Bragging rights. Perhaps he hopes that by projecting an "image" he'll attract offers from other collectors who want to sell their stuff. -hl718
I think maybe I look at the wrong pictures? They are the pictures here: http://www.geocities.com/xacrow_1999/rare/rare.html Just two of them are store samples, the others are not. I just think they are not standard crap as you said they was.
Juste: No, those are all standard store crap. Those show up on Yahoo Japan all the time. Nothing special there. Also, just off topic, but I did pick up a REAL Castlevania Bloodlines prototype in the US a few weeks ago. HL718: He doesn't RESPOND to any offers because he doesn't have the stuff or he's pretending he's someone else. I think whoever he is "may" have ROMs, but physical proto carts, no.
That's not true at all. And they don't appear on YJ!A all the time. It is like you only class prototypes as rare, and nothing else.
He's right you know. They do appear all the time. I guess our attitude comes from the fact that the stuff we buy usually appears once or twice in a decade, whereas this stuff gets relisted all every other month or so
I only think that would be we the store samples, which only two are and not all of them like DreamTR said. I agree that they might appear more than a prototype cassette would for example, but I don't think they appear enough or all the time to class them as standard store crap.
Juste: ALL of the ones he has are store samples. Those are ALL common standard stuff. Did you not see original boxes for some of those? Believe me, if you think THAT stuff is rare....it's very shocking...it's precisely why it makes no sense why this guy has common store crap and no Neo Geo proto pictures. All of the stuff he has pictured of, NOTHING is remotely rare. If you want to see RARES, I am sure DRX or myself can show you a boatload of "rarities" for Mega Drive.
Jason, you're wrong. You know I love my MD. 'Some' of the titles in that link are very very rare indeed. Rare to the extent that I've seen legit Tetris md for sale more often. Some are very common, but the banking carts and Wonder Midi are not. Not proto rare, but to suggest they are common store crap is ignorant. I defer to your knowledge on many things gaming, but on these you are wrong. Sorry. Hell even sansan hadn't been seen for several years until 2-3 years back I unearthed a small stash. That said, if they are store crap can you pick me some up please;-). I'm having trouble find them, so could do with the help. I'll pm the ones I'm after!
That's not true at all. It just isn't. I get that yourself or DRX can show many rarities for Sega Mega Drive, but so can many others, but it doesn't do anything to change the fact you are not right. I just won't agree with you.
Guys, we were talking prototypes, not rarity of things that say SAMPLE. No, I did not know that some of those things were rare, but a lot of them were not, and the point was we were talking prototypes. He has no prototypes up there pictured. Zilch.
Some interesting & unknown facts about the NeoGeo protos Gentlemen, I happened to stumble upon this interesting thread during a routine Google search which I was conducting one night well over a month ago and it had quite an impact on me. It made enough of an impression that I literally felt compelled to open a user account on this site just so that I could participate in the thread. However, the account process on this site is very restricted and it took forever for me to finally activate my account. Now that I can finally post, I would like to contribute a lot of useful information to this thread both to set the record straight, as well as to ensure that misinformation does not run amuck on the internet in regards to the elusive NEOGEO prototypes. Alright, so those interested, grab your favorite beverage, get comfortable in your seat, and enjoy this nice long read. I will address as many of the important points that were raised as I can, and I will also be willing to correspond more in the future, as well as even answer any questions that may help, but all that I ask is for your patience. It is not often that I have any spare time to get on the computer, let alone to participate and/or respond to ongoing threads. But rest assured, I will be back eventually, just give me time. The infamous “MAK Japan / Brikinger proto rumor†This is 100% completely false. I correspond with the owner of MAK Japan and I discussed this rumor with him at length many years ago and it is 100% false. A brikinger proto cartridge has never been bought, sold, let alone even come through the door at MAK Japan. Even though this rumor has been heard from various different sources, (most of which came from France by the way) it is nothing more then an urban legend. Ironclad is indeed one of the most talked about NEOGEO protos, but the few stories of the game that are actually 100% true have absolutely nothing to do with Mak Japan. Feel free to read the entire article on Ironclad at my website. It will help shed some light on just how ridiculous Ironclad claims have become over the years. The elusive Crossed Swords 2 Dip Setting screen shots Yes Tonk, I have