Star Tech Journal

SNK Ops To Get Piece Of Honie
NEO•GEO Market
James Calore
STAR*TECH Journal
Merchantville, New Jersey
In Japan, SNK's NEO•GEOvideo game cartridge
system is both a home game and an arcade piece.
Only with this system, the operator gets the best
of both worlds!
SNK Corp. America will have control of the
software and will arrange for coin-op to have
several months advance exposure before a title
is released to the home system.
CONCEPT
MEMORY CARD
A player can have a game in progress while in his
favorite arcade, save it on a memory card, rent
the home game and cartridge and later that
night, at home, pick up where he left om Or, vice
versa. He can continue the home game back in
the arcade the next day!
The memory card is a credit card sized identifi-
cation device in which players can carry games
in progress back and forth between the arcade
and home. It is actually a battery backed-up ram
card. Itmeasuresapproximately2"x3.5"x 1/8"
and utilizes surface mount technology. The
lithium battery will hold the ram contents for two
years without a charge. Each time the card is
inserted into a console it is recharged. The
memory card is a standard Japanese data card
used in many communications applications.
While SNK Corp. America is strictly coin-op,
their home marketing arm, SNK Home Enter-
tainment of Torrance, California will have home
consoles and cartridges for the home market
available this November.
RETAIL
Coin-ops will be encouraged to sell and rent
these systems. The hardware console will retail
for $549 and the software cartridges will retail
for $199 each. Because of the expense, it's
expected to be a rental business.
SYSTEM
Both systems will have a memory card slot (the
coin-op version already has this slot incorpo-
rated into the cabinet) in which the player can
insert his card to continue play of a suspended
game. Each memory card can hold up to 27
games in progress.
Only the coin-op units will contain bookkeeping
information and this data will not be available on
the home systems. The cartridges will not be
compatible and, in fact, are not physically in-
terchangeable. The coin-op version has addi-
tional circuitry to communicate the bookkeep-
ing data to the mother board.
The card will retail for $26. Many ops will use
these cards as premiums, envisions SNK Home
Entertainment, such as contest winners, lot-
teries, door prizes, etc.
BOTTOM LINE
SNK has developed a system, NEO•GEO, which
is constantly in the top 5 best earners since its
release in May '90 and now establishes a way to
bring it home without alienating the operator. In
fact, he can profit by it!