SNK starts montly Neo Geo game downloads worldwide on Wii Virtual Console in August 2007
Ben Herman, president of SNK Playmore USA, was interviewed by IGN about the launch of the Neo Geo console via the Wii Virtual Console download service. These are the facts that they revealed:
* SNK are planning for a limited number of games each month over the course of a year. They really want to have a flow where there are a couple of games available each month (they say it could be two games a month), and keep adding to the library that way.
* With NES at essentially $5 and SNES at $8, SNK will be putting their game prices at just a little above the SNES point. That’s between $8 and $10 then.
NEOGEO Virtual Console logo* SNK are aiming for worldwide releases, so that it’s available for all regions at once. As far as the date, they are looking to start releasing games around mid-summer of this year. The middle of summer is between June 21st and end September, so falls in August 2007.
* SNK wants to release the games from their 120 different Neo Geo games library that haven’t been available for a while (Metal Slug Anthology is a new Wii release) to be more attractive to users. So you won’t see King of Fighters ‘94 in the first month.
* No new Virtual Consoles are in development at SNK, they are sticking with purely retro games at this point.
* As for retail games, the Wii might see ports of PS2 compilations (but with added controller options) like The Art of Fighting Collection & Fatal Fury: Battle Archives. SNK also plan to have new games that support online play on the Wii.
Fun facts: SNK’s Neo Geo console lived from 1990 to 1997. But the last game from SNK for the system, Samurai Spirits Zero Special, was released on October 19, 2004. Unofficial support was last seen in 2006 with the limited release of Last Hope.