all of these and I will be more then happy to share them here in this thread. Just tell me how to post pics in a thread and consider it done. I will post all the pics as well as all of the information surrounding when and how I got them and where they came from. The Final Romance 2 proto story The FR2 proto hack never had an “official†rom release per says. It began as a rom set that only found its way into the hands of a certain select few. Granted, like all roms, eventually after months of people sending them to “close friends onlyâ€, they eventually leak somewhere and become shareware that can be found on the internet, but this always takes time. For the record, when I myself was first given the FR2 rom set, it was given to me under very strict conditions, so much so that to this day I still don’t really have “permission†to divulge who gave it to me. But of course the biggest condition was that I could not redistribute or share the rom data with anyone. So my copy just kind of sat there for several years on a shelf but the rom data eventually turned up on the internet anyhow, so someone leaked it, but it was not me. And as a quick side note, the same thing happened to me with the “Zintrick version 2†rom set which made enhancements, corrected some bugs, etc. Again, I have it here, but I am not really allowed to do anything with it. Also important to note here that to this day, it is not possible to find the original “un-altered†rom sets of Ghost Lop, Zintrick, or Final Romance 2 on the internet. Every time I find a website with one of the rom sets I download the data and conduct CRC checks and they never match up to the originals. I am not trying to conjure up a conspiracy theory just stating the facts. At first I was told that bytes of data were altered to control and identify whose exact copy was dumped when it happened (we all knew it always does eventually) but then when it did (as say in the case of Ghost Lop) the French Team never made known to me whose copy was the one dumped. After that, I questioned what the point of it was, but then realized that the code was altered for THEM to identify the culprit, not for “us†per say and as a result I did not want to ask any more questions. Now, unlike Ghost Lop which is a 100% genuine proto, both Zintrick and Final Romance 2 have been hacked together and assembled by hardcore NEOGEO enthusiasts, which brings up the next mystery. Why work on Final Romance 2 rather then Crossed Swords 2 or Ironclad? (Why hack together a cartridge proto of a far less desirable title?) This one, even I cannot answer! Zintrick is simple and logical. It was a low meg puzzle game and so it was a smart choice for the first attempt to hack a CD game onto the cartridge format. It was the easiest of the lot. However, why Final Romance 2 was chosen rather then Ironclad or Crossed Swords 2 is anybody’s guess. I have the utmost respect for all the time, talent, and treasure that was put into the task, but really I think about 99% of the NEOGEO community would rather have hacks of CS2 or Ironclad sitting on their shelves then FR2. And furthermore, why still to this day, nobody has bothered with Ironclad or CS2, boggles my mind. Music or no music, I can think of dozens of collectors, myself of course included, who would happily pay $500 or even $1,000 for a hacked cart version of either one of those titles, so their hard labor would not go without credit or compensation. But hey, to the best of my knowledge it has never happened and most likely never will I guess. Personally, I feel that the original protos (100% original versions with music intact) have better chances of being found in the wild before somebody actually puts hundreds of hours into hacking these 2 titles together on cartridge. Granted, it is of course VERY possible that both of these titles HAVE already been assembled by either members of the French team, or some other neo geo think tanks in the world, but due to trust violations and security incidents that happened with the previous Zintrick and Final Romance 2 carts, the distribution of the CS2 & Ironclad hacks has been kept solely amongst the highest end collectors and members of the group. Now, finally, the debate over the legitimacy of the Xacrow proto pics I can assure everyone here that the pics provided by Xacrow to the public back in January of 2005 are 100% genuine. First off, they are clearly pics of the game running in an emulator, so yes, this proves he has the rom “dataâ€, but it is important to note (and was mentioned by DreamTR earlier) that it does NOT prove that he possesses the actual original proto cartridges themselves. (more on this in a minute) Secondly, I can assure you that they are real because the actual video footage that I have of those games running in real time match up 100%. Even assuming he got his hands on a copy of the videos, no human being could or would waste hundreds of hours of time to capture an image from a frame in the video and painstakingly go through the process of photo-shopping it to look like an emulated screen grab just for a fake brag post. (and that’s assuming that it would even be possible to pass it