Interest check on a port

ysselcneogeo

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Hey guys. I've currently been working on a mega drive rpg for years a project manager and we're starting to actually make a ton of progress.

While tons of work would be needed to port this to the neo geo I was trying to gauge if theres actually and interest for rpgs for the system.

Some things to note.
* The only physical release would be a neogeo cd version
* it would need more than likely need to sell 200 copies at around $150 a piece.
* It would feature a completely arranged ost version for the neo cd
* All purchasers of the cd version would receive an aes/mvs rom at a later point in time
* A aes/mvs rom would be released for purchase after the cd version.
* Graphical enhancements and quality of life improvements would be made to the neo version that are vastly better than other indie offerings on cd, that include cd exclusive enhanced features.

This tweet is a sample work of the game build as of 4 months back.


https://soundcloud.com/c1e55y-1%2Fviking-ninja-sample Heres the first time a sample of the ost has been uploaded.
 
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Neo Alec

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Yeah, I supose you can count me in for one. Interesting approach. I'm sure you'll get some blowback for that price. You'll probably get more attention if you post in the News Forum, so I would post there if you decide to go ahead. You'll get a lot of negative responses too I'm sure, so just make sure you have thick skin and don't let them get to you.
 

Burning Fight!!

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That's an expensive price for neogeo cd. I am definitely not interested in $150 for a cd.

And btw I'm sure many neo geo collectors will buy anything on a cart but a game without any pretense to be placed in a coin operated setting does not fit MVS at all, is your game meant to be more of an arcade action RPG?

vastly better than pathetic offerings like xenocrisis.
Let's see if you can put your money where your mouth is because judging from that twitter video you're pretty far from even offering what xenocrisis does at the moment on any platform.
 

kernow

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Uh yeah that homebrew quality title is not worth $150 on any system I'm afraid
 

kernow

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Scrolling and sprite work is very jank for nowadays

"Music" is absolutely unbearable

This is not worth porting
 

Tarma

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I think you should so something more constructive with your time... maybe port Half Life to the Neo Geo CD instead?
 

Neo Alec

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And btw I'm sure many neo geo collectors will buy anything on a cart but a game without any pretense to be placed in a coin operated setting does not fit MVS at all, is your game meant to be more of an arcade action RPG?
As if it matters at all whether it's an arcade game anymore. New Neo Geo games are aimed at collectors and hobbyists for home use. If anything, there's pent up demand for RPG's on the platform.

But you have a point about carts. I think Neo Geo collectors are willing to pay insane prices for carts, but not CD's. It's a shame though, because manufacturing carts is very impractical. If anything, I'd like to see more releases using this approach of putting out roms and just letting the end user decide if they want to play on a flash cart, Mister, emulator, or even make their own cart.
 

Burning Fight!!

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As if it matters at all whether it's an arcade game anymore. New Neo Geo games are aimed at collectors and hobbyists for home use. If anything, there's pent up demand for RPG's on the platform.

But you have a point about carts. I think Neo Geo collectors are willing to pay insane prices for carts, but not CD's. It's a shame though, because manufacturing carts is very impractical. If anything, I'd like to see more releases using this approach of putting out roms and just letting the end user decide if they want to play on a flash cart, Mister, emulator, or even make their own cart.
Maybe it's just me but not being able to imagine someone feeding quarters and trying to beat the greed of the operator on a Neo game just feels... off. Seems like a pointless exercise, or being more cynical, a soulless cash grab -- $150 for a Neo Geo CD PORT???? I want to see the justification for this price, and shitting on a game that plays and looks 10x better than what was presented isn't working.

Thumbs up for releasing the AES/MVS game in ROM format, but it's still a $150 dollar ROM. The "pathetic offering" (:thevt:) Xenocrisis is a £30 CD or a £15 mvs ROM...
 

Johnny16Bit

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If it's not an arcade-compatible game, personally I wouldn't do it... Though I can hear that the system's, say "scope", has evolved - but even it's for home use, it's still the arcade experience we're after... I think??

