Unknown Neo Geo Fighting Game Discovered and Dumped | Hacker News Reader

Unknown Neo Geo Fighting Game Discovered and Dumped

neo-geo.com

191 pointsKaruma25 comments

The part I find especially interesting is that there are probably literally thousands of games that get into more-or-less-working prototypes, the project gets cancelled for any number of reasons, and the game sits on a hard drive until it crashes, and is lost for forever.

I always think of 38 Studios or 3D Realms when I think of places where this could've been possible.

I worked on a couple, for almost a year each. One made it into a Kotaku article before being canceled. http://kotaku.com/5686890/a-new-breed-of-survival-horror-com... A commenter was angry since they submitted the idea to EA when they were a tester, but oh well, no point now.

The other made it to a dummy Amazon listing before being canceled. It was basically Mario Party with old Atari properties. (I made about 30 "microgames" for it) You can see pictures of it and the first game in a former co-worker's portfolio here: http://portfolio.gen-n.net/basic-ui.html

The sad thing was (apart from this game being canceled meaning our dev studio was closed) that we took the project over from another studio that shut down, and we had a prototype that they were working on. We didn't have the code, though, so we started over.

That's so depressing.

I know it's kind of a miracle for any game to make it to the store-shelf, but I'd like to actually see a percentage at some point of how many games never make it, because I would suspect it's pretty high.

Yup, I've known a few people (un)lucky enough to work on two MMOs in a row that were canceled. They hadn't shipped anything in ~8 years.

I'm exactly the contrary : I "shipped"* about 50 projects in 6 years but maybe half a dozen are really used.

* admittedly they're small programs, not the size of a MMO.

Shipping games & software has some distinct differences though, esp in gamedev.

Most of your credibility is based on the titles that you've worked on(and more importantly been credited on which is the largest difference). When a project gets canceled you don't get credited and in some cases can't even talk about what you worked on since the IP might have reverted back to the publisher.

Try the satellite business... I had a string of 3 satellites (~8 years) that were complete and delivered to the customer, only to be blown up in the first 5 minutes after launch.

It'd all be worth it if only you could get a chunk of that insurance payout!

I worked as an engineer designing aircraft instrumentation systems for four years. I designed 6 entire systems for different aircraft platforms, only to have each project canceled before the system could actually be built and installed.

Reminds me of the RC build of The Red Star making the rounds in the office; everyone with a modded xbox ended up with a copy. From what I recall, the story was Activision canned it at the last minute then it was shopped to other publishers. One of them was us and a well-meaning individual starting distributing the game.

It was a fun game too, never understood why it died on the vine.

I once worked on an Austin Powers game for the PS2. I think I still have some screenshots on a CD somewhere in the closet.

Dude! Can you please post that?

Well, I'm not sure of the legalities of such a thing. I'm sure I signed something somewhere that stated I must not do that. I can see lots of pages referencing the fact it existed, but I only saw one screenshot that looked like it came from the game.

It's all alpha quality stuff so it's not super interesting.

Thrill Kill is an interesting example of this. The game was basically finished, but received an Adults Only rating, and then wasn't released. The devs supposedly leaked a copy of it, and it became one of the most widely pirated PS1 games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrill_Kill

Played a lot of it in college. Fairly decent four player fighter.

The engine was later used the in the Wu Tang Clan fighting game Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style, some X-Men Games and Rock Em Rock Em Robots game so it wasn't all bad.

Agreed on it being fairly decent too, but nothing to write home about (sans the violence).

Galloping Ghost Arcade outside of Chicago just finished restoring an Atari Beavis and Butthead prototype. The game was nearly finished and on initial test when it was killed. The restoration team needed to find an old 3DO unit to make it work again.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/4/9/11397694/beavis-and-butt-hea...

Fascinating and a little humbling how easily this gem could have been lost to the salvage yard. Makes you wonder how many other half finished games are sitting on decaying ROM chips on a shelf somewhere.

One nice thing about the whole open source movement is that sharing old binaries and source has become increasingly acceptable. To the point where some projects which run out of steam are left out there for the community to finish.

Hats off to the guys and gals who keep this gaming scene alive. I just wish I had more time to game it!

What I'm loving most about this link is the enthusiasm of the community on that board. It's really sweet to find these small communities on the web that still feel really tightly knit.

This is especially amazing: http://i.imgur.com/Pk5GpCO.gif

A late page of the C ROM data looks like it contains data from Money Idol Exchanger, so I think this game was developed by FACE.

Super interesting stuff! SNK made a lot of really classic and beloved fighting games, it's cool to see an unreleased one.

Also, god damn that spritework is beautiful. Those backgrounds are amazing.

That's really cool. Thanks Mithaldu for the link, what an interesting read. I can't wait to hear more about the game.

Original post: http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?265573-Lost-Neo...

Contains LOTS of detail over that article.

Cool ta. For the time-limited people here's a link to a post in the middle of that lot, that sums up exactly what's on the ROMs:

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?265573-Lost-Neo...

Ok, we've changed to that URL from http://arcadeheroes.com/2016/04/11/unknown-neo-geo-mvs-fight....

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