Friday, September 4, 2009

K2_VIDEO Unit Exposed

My new best friend, NeoTurfMasta, over at NeoGeoFanClub.com recently released some pictures of the insides of his K2_VIDEO unit. This machine was used to allow Neo Geo Pocket developers (and perhaps reviewers) to play NGPC games on a TV or video capture device. Here's a direct link to his post about the SNK K2_VIDEO NGP to TV adapter.

What's more is that Turfmasta has been using this hardware to create some nice video captures of Neo Geo Pocket Color games. This is excellent, because it gives you an idea of how the stuff runs on actual hardware without having a video taken by a camera of someone playing a NGPC (like I would do). To me, though, it's much more than that. It excites me to know that hardware like this has made its way into the hands of regular (non-SNK) people. I really appreciate that Turfmasta has gone out of his way to share his collection through the pictures and videos that he's providing. I wish more collectors would follow his lead and show us some other cool NGPC development or prototype hardware/software.

I'm working with Turfmasta a bit to try to get the BIOS of the K2_VIDEO unit dumped. I don't really know if it will ultimately produce anything amazing, but I fell that it's important to share this sort of thing. If we can get it into the capable hands of people like Judge and Flubba, perhaps they can find some hidden gems in there. Otherwise, I still feel that it's important to archive such things for historical and nostalgia purposes.


Oh, did you want this post to be CFC2English related? Okay. There's a video clip Turfmasta made by video capturing CFC2English running on his K2_VIDEO unit. Thanks again to the NeoGeoFanClub guys: Turfmasta, NeoBomberman, and rarehero.