Also, make it on cart or it just doesn't exist :beer:
 

SignOfGoob

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I don’t have any problem with the idea of a $150 purchase price of a CD that comes with ROMs for the cart version. If I were selling it I’d aim for higher sales and lower price but I think it’s a decent idea. Anyone who’s ever used modern day pro software of pretty much any form has paid way more than $150 for a ROM. (Honestly, anyone who has bought and upgraded Mario Kart 8 on both systems has paid $150 for a ROM at this point…).

I’m not sure if any other good ideas have been demonstrated though, such as a Neo style game that would actually be worth this. Deciding to make a Neo game is like deciding to shoot a three hour $300M movie. You have to have some reason to do it. You have to bring it and bring it all to be noticed on a system where every game made for it sank or swam based on real life in-person arcade popularity. It’s not easy. Nobody is going to be impressed with Hello World level stuff on a system where almost every game is amazing or at least amazing looking.

I’m not sure if porting anything to the Neo makes a ton of sense. Games made specifically for it are more logical.
 

GohanX

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I'm not really interested, but knowing what I do about CD duplication you may consider the cost benefits of a larger run. CD manufacturing gets infinitely cheaper usually if you order at least 500 units. It's been a while since I looked, but the vendors I was researching a while back the production cost for a run of 100, 200, and 500 discs was almost exactly the same. 500 discs at $60 each would be an easier sell I think and get you the same amount of cash. It would take a while to sell through probably, but really you don't need to sell too many to recoup manufacturing costs and then everything else is gravy.
 

city41

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If it's not an arcade-compatible game, personally I wouldn't do it... Though I can hear that the system's, say "scope", has evolved - but even it's for home use, it's still the arcade experience we're after... I think??

Also, make it on cart or it just doesn't exist :beer:

Think of Samurai Shodown RPG
 

Neo Alec

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I'm not really interested, but knowing what I do about CD duplication you may consider the cost benefits of a larger run. CD manufacturing gets infinitely cheaper usually if you order at least 500 units. It's been a while since I looked, but the vendors I was researching a while back the production cost for a run of 100, 200, and 500 discs was almost exactly the same. 500 discs at $60 each would be an easier sell I think and get you the same amount of cash. It would take a while to sell through probably, but really you don't need to sell too many to recoup manufacturing costs and then everything else is gravy.
Good luck selling 500 NGCD discs.

@Burning Fight!! it is just you. SSRPG already exists.
 

ysselcneogeo

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That's an expensive price for neogeo cd. I am definitely not interested in $150 for a cd.

And btw I'm sure many neo geo collectors will buy anything on a cart but a game without any pretense to be placed in a coin operated setting does not fit MVS at all, is your game meant to be more of an arcade action RPG?


Let's see if you can put your money where your mouth is because judging from that twitter video you're pretty far from even offering what xenocrisis does at the moment on any platform.
So the cost of the cd game is literally funding the cost to port to the neo platform and make a aes and mvs rom.
I don't like Xenocrisis but shitting on it and then showing that is laughable. Not a good look.
Loving all the commenting and feed back

Wanted to say im not shitting on Xenocrisis im shitting on the neogeo version. It literally has no benefits to being on the neo. The visuals are the same the music is the same, the game had an issue with being panned to the speaker, it had improper over scan that cuts of the screen on most mvs cabs. It had a ton of lack of quality on the Neo. The cd version also didnt have and arranged ost which imho is a must.

The game has no point in having a mvs version as it just not an arcade experience. Its a 2 player co op action rpg thats around 20 to 40 hours long.

In terms of graphics theres plenty of room for improvement however quality of assets means money. Originally the creator of this did literally everything himself. Most of the people working on this project have worked on other genesis games and have experience in the field. So the talents there but the budget isnt high. Its 100% self funded, no pre orders and no crowd funding kick starter type ho ha. As for the genesis version there will be as many copies made as people wanna buy, no fomo to drive sales.

