OKTrashPanda

This is a collection of full scans for the inserts to AES games for both English and Japanese releases. Admittedly, most of these images are low res and low quality, but they ARE official. If you've ever spent any time trying to find official AES art you know it can be a real headache and full scans are even worse. Since LaunchBox is now using 3D models I wanted to get ahead of anyone carelessly using the first images they can find for a collection. You see, Neo Geo games are notoriously expensive, so there are a few bootleggers out there who try to rip off collectors by making repros and selling them at full price as authentic AES games. As a reaction to this, the Neo Geo community has made it very hard to find high quality official scans. You can find PLENTY of fan art for people who just want shelf candy, but as a result of this, a lot of fan art winds up being used instead of official art including here on the LBDB as well as the art on EmuMovies (virtually all of the spines on there are fan art). Sometimes it looks convincing at first but comparing it to photos of the real boxes will reveal tiny differences. Most of these come from Southtown Homebrew. Unfortunately for those of us who want virtual shelf candy in LaunchBox, this means we can either use fan art boxes or go crazy searching for the official scans. I chose the latter, and this is the result. Unfortunately, some games are extremely hard to find. Whether it's due to the community circling the wagons to fend off scammers or just the severe rarity of the game in question, certain boxes do not seem to have full scans available online. Believe me, I looked. This means this collection is incomplete. Some of the games that are missing are very popular titles which is frustrating but I don't know of a way to solve that problem right now. Here is a list of missing scans: US: Art of Fighting 3: The Path of the Warrior Bang Bang Busters (this game was released in 2010 so whether or not it's official is debatable) Baseball Stars 2 Fatal Fury 3: Road to the Final Victory Galaxy Fight: Universal Warriors The King of Fighters '95 The King of Fighters '96 The King of Fighters 2003 (I found the "classic" variant and included it, but the original art was not available when I searched) Metal Slug Metal Slug 2 Metal Slug 3 Metal Slug 4 (I found the "classic" variant and included it, but the original art was not available) Metal Slug 5 (I found the "classic" variant and included it, but the original art was not available) Mutation Nation Ninja Master's: Haoh Ninpo Cho Rage of the Dragons (I found the "classic" variant and included it, but the original art was not available) Samurai Shodown III Sengoku Soccer Brawl Spinmaster Stakes Winner Street Slam Super Sidekicks 3: The Next Glory The Super Spy Top Hunter: Roddy & Cathy Japan: ASO II Bang Bang Busters (this game was released in 2010 so whether or not it's official is debatable) Fighter's History Dynamite Ghost Pilots The King of Fighters 2000 (you will also notice this game is missing from the US releases. This game came out during that awkward bankruptcy phase for SNK and never got a US AES release ) The King of Fighters 2003 King of the Monsters Metal Slug 4 Metal Slug 5 Rage of the Dragons Raguy Samurai Spirits Zero Sengoku Denshou Sengoku Denshou 2001 Shin Gouketsuji Ichizoku: Toukon Matrimelee Top Player's Golf At some point in the future I might revisit this collection but right now I don't see much use in driving myself up the wall just to find one or two more results. I do, however, hope that others might find this useful and maybe someone else will feel motivated to find the other official scans. These scans are from neogeosoft, neostore and videogameobsessions. There are a few more that I don't remember finding, nor do I remember the source of, but no claim is intended.