My Korean Neo Geo A.E.S. has "Vic-A" on the top-left corner of the top facing.

My Korean Neo Geo A.E.S. has "Vic-A" on the top-right corner of the top facing.

All of the pics I've seen of the Korean one don't have that logo.

I'll provide a picture soon.


EDIT: Here's the rush job-

 

Pretty cool. I have heard of this being printed on some of the Korean Neo's but never actually seen a picture.

My guess that it's an addition made by Korean distributor or something that is found on either an early or late Korean model. Nobody really knows. Does your unit have a serial number? Apparently many Korean units don't.

Additionally if you've spent anytime in Korea like I have you'll know that nothing there is consistent in the gaming world. Nothing.

 

I saw an old auction with the Vic-A in the upper right. You don't see too many picture of Korean AES either way. It's like 2-2 for pics I've seen of korean AES with the Vic-A & without.

Vic-A was the company that published the neo geo in korea. They were officially licensed. Do you have other (NA/JP) AES as well? Apparently, the Korea version is much lighter.

 

Yeah, I believe it says 90A-TC, with the TC part being hand-written for some strange reason, but I don't quite remember since I was too busy trying to get the darn thing to work. I'll get a picture for you guys tomorrow.

Sadly, this is my first venture into having a Neo Geo AES, so I have nothing to compare it to.

 

I won't be able to get a picture of the underside today since I have a conflicting work schedule, but I'm pretty sure the serial number says "90A-TC" (with the TC part being hand-written with a permanent black marker) and the model number says NEO-AEC. After looking at this thread, that's definitely what I recall-

http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?8595-FS-Vic-A-quot-prototype-quot-NeoGeo-AES

 

These units were probably created by Viccom, which from what I've heard helped SNK circumvent the ban on Japanese products in South Korea by distributing their stuff themselves in the early 90's.

Viccom also made their own Neo-Geo game: Fight Fever. They tried to follow up with "The Eye of Typhoon", but that was never released on Neo-Geo and instead ported to the PC and the 3DO.

EDIT: "Vic-A" is the name of the corporation that manufactured the system, but this may be involved with Viccom, may be a subsidiary or a previous name of Viccom. Makes sense.

 

NEED

 

in korea, japanese products were banned until 1998 thats why you see a lot of japanese consoles being made and distributed by someone else. Samsung for example made all sega consoles for korea until the dreamcast.

Also if someone knows when this korean model was made plz tell me as i am corious about when my neo geo was made, both the korean version and my neo geo with serial number 240k must have been made at the same time i think.

 

Zoomed in close on some episodes of Reply 1994, since they a Neo Geo in addition to several other consoles in some scenes. Theirs also has the "Vic-A" on it.

You know what Koreans need to do? Dump their blasted games already ;*)

 

Do you know why that is? Is it just because of xenophobia?

 

See "History of Japan pre WWII" for reason.

 

Japanese music, movies and TV shows were banned as well, though many japanese animation studio used to subcontract South-Korean studios in order to produce cheaper TV shows - Secret of blue water is probably one of the most famous examples of this tendancy.
A first step forward has been made in 1998, followed by a second in 2004.

 

That's actually not correct. Selling Japanese electronic products never was a problem, which should be obvious by the fact that most of these licensed consoles still bear the Japanese companies' logos. The consoles were licensed to Korean companies simply because Nintendo, Sega etc. didn't operate there (there were Japanese companies with subsidiaries in Korea, but it wasn't very lucrative. Don't know the specifics about that, but there were a lot of restrictions on ALL foreign enterprises in Korea). What was banned were media in Japanese language, that's why the Korean Saturn for example has the Japanese language option removed from the BIOS.

 

There is a Wikipedia article which discusses this topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Japanese_media_in_South_Korea

After the Empire of Japan surrendered in 1945, it lost control of the Korean peninsula (which in turn was fought over by the Soviet Union/China and the United States/UN... Korean War, they ended up with the 38th parallel DMZ, the end result being the North and South Korean we have today).

During the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945), the Japanese government took steps to make Korea a "home away from home" (look at a 1930s photograph of Seoul, and it looks akin to a picture of 1930s Tokyo). City names were changed to Japanese ones, Korean family names were changed to Japanese, etc...

So, after Korea again became an independent nation in 1945, bottled-up nationalism swept across the country. Efforts to purge the country of the Japanese occupation continue to this day (for example, just a few years ago, the Seoul City Hall, built by the Japanese during its occupation, was demolished and a new structure was built).

Within this historical context, South Korea's ban on foreign (primarily Japanese) cultural goods made sense to the Korean government at that time.

In terms of video games, we now have the interesting Hyundai/Nintendo, Samsung/SEGA, Vic-A/SNK hybrids which I suppose were a means of meeting these Japanese companies "halfway" and permitting in-demand Japanese video games to be marketed and sold in South Korea.