off as real anyhow btw) Oh and I mentioned a follow up on my first point. Important to note guys that DreamTR is a “type-A†collector and not a “type-Bâ€. In simpler terms, he finds and gives more “value†to an actual physical prototype cartridge then I do for example. (not that there is anything wrong with that…and let me be clear, he is actually right, and it is very true in fact) But myself (and most others out there when it comes to the NEOGEO protos) are well aware of just how absolutely unbelievably rare an actual original unreleased NEOGEO prototype cartridge is. Put it this way…to this day, only TWO have ever been found. So when it comes to the NEOGEO protos, most of us have the philosophy “beggars can’t be choosers†and so we would be more then happy with just a reproduction of the original proto cartridge or even just the rom data itself so that we could build our own cartridges. Now, in regards to Xacrow himself, well that is a whole other ball game. My viewpoint is simple. SOMEONE out there, whether their name is Xacrow and they live in Japan, or whether they are French and just posing as someone in Japan, got their hands on these screen grabs. Additionally, the screen grabs themselves are indeed 100% authentic and real so hence whoever made them, has at the very least, the rom data for the games. But lastly, finding that person (seemingly impossible although technically Razoola would be the first logical place to start) and then subsequently trying to strike up a “sale†or “trade†of the rom data with that person, seems so far to be at the very least improbable. In closing I would like to say that I don’t think that I will ever 100% completely forget about and/or lose interest in trying to track down the elusive NEOGEO protos, but I will say that over the last several years I literally had to force myself to stop thinking about them. From time to time, this post right here being an example, I do get a little excited about them, but for the most part I can no longer give them the same attention anymore as I used to give them because they became a serious cancer for me that I could not control and although I am currently in remission, a recurrence could happen at anytime. It is so sad that the NEOGEO community is so different then all the others. The manner in which prototypes are discovered, discussed, and distributed for the Atari, Sega, and Nintendo communities is absolutely astounding. The level of cooperation could serve as a model. Even the few and far between games that happen to fall into the hands of serious high end non sharing collectors, are at the very least photographed, documented, and discussed in detail. The concept of a collector not even sharing something as silly as a product number is plain ludicrous. Get over it man!
Very interesting reading, Supergun. I can understand one collector who wants not to leak the software of a very exclusive and hard to find cart/rom, but sharing some footage of the item, hell, it does not hurt anyone. Some pictures, some videos, some comments... all we "poor beggars" like to watch and to read to.
It's quite simple answer. These games are small and simple then it's easy to hack them to cartridge version. CS2 and Ironclad are huge games and with lot of features and that's why they didn't choose them. Or maybe they start with the small one for test, but then they discover that it's to much effort and didn't go for the big games. And to be honest the whole game industry change from the time when only few people have been able to get hand and have equipment to dump games/proto. Not even mentioned that with powerfull home console the arcade sector lose the potential and interest of people, because they can enjoy the games for "free and anytime" at home.
Guys, do yourselves a favor. http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/profile.php?do=addlist&userlist=ignore&u=50105 You'll be glad you did.
I have a long time dislike of the Pitt. I believe he epitomizes what is wrong with the Neo community. He has always been about inflating his ego and I truly believe he has never owned a real prototype cartridge. With the exception of the Dev board he got off of yahoo.jp. For the record, I do not consider owning a COPY of a prototype is the same as owning a legitimate prototype cartridge. I think the thing that pushed me over the edge, and it has been discussed over and over again, is how he handled Ghostlop. He had the opportunity to do something extremely positive for the community, but he chose to go the path of greed. For someone to call themselves "Proto King" and not have a single proto, is probably the most retarded thing I have ever heard. I cant stand attention whores, I cant stand elitists, and I cant stand Pitt. So, I choose and I encourage others to just ignore him. He has zero creditability in my book.
Anyway, probably you all know now that "IRON CLAD" MVS Rom has been extracted from the Wii's VC file, and apparently now is spreading through the world. All these years keeping Rom prototype's from be leaked, and now 900 Wii's points have ruined all that: awesome. Let's see if other Protos will be released on the VC...
