Fygee

Thanks for the welcome! I reached out to Able Amusements (I'm also in Las Vegas) but haven't heard back. I believe they're closed due to the Corona-virus shutdown. Would be pretty interesting if this cab had been in their sole service for 24 years up until I got the unit back in 2014. I currently have a local guy who's doing a professional restore on it. His work is extraordinary, and he has a lot of rare cabinets to boot (including, to our knowledge, the only working Atari Quak in existence). My hunch is the same as yours. This was either a prototype, or a very first release cab that was used for promotional purposes. It would be great if there was an old SNK USA employee I could contact that could confirm. Great Neo thread here by the way!

Hey there everyone. New member here, and I'm hoping you can help me since AtariAge members are well known for their sleuthing. I've also posted on KLOV and Neo-Geo.com, but sadly haven't made much headway. I'm working with someone to professionally restore a US 6-slot Neo-Geo MVS cabinet, and it seems there are a lot of quirks with it that all other Neo-Geo big red cabinets do not have. We're wondering if this may be a prototype, or first run release of some kind. Here's the differences we noticed: 1. The CPO is most definitely original, but the hole placements are different. Holes for the CPO art are lower from the top, and there are two on the sides with one up higher from the bottom center than normal. Joystick and button holes are lower on the CPO, about an inch. Using a standard factory CPO, it hangs off of the bottom edge a bit, and it can only be screwed in on the top. 2. The original side art it came with has a smaller font for the SNK logo. It's also significantly glossier. 3. Underneath the side art is another completely black decal, as opposed to bare smoothed wood. 4. The bottom backplate has no drilled holes on the sides or wood screws. Just a rounded hole at the top that looks like it was used with a lock. 5. The memory card and headphone decal was only red, not white and red with text descriptors. 6. The SN# begins with KC, rather than KOAM which is the standard for US cabs as a company named 3-KOAM manufactured all of them. It's also just a small silver sticker, and not the standard big, red SN sticker that they often came with. 7. There is no "born on date" scribbled on the wood under the CPO, which was standard at the time. Many of these things match promo posters from 1989/90(?) advertising the first release of the Neo-Geo and their line of cabinets. That promo is attached, along with pictures of the original side art it came with (now removed sadly), the original CPO with the holes punched into it on the side, and the CPO as it is now with a Joe Szabo repro panel.