A sad day came upon us just as the A levels started - SNK has declared complete, total, and utter bankruptcy and has completely folded. Not even any more Pachinko games (which they were making after Aruze, curse their black hearts, bought SNK the first time they filed for bankruptcy.)

SNK died because of a mix of bad marketing strategy (although they did squeeze every last bit out of the Neogeo... a dead horse is still a dead horse, no matter how far you can kick it :P) and poor business decisions, as well as rapid improvements in terms on arcade hardware being made by other companies. When Capcom came up with CPS-3, SNK was still using the "GIGA-Power" MVS (which wasn't really GIGA at all, but had a hardware cartridge memory limit of about 80 megabytes... or about 700 megabits. That's somewhat similar to the Nintendo 64's cartridge hardware limits. Cartridges cost a lot.)

(Neogeo CDs made things cheaper, but not by very much. And the load times were long, to say the least. Almost long enough to cause screen burn-in, and that hopping monkey doesn't help, much.)

The Neogeo 64 failed miserably. It has graphics capabilities on par with early capcom ZN models. (SF EX 1, anyone?) Sadly, Samurai Shodown 64 was on it, which meant that almost no one outside of Japan got to play it (I've only managed to find it in one arcade in Singapore, about 4 years ago.)

However, SNK had a history of listening to what their fans want. The King of Fighters 97 roster was created completely based on Fan feedback. Almost no other company I know of makes games 100% based on what their fans want. Thanks, SNK, for making such great games over the years. You'll live on in our memories. Hontou ni arigatou gozaimashita.

P/s: Reading books on your PC will kill your eyes. I finished Neuromancer, but not before my eyes were red, bloodshot, and had images of Metapad burned into the retina.

P/sP/s: Dr. Pepper is a hard-to-acquire taste. How can ANYONE stand to drink that thing?