Last month, NeoTurfMasta bought an old Neo Geo test board for $750. After messing around with it for a while, he made one hell of a discovery: lurking inside was a prototype version of an unknown, unreleased Neo Geo fighting game.
It’s far from complete—there’s no UI or sound, and not all the character art is final—but there are 12 fighters, background art and some semblance of a playable video game. Here it is, running via MAME:
Those lucky enough to be at the Midwest Gaming Classic over the weekend even got to see it running in person:
What’s cool isn’t just that this has been dug up decades later, but that nobody seems to know what the game even is, and won’t unless someone who was at SNK at the time sees any of this news and comes forward with some answers.
So until then, any and all nickname suggestions are welcome.
Collectors and Neo Geo fans, you can read about the particulars of the discovery over on NeoTurfMasta’s original post.