What happened to NMK?

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Macaw
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Location: Australia

What happened to NMK?

Post by Macaw »

It seems NMK's shmups seem mostly unknown to most, but some of their stuff is truly remarkable. Sure Zed Blade isnt so hot, but games like Thunder Dragon 2, Rapid Hero, and Desert War are still some of my most played shmups.

So does anyone know where the remnants of this company went to? Thunder Dragon 2 and Rapid Hero have very raizing-esque gameplay with a medal system and lots of bombs so perhaps Raizing had a lot of of Ex-NMK employees? I'm just curious.

Also here is great a site with a complete list of NMK games http://www.ngy1.1st.ne.jp/~momochi/untiku/nmk.htm
AWJ
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Post by AWJ »

Well, Manabu Namiki (Santaruru) began his game music career at NMK and later ended up at Raizing, so there's one connection.

Atlus seems to have licensed some of NMK's hardware (or maybe they bought them out and that's what happened to them?) as the Power Instinct PCB has a lot of NMK-labelled chips on it. Power Instinct 2 and DonPachi also have some NMK chips.
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Neon
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Post by Neon »

Poor shmups, but Saboten Bombers and Bombjack Twin are pretty fun. Great graphics for the time as well - tons of animation.
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BBH
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Post by BBH »

now I feel retarded because I looooooove Psychic 5 and had no idea it was an NMK game, I thought it was by Jaleco.

one little gem from NMK that I never would have known about without MAME (and honestly I can't find any information on the game elsewhere... it's not even listed on that link in the first post!) is Riot. It's a "crosshair shooter" a la Cabal or NAM-1975, with a twist - instead of just shooting enemies in the background, you can shoot enemies that appear in the foreground too. It's a pretty neat game, I highly recommend checking it out for anyone that enjoys the genre.
320x240
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Post by 320x240 »

Am I the only on to think that the (animated) character portraits in Rapid Hero looks Korean in style?
It is powerup of laser.
lgb
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Post by lgb »

320x240 wrote:Am I the only one to think that the (animated) character portraits in Rapid Hero looks Korean in style?
No. And you're missing an "e".
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Hey, I didn't mind Zed Blade too much.
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