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SNK Playmore

Denshi Maid Techou: Koi no Iroha (Electronic Maid Notebook: Iroha’s Love) is a cancelled day organizer – life simulation game that was in development by SNK Playmore around 2006, planned to be published on Nintendo DS. The project was officially announced at the Tokyo Game Show 2006, with many other titles that SNK were publishing for DS (such as Doki Doki Majo, Metal Slug 7 and SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash).

In Denshi Maid Techou players would raise a digital version of Iroha from the Samurai Showdown series, somehow like a Tamagotchi. By doing this she would start learning more about the world and help you in your daily-schedule, similar to an organizer App. Nice idea to gamify boring “do my homework, do my laundry, do my shopping” checklist, isn’t it? Some details about this strange software can still be found online in Japanese forums:

“In addition to the daily schedule function, elements of training, communication, and changing clothes are also included. There are about 100 costumes for Iroha. Mr. Takkun (Denshi Maid Techou character designer) commented: “Please put it on your desk at home or at work and enjoy one maid in the family”.
The traditional Japanese girl Iroha who looks out of a fairy tale suddenly appears in front of the protagonist: serving players at home, school and outside with the gentleness of a traditional Japanese geisha. But because Iroha doesn’t know the real world, players must also take some time educating her.
The game provides 5 kinds of “educational activities” every day, plus mini games to play against Iroha. Dialogues with Iroha and her personality depend on how players educate her. By playing every day you can also unlock new costumes for Iroha, with more than 100 types in total.”

A similar simulation game featuring Iroha was later released for smartphones, but it sees they removed the life organizer features. As we can read on the SNK Wiki, “a character named Tsunami was originally created for this game. However, she later appeared in Days of Memories series and Koi no Iroha games for mobile phones”.

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Arcade, Others

The King of Fighters ’99 [Arcade – Beta / Concept]

monokoma

11-07-2010

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As we can read from Wikipedia, The King of Fighters ’99: Millennium Battle is a 1999 head-to-head fighting game by SNK released for the Neo Geo arcade and home platform. The King of Fighters ’99 initially meant to remove Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami from the series due to the introduction of the new lead character, K’. However, due to negative fan response in location tests, they decided to readd them.

The SNK staff wanted to create a Robo Army Team. However, this idea was abandoned but they later made it a tribute in The King of Fighters 2000 by introducing Rocky, a character from Robo Army as a striker for Maxima. The character from Whip was originally meant to star in The King of Fighters ’96, but due Leona’s introduction in that game, the staff decided to wait until K0F ’99.

Developers also found troubles with the large number of young characters appearing in the game; as such the staff also designed older character such as Maxima and Vannesa to balance the game. In contrast to this Bao was added to the game in order to reduce the average age from the Psycho Soldiers Teams. Bao had many different design before its final one, as you can see in the gallery below.

Here’s the final Bao sprite to compare it with its early designs:

Thanks to Saga Darvulia for the contribution!

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Arcade, Others, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Neo Geo Battle Coliseum [ARC PS2 – Beta]

monokoma

07-04-2010

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Neo Geo Battle Coliseum is a 2 on 2 tag team fighting game developed by SNK Plyamore and released in 2005 for the Atomiswave arcade board, with a Playstation 2 port in the same year. Mikel noticed some beta differences in a trailer from the JAMMA/TGS 2004:

At 0:20, you’ll see Mai do her trademark Super Deadly Ninja Bees move, you may notice that when she starts the move, you will see that the Desperation Move Sparks are The King of Fighters XI, the Desperation Move sparks in the final version of Neo Geo Battle Coliseum are different, and the Desperation Move sparks you see later made it to The King of Fighters XI.
At 0:24, you’ll see Asura (From Samurai Shodown 64-2 (The 64 doesn’t mean that it’s for Nintendo 64, it’s for an old, abandoned Arcade Board by SNK named the “Hyper Neo Geo 64”)) preform a Double Assault, the Double Assault spark was later reused for the Leader Despeation move spark in The King of Fighters XI, and the Double Assault background is somewhat absent.
At 0:31, you’ll see Yuki doing a strange pose while K’ does some Light Kicks then K’ later taunts, the sprites for the pose Yuki was doing were absent in the final game.
At 0:33, you’ll see Fuuma doing a weird taunt that has him spinning his head around holding a folding fan, then he opens the folding fan (i.e. Mai Shiranui) at the end, I am not too sure if that taunt is in the final.
At 0:41, you’ll see that Hanzo’s stance is different, that stance was replaced with a new stance in the final game.
At 0:42, you’ll see that when Ai walks backwards, only one sprite shows up, she gets sprites when she walks backwards in the final game, and Ai’s taunt is also different.
At 0:47, you’ll see K’ preform his double assault with Tung Fu Rue, you’ll see that the background is black.
At 1:21, you’ll see Asura preform one of his moves, you will also see that the background doesn’t fade to black when he does the move (I forgot the name of the move, if you know the name, tell me right away).

Thanks to Mikel for the contribution!

Video:

Arcade, Microsoft, Others, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

The King of Fighters XII [Unused Characters]

U64 Staff & Contributors

11-09-2009

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The King of Fighters XII (KOF XII) is the latest installment of the fighting games series developed by SNK Playmore. The game was released in Japan in April 2009 for arcades with an home versions for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in July 28 of the same year. Due to the time the developers took to make the sprites, there are only 20 playable characters (the lowest number of characters ever had in a game from the series) but many more unused ones were created in concepts during the development. [Info from Wikipedia] In the gallery below you can check some of these lost fighters!

Also, Mr. Lip Buster from the Ignition Entertainment Forum has found the names of more unused / removed characters in the game’s code: Vice, Hwa, Takuma, a boss, Dark/Orochi(?) Ash, Mai, King, Yuri, Classic Iori, and Billy were all planned and not included. There are 7 more empty spots with no character at all. That’s a total of 17 characters gone from the final version, 10 that had made it to planning and 7 that never even made it to the data. tKoF XII was originally planned to be the conclusion of the Ash saga.

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