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| SATURN
D&D Collection |
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After numerous delays over the course of a year+, Capcom's D&D Collection has finally arrived. Initial impressions:
Great arcade conversions of the two coin-ops Tower of Doom and Shadow
over Mystara. Characters are goodly sized and animate well. The gameplay is a mix
of Final Fight and Guardian Heroes where you hack 'n slash enemies and end level bosses
but you also level-up with experience points to gain in power and capability as per the
D&D board games. The genre that D&D represents may be overshadowed by new
offerings such as Gauntlet Legends that go into the realm of 3-D but NCS still enjoys a
good 2-D platformer from time to time. |
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| Pokemon
Snap |
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Nintendo has opened up pre-orders for the upcoming Pokemon Snap on the N64. Players will take the part of
a camera wielding adventurer on Pokemon Island. Your mission is to seek out Pokemon and
take interesting and notable photos of the creatures in action. Once you have a roll of
film done, you can place the photos in a Pokemon Album for later enjoyment. In Japan,
Nintendo has a special offer for the Pokemon photographer where they can have the photos
in the Pokemon Snap cartridge printed into special custom stickers. Pokemon Snap is
expected on March 21 at Y6800 or roughly NCS $60. Please pre-order if you are interested
since we will only bring in enough quantity to satisfy reservations on N64 stock. |
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| Pokemon
Pinball |
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Nintendo has announced Pockemon Pinball for the Gameboy Color to ship on April 14. The
game features 150 Pokemon that you can collect in your Pokedex. The ball in the game is
appropriately, a red/white Pokeball that you flip around the pinball field. PP features a
special rumble cartridge that will vibrate and buzz as you play the game. NCS' expected
retail is US$39. Pre-orders are welcome |
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| Pocket
Station Update |
| NCS
received a new offer for Pocket Station stock overnight at US$64.68 trade.
At this inflated level, NCS will end up paying US$67 after carriage and
duties. It's unacceptable and we will wait a little longer for Sony to ramp up production
and supply enough of this item so that prices return to normal levels. The Sony short
supply situation is inexplicable and one would think that they'd flood the market with the
devices. Reality shows that the Pocket Station is rare, priced at a mega-premium and fair
ground for gouging. No thanks. |
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| Final
Fantasy VIII Soundtrack |
| The
new 4-disc FFVIII soundtrack is expected tomorrow morning. A commemorative book is
included with the deluxe package. NCS expects retail to price at US$49~US$52
and pre-orders are welcome today for dispatch on Friday. Details will be posted when the
stock arrives. |
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| Playstation
Updates |
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Macross: Do You Remember Love and Noel 3 have both been delayed
until April. A number of other titles have also been delayed but Final Fantasy Collection
is on schedule for next week. The complete schedule for May is not available yet but
Konami announced Beatmania Append Gottamix (05/27) and Gun Gauge (06/03)
overnight. Gottamix will include 20 new songs and some music from the
arcade version of Beatmania 2DX. A DJ Battle Mode is new to this version and the Gottamix
disc will require the original Beatmania in order to boot. Gun Gauge is a
roaming action/shooting game where you take on enemy mecha in different scenarios. One of
the scenarios involves a high speed chase on a subway railway. Pre-orders are welcome for
these two items now. |
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| Yen
Equilibrium |
| The
dollar stands strong at Y123.40 this morning. NCS looks for equilibrium at 125 but this
range will not be confirmed until forex trading settles down. The rise to Y123.4 was very
quick so the smart money arbitrage play would be to short the dollar and go long the yen
with an eye towards Y120. Once that level is hit, close both positions and go long the
dollar and short the yen again and wait for Y125. New equilibrium takes a while to sort
out but it can be profitable if read correctly. |
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| Playstation
Casing Update |
NCS
has received a sample of third party Playstation casing. It's a regular gray color but
lighter in shade than the original Sony case. The handiwork is excellent and the component
that we had most cause for concern for, the lid's hinge mechanism, is of very good
quality. There are some issues that we will have to iron out before we can proceed with
the manufacture of transparent casings for the Playstation. NCS will update accordingly
when these issues are resolved.
Demand for the new casing is strong and we have commitments from our
large resellers for bulk quantities. Initially, NCS will focus on manufacturing two
colors: smoky transparent and smoky transparent blue. The effect of the smoky casing is
more dramatic than a crystal clear casing where all of inner details of the Playstation
are stark. Please trust our judgement as we have seen both types of plastic and the smoky
colors are much nicer. NCS is aware that many customers have their own wishes for various
colors but we have to manufacture in the thousands for each color. Smoky transparent is in
demand but only a handful of our customers are interested in pink or lime green. We'll try
to do custom colors once we are up and running. |
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| E-Mail
Snafu |
| A
bug hit our mail server at 05:32AM this morning and messages that were sent to our account
at escape.com have been spooled until the problem is fixed. We hope to be able to regain
access to e-mail in the early afternoon. |
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| Asian
Manufacturing Capacity |
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While hunting for factories that would accept our casing manufacturing details, we found
that many factories in mainland China have vast unused capacity. As a result, a lot of
machinery is idle and unproductive. Much of the production found in these factories range
from toys that are sold here in the USA to cheap electronic trinkets with primitive chip
technology. We were offered thousands of Tamagotchi clones for a few cents each and
Pokemon product rip-offs that were 80% cheaper than the Japanese originals from Nintendo.
Then there were the clone cartridges of current videogames that we would never consider
carrying. Truly amazing that these factories can churn out so much product and still have
idle capacity. |
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| Capital
Markets |
| The
market is too wicked to trade. NCS is watching the SPX which stands at 1227, a point below
the support of 1228. The markets will open in about 1/2 hour and normally we would short
the SPX at the open since support has broken and discipline requires taking action when
1228 is taken out. However, money flows continue to go into the market which eats up all
the selling. Something has to break over the next couple of days; either the sellers will
overwhelm the buyers or the buyers will have their way, sponge up all of the selling and
take this market higher. Our bias is to short the market by taking a strong position in
the SPX and RUT and wait for the sellers to overwhelm but the action is too tentative, too
wishy-washy to initiate positions. We may nibble short positions today on buying strength
and set up a core position on which to build on. We'll watch the BKX for hints. |
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NCS Weekly |
Tel
(718) 523-5774 |
Fax
(718) 523-7069 |
| Monday |
Dreamcast
supplies in stock, New DC imports for this week shipped, expected on Wednesday |
| Tuesday |
Gamera
VMS, Clear Blue Saturn - Derby Stallion Pack, Dreamcast Magazines |
| Wednesday |
New
Dreamcast imports: Aero Dancing, Mahjong Taikai 2, Psychic Force 2012, Puyo Puyo 4 |
| Thursday |
SATURN
D&D Collection in stock, Pokemon Snap and Pokemon Pinball pre-orders open |
| Friday |
Pokemon
products next week, Final Fantasy VIII Soundtrack |
| Saturday |
Puru
Puru Pack compatibility, Blue Stinger posters are nice but usually for stores... |
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