SNK Playmore has officially changed their corporate name to SNK effective as of today, December 1 2016.
Together with the change, the company unveiled its new corporate sound logo and a commemorative site, SNK HISTORY, which outlines the company's footsteps from back in its arcade era in 1973 when they were still called Shin Nippon Kikaku (which roughly translates as "New Japan Projects").
The commemorative site is in Japanese only and it has some gems of tidbits, particularly regarding the Fatal Fury series.
Trivial Tidbit Translations by MMCafe: [Note: Translations take time and effort. Please link to this article rather than copy & paste the whole text on Forums or SNS sites. Thank you.]
- Mai Shiranui was originally a male character called "Ninja Master" and he was 60% done by the time they decided to ditch him in favor of a female character. Mai's tail is a remnant of Ninja Master's design as he originally wore a long scarf. His concept design is viewable at the site.
- In Terry Bogard's original setting, he was supposed to be the younger brother to Andy, not the other way around.
- Fatal Fury plays with two planes, but at the game's planning stage there was even more depth.
- As the first fighting game that features zooming, Art Of Fighting 1 in its early development zoomed so much that you couldn't see under the character's knees.
- Kim's Hououkyaku super was inspired by AOF's Ryuuko Ranbu. Back in RBFF1, the developers wanted to add in a phoenix effect when the move was done but it wasn't possible. That lead to the birth of the special effects designer in the dev team. The phoenix effect was later realized in Kizuna Encounter.
- Character nicknames during the project phases of Garou:MOW-- Sarumaru(Hokutomaru/note that Saru means monkey), Beauty Jenet(B.Jenet), Iron Lynch (Kevin). Also, Terry's Buster Wolf special was called God Guyser. On a side note, in B.Jenet's original settings she had the hots for Marco, not Terry.
- The NeoGeo only supports 15 colors per palette for the characters, but in Garou:MOW the designers overlapped 4 laters to display 60 colors.
Sales Department Memoires
- At a candy shop that was closing down, the grandma who ran the place kept on giving her uncountable thanks to the cabinet and bit it farewell with tears under her eyes as SNK's workers stalled it away.
- Sales dept vehicles back in those days didn't have a NeoGeo/SNK logo to avoid merchandise thefts. But when the NGPocket came out, things went the other way and the workers were ordered to place stickers on all the cars. On top of that, workers were given a bonus if they advertised their own cars with the stickers as well.
- A certain arcade asked for a bunch of promotion calendars to place up for advertisement. They were then discovered to be selling them in the store.
- Sales offices used to have the weekends off but it was moved to Sun and Mon due to potential repair calls on Saturday. It was actually received well by the workers since they could go the the shops and movies when stores aren't busy.
- The SUPER NEO 29 arcade cab wasn't exactly praised thanks to its camera, which let the opponent see who they're playing and could end up in fights.
- One worker was told he couldn't come back until he delivered all the loot on a truck (8 MVS-U4 cabs + games)
- After a volcano incident, an office in Kagoshima prefecture washed off the ashes from cabs and pcbs so they could throw them away. After 3 days of sun-drying, they actually ran.
- The bank lady hated workers from SNK because they'd bring in couple of grands worth of 100 yen coins at the end of each month.
- The screws used on SC cabs were specially shaped and they were called "NEO screws"
- The title panel (EL Card) on MVS cabs were popular amongst some kids and they collected them. It was a bit of a mystery where they got them from.
Reflex Tester