Below is just some pictures to kinda show tha the project is constantly evolving.


I

artevolution.pngrevision.png


I'd also like to address the cost of a cd version. $150 sounds like a lot and it is. I'd like to mention that the quality of packaging and materials you can expect from our product should be higher than anything i've seen on the neo indie market. If any of you've had the chance to see Pier Solars or Papriums genesis first print release you can expect more of the same we almost all of us have worked on those projects. We'd also consider giving every neo cd version of the game a AES case and manual. However that the moment considering even making an AES cart just isnt a financially sound choice.
 
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ysselcneogeo

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Maybe it's just me but not being able to imagine someone feeding quarters and trying to beat the greed of the operator on a Neo game just feels... off. Seems like a pointless exercise, or being more cynical, a soulless cash grab -- $150 for a Neo Geo CD PORT???? I want to see the justification for this price, and shitting on a game that plays and looks 10x better than what was presented isn't working.

Thumbs up for releasing the AES/MVS game in ROM format, but it's still a $150 dollar ROM. The "pathetic offering" (:thevt:) Xenocrisis is a £30 CD or a £15 mvs ROM...
The aes rom released afterward would be no where near the $150. The $150 is funding the cost it takes to hire someone to program the game for the neo and the cost to higher on or pay for more pixel artist to revise the graphics to meet the quality of the neogeo and not target the visuals mega drive.

Im a strong believer that if somethings going to be on the neo it needs to actually utilize the neos hardware.
 

sirlynxalot

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I think you can buy AES bootleg carts on aliexpress for under $150, and MVS boots for like $50. Wonder if it would be worth it to you to order like 50 of one or the other and then put in a markup so that you can provide an AES or MVS version for the cart collectors. The downside is that then the Chinese have your rom and could provide unlimited copies of it in the future, but then again, if you're already providing the rom to a group of people, the potential is there that one of the buyers orders a custom cart from one of these guys and then they have the rom anyway.
 
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Neo Alec

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I think you can buy AES bootleg carts on aliexpress for under $150, and MVS boots for like $50. Wonder if it would be worth it to you to order like 50 of one or the other and then put in a markup so that you can provide an AES or MVS version for the cart collectors. The downside is that then the Chinese have your rom and could provide unlimited copies of it in the future, but then again, if you're already providing the rom to a group of people, the potential is there that one of the buyers orders a custom cart from one of these guys and then they have the rom anyway.
He knows the cartridge rom is going to get out in the wild once he starts distributing it to buyers. That's why he said it won't be available immediately.
 

Burning Fight!!

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Well that’s what you should have said from the beginning. Makes much more sense now.
 

kernow

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Uh it's not the assets its the engine
I don't get the motivation behind having to release this as a paid product - there's tons of jank homebrew out that hasn't been monetized.
 

ysselcneogeo

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Uh it's not the assets its the engine
I don't get the motivation behind having to release this as a paid product - there's tons of jank homebrew out that hasn't been monetized.
Because digital distribution isnt the dream anyone has when making a game.

Also I think you're judging a lot by a very early wip of just the tile engine. The point we're at in programing is pretty much at proof of concept levels imho right now.
 

kernow

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Because digital distribution isnt the dream anyone has when making a game.

Also I think you're judging a lot by a very early wip of just the tile engine. The point we're at in programing is pretty much at proof of concept levels imho right now.
You can't even spell the word programming - good luck.

It's not worth $150 on a cd - even a printed one, if you do an ngcd run you will not sell them all, and you'll lose money

Godspeed eh?
 

kernow

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Because digital distribution isnt the dream anyone has when making a game.

Also I think you're judging a lot by a very early wip of just the tile engine. The point we're at in programing is pretty much at proof of concept levels imho right now.
You showed the video then slagged off a highly polished game which is lightyears ahead of yours. First impressions count - and perhaps you should be thinking about selling it when it's not a 'wip'?

You showed the video, what did you think people would say?

Fire your sound guy btw
 
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