|
We’ve been talking about this forever; our big interview with SNK Neo Geo USA. We were to get all of the answers to all of the questions. Well – we gave it our best shot.
Eric-Jon did a fine job of impressing SNK Neo Geo USA’s president Ben Herman early on day one. He wrote up his thoughts on that conversation, as you’ve no doubt read. This was after I had made my interview appointment with three members of the SNK Neo Geo USA team, for 10:30 AM on Thursday morning. The following individuals were present; Vincent Diamante and myself, Ben Herman – president, Shinya Morishita - ex Playmore staff, now with SNK USA, and another fellow who didn’t talk much.
The interview went as planned…sort of. Eric-Jon didn’t show up, due to confusions on the time. That wasn’t in the script. But equally unplanned, and more dissatisfying was the checks-and-balances of the head of SNK in the US, and an ex-Playmore employee.
Ben Herman and his ex-Playmore counterpart both had a hell of a lot to say. I get the feeling that if we had gotten each of them on their own, we would have learned a lot more than we ultimately did. There was more nuance, inference and hinting in these 35 minutes than in any other interview I have ever conducted. Every time they were about to say something, they stopped. It was a frustrating experience on a very high level. Because of this, the necessary resultant write-up became overly difficult. It was ultimately decided that you could best judge for yourself what was going on by listening to an MP3 of the entire conversation. A full transcription will come later. The questions were compiled by Eric-Jon and myself, and performed by yours truly.
We got more answers than we can write – ‘I can’t say’, when in reference to a yes or no question tends to mean ‘yes’ the way I loaded things.
There’s a lot of cool stuff in there though, discussions of some very minute details of the SNK universe. Of course, in our reluctance to write this thing up, the majority of the ‘big news’ has been leaked by others. It’s the price you pay for meticulousness, I suppose.
But there is an upside to this. For one thing, SNK is back, not just in the US, but in Japan. Playmore is SNK, as you may no doubt have heard. Another upside would be my pending interview with Playmore in Japan later this month. Here’s hoping we’ll get some interesting answers there as well.
I don’t mean to downplay the interview. It’s damned interesting, perhaps even more so because of what was not said. One is only left to ponder why.
Update! A text version of the interview is now available - check it if you hadn't time for the MP3.
Brandon Sheffield
|
