Giga power

It would seem SNK is getting back to business. After taking over 10 years to finally refresh the King Of Fighters series, they're not wasting any time cranking out the next iteration. KOF XIII was officially announced today, in typical KOF style, with only a logo. At least it's a nice looking one. In accordance with said KOF style, details will begin to trickle in from location tests, and magazine articles over the course of the year. If everything goes according to plan, KOF XIII should hit around November.

One reason they're being serious about it is that 2010 is the 20th Anniversary of the Neo Geo platform, where the King Of Fighters originated. To remind people that they were once a force to be reckoned with, SNK put up a Neo Geo Museum site with a brief history of the system, a game catalog, and print ad gallery and some new promotional goods for the 20th Anniversary.

It's a nice thing, but as a Neo Geo fan, I'd like to see something more in-depth. I recently had to do some internet detective work in order to find out which parts were originally used in SNK's Candy line of cabinets. It's nice to see a picture of it on the history page, but I'd like to see some more nerdy stuff on there. For example, the game catalog doesn't list the meg count for any of the games, something that was prominently used as a marketing gimmick back in those days. While that data can be easily obtained by anyone, some information that only SNK could provide, for example, could be the amount and size of the ROM chips used in the actual arcade cartridges. Something that can currently only be obtained from the MAME project's documentation (specifically its source code). And for the truly Neo faithful, finally finding out the missing NGH catalog entries would be a monumental event. Having an official source for _all_ things Neo Geo would be much appreciated by video game nerds the world over.