                                    |
 |                                                                              |
 | The NGH number of the game is set at 066, which is the same as Fighter's     |
 | History Dynamite. This is very possible if the game was coded using "shell"  |
 | code when the game was developed and never changed (programmers will know    |
 | what shell code is).                                                         |
 |                                                                              |
 | The game itself definitely looks like a work-in-progress, evaluation type    |
 | deal. Something whipped together to see if this type of genre would fly.     |
 | There is no polishing in the game. No "NEO GEO" boot screen, no credit       |
 | counter (that I could se), etc.                                              |
 |                                                                              |
 | I've only played the game for about 2 minutes, so I can't give much detail   |
 | on gameplay. The movement of the player could use a little cleanup, and the  |
 | graphics are definitely not Neo quality. It actually looks like 32 color     |
 | graphics you would see on an old Amiga 500.                                  |
 |                                                                              |
 | Speaking of graphics, when I was looking through the graphic roms, I did not |
 | see any graphics for the "NEO GEO" logo screen, I could read "VISCO GAMES"   |
 | in the S1 graphics though.                                                   |
 |                                                                              |
 | The game does use large parallaxing playfields, which is a nice change in    |
 | pace. It has a lot of the Boulderdash fell to it (if I remember that game    |
 | correctly). Your objective is to collect enough gems to get out of a level   |
 | and as you're going, you need to collect energy boosts or you will run out   |
 | and die. The timer was counting down from 20, but nothing happened when it   |
 | got to 0 -- my guess is that it's a bonus counter?                           |
 |                                                                              |
 | If the game was a little more polished and the controls tweaked a little,    |
 | this would be a great Neo addition.                                          |
 |                                                                              |
 | That's about all I have at the moment. If this is a truly lost game that     |
 | surfaced, then it's rather kool that it did. If you want a change in pace    |
 | for the Neo (for once), then this is something to add to your collection. I  |
 | think this game will fall into the hands of the collectors simply because I  |
 | have a strong feeling that there will be NO official home (or MVS) release   |
 | of this game from SNK or Visco, or whoever the developer is.                 |
 |                                                                              |
 | I really don't think NCS had an official distributor from Japan lined up on  |
 | this one folks. I think they heard about the game and were trying to find    |
 | out info and took pre-orders just in case they could source it. I would love |
 | to be proved wrong though! I'm always glad to see new games released (though |
 | the official channels).                                                      |
 |                                                                             :| 
 | Is it homebrew (or unofficial 3rd party)? No idea."                        ::|
 |                                                                              |
 |@---------------------------------::::----------------------------------------|

 
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