Hi, didn't see this posted, thought it might be interesting. From insertcredit.com: ---- Today at the Austin Game Developers conference (that's my excuse for the slow updates) I met with a friend who used to work for SNK in Japan. I can't say his name, but his information is certainly reliable. You may recall some time ago that SNK, pre-Aruze purchase, announced that it was working on its next hardware - everyone assumed this was the Neo Geo Pocket 2, or something to that effect. I asked this fellow about it, and he told me that wasn't quite correct. SNK poured a lot of money into the development of a new chip - and this chip was to be used as the foundation for next-gen arcade hardware, as well as a next-gen home console. As time wore on and money got tighter, development slowed, and other next gen home consoles started to come out, and the new SNK chip looked "a bit silly" in comparison. The chip could have also been used in a handheld device, which was probably the last thing they considered once the home console market looked like it had moved beyond them. "Much better than Neo Geo 64," is what he said to me. Development was abandoned entirely when Aruze took over, but it was meant to compete with other consoles within the 1999~2000 timeframe. Apparently the chip itself looked very good, and at the time it was conceived, it was the absolute top of the line. I'm sure documentation and prototypes exist within SNK's home office in Osaka - one can only imagine what it would've become. http://www.insertcredit.com/archives/002002.html
Pro tip: Use the default font color and watch your forum popularity soar. Some of us use the white theme, which means we can't read that shit.
Colour changed. So anyway, if this is true then the next SNK system would have been as powerful as the Dreamcast? I can't see that. Why make a custom chip when they could have used off the shelf parts? Yakumo
Off the shelf is generally cheaper: the parts are more readily avaliable, there's more than 1 customer for the chips, and there's very little design overhead.
