Star Tech Journal

Parallel PCB Market
Evan Wessel
Mercury Amusement
Havertown, Pennsylvania
Bill Johnston
Johnston's General Store
Buffalo, New York
I spoke to a distributor who was pushing
POW as the hottest game since Double
Dragon. I had to tell him that I would not
invest nearly $3,000 in a dedicated game as
long as parallels will be readily available.
As a parallel distributor myself, now that the
Several factors here.
1. Profits are slim. Home games, high prices
and weak games are putting some operators
out of business again. The rest of us must be
very careful where we put our dollars.
~
2. Dedicated games that cannot be dupli-
cated ( Outrun, 720) will hold a good resale
value due to a limited supply. A game like
Double Dragon is now flooding the States
parallel and the dedicated version will drop
like a rock. (Just traded mine in because of
this foresight).
Well, there's more reasons not to buy dedi-
cated; let's just say I would like to remain in
business.
Manufacturers must give us a break and
either lower dedicated prices to $2,195, or
release the blockbusters as a kit, even it it's
high priced. I hope something good comes
out of this mess.
***
Beckham case is a win, I speak the same as
I did before the win when I was a parallel user
and advocate. The USAis a free country, and
now thanks to my hero Bill Beckham, is a
free marketplace. Parallel distributors sell-
ing legitimate Double Dragons are selling the
original printed circuit made by Technos
and licensed to Taito. All legit PCB's bear the
stencilling Technos on the PCB.
Taito never made the boards. Thanks to
Taito America hiding behind copyright laws
of their day, they took a monster hit which
still today commands the number one posi-
tion on the game charts after over one year,
and sold it dedicated-only at $2,495 (if you
were "lucky").
Today, all the Double Dragon operators have
a high demand level for this evergreen title,
and it still commands up to $1,295 as a PCB!
SNK is offering POW as dedicated only, and
if they find that the parallel distributors have
reduced the demand for dedicated games,
perhaps they'll adjust to the kit demand and
downshift to kits ...
We'll see who's the smartest merchandisers
in the land of the licensees during the up-
coming marketing months.
***