This is to answer Kenladen's original question about the Neo*Geo scene. I used to be really hardcore into the neo and of course I ran into Dion Dakis and Chris Ray over the years. Mind you I wrote this in April of 2002 so they have long since been ruined by me and many others who exsposed their bullshit.

Many people wonder why the vast majority of NeoGeo fans dislike the two people running a small web based business selling neogeo carts.
They warn people away, but often don't go into detail.
The reason they don't, is it gets very very old, repeating the same warnings over & over again.

For you to really understand how bad it was, & to some degree still is, you would have had to have been apart of it for the last several years.
Since so many fans, feeling insulted & ripped off have left the scene.
They are no longer here to tell their tales to you.
So instead of letting you find out the hard way, here's a sample of many past occurrences:


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#1 The Neo Alec Scene
On Neo Alec's web site around August of '98. There were a few flame wars, which were a lot of fun.
This is where many many members of the neo community, Bonuskun, Billkwando, Samhain, Gui_Long, nick_th_fury, SNKiller, etc., met & became friends.
This is also the first place where we noticed this guy claiming to know EVERYTHING about the 16 bit Neo*Geo system in that section.
The person was none other than Dion Dakis, running around dubbing himself the ultimate guru of the Neo*Geo world.
He was seen lying to people, insulting them, and telling them that all SNK MVS carts produced were also made for AES Home system as well.


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#2 Refugees
In December of '98, more and more people were being kicked from Neo Alec's board in his attempt to establish control over everything.
One of the older Yahoo Clubs known as 'Southtown Neo*Geo Land' was more than happy to welcome us from Alec's board.
Dion and Gui_Long finally confronted each other at this point, arguing about the way he talked down to people (which he still does).
He sent Gui a threat by E-mail, and with that he ended it..
Dion then created the club 'Neo*Geo Heaven' in which he told many people that "if you're so big & bad you'll be at Shodown 99" (a get together for Neo Fans).
Dion threatened many people on both the bbs's, and on the dhp list. Threatening to deal with anyone that had an issue with him there.
However, when shodown '99 rolled around, Dion didn't show.

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#3 Neo*Geo HELL
Soon after all of this, Dion was caught selling converted carts with fake inserts and stickers.
We had thought Dion was just an asshole before now, and were surprised to find out he was a lying thief as well.
He had advertised that every cart included all the original materials, especially the manual.
He was caught selling photocopied inserts for Super Dodgeball, Shock Troopers, and other titles.
The items he had called original were nothing more than cheap, fake printouts, definitely not from SNK, which he offered for the "oh so low" price of $900.00 a pop.
So Neo*Geo Hell was opened, somewhat because of the desire to establish a place to discuss Neo Gaming, but primarily to inform people about Dion's lies.


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#4 The Loser
Dion steps forth once again to prove what scum he is. In a rather stupid move, he claims that Shock Troopers 2 will not be released on home cart.
Of course, a short time later, SNK does in fact release the home cart. Faced with this, Dion tries to publicly inflate his ego, saying SNK did it to "keep him from having an exclusive home title."
Dion had made his own fake Shock Troopers 2 cart, US version (complete with fake US sticker), and tried to pass it off as a "rare" official release that only he had received.
His trickery was immediately pointed out, so then he tries to save face by hyping his cart sticker, saying he "wanted to compare it to SNK's to see whose was better."


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#5 The Thieves strike again.
Dion's poor business practices start to surface. He tries to purchase the entire stock of Metal Slug X carts from SNK USA, so he can make "limited edition cart casings" (meaning the actual plastic PCB casing) that were orange in color.
This, of course, would give him the ability to ration them out to whomever he wanted, and charge whatever price he desired, forever claiming they are "rare" titles.
When his ploy failed, he threw a fit like a child, and tried to discourage everyone from buying the game, claiming it would not be rare or worth anything.
This failed as well, and the game sold in droves in Japan and the US, making it a fairly rare title to have due to its scarcity.


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#6 Supersellers
Billkwando discovers around this time that Dion had ripped off Shinichirou Mukaigashira,
the owner of Supersellers, for about $600.00 worth of Neo carts. In response,
Shinichiro-san discouraged everyone from dealing with Dion, outlining what a thief he was.
Some of the older guys on the scene might remember this memento that proves Dion's guilt:

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I know a man called Dion Dakis. The software of NeoGeo has been sold to him before.
However, since he has doubt which is carrying out the criminal act, he is taking care not to be concerned.
(The unjust copy, forgery, etc. of a product package) He has not yet paid the price of the goods purchased from me about 6 months before. (about $600!!)
It is very disreputable although his action is seen by news group or mailing list. (There are many grievances in goods transactions)
His transactions are not recommended.

Thanks.
Super Sellers Group Owner
Shinichirou Mukaigashira
order.ssg@anet.ne.jp
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#7 The Irritating Maze
Dion at this time had made his IM game for AES with which he claimed he had connections with SNK.
He claimed that SNK USA refused to sell his game for him and had even tried to have SNK of Japan to force them to have them sell his game.
He originally also tried to make SNK USA to give him an official Certificate saying that this was an Official SNK Product.

In an unprecedented move, Alica Barone(The President of SNK USA's Daughter) came down to Dion's club and stated in front of everyone that
SNK had NOT endorsed The IM project and Dion had no such claim to say as much putting Dion in his place.
Dion, being unable to dismiss he claims as a "jealous fan" instead of debating the issue, Banned her from his club for what she did.


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#8 Adol's Misadventure
Adol (I don't know which of the 2 brothers being referred here seeing as Adol is actually 2 different people) was at one time ripped off by Dion who sent him a
Converted Shock Troopers AES cart. When Adol received the game he had checked that back of the insert to find that Dion had written his name on the back
of the insert in black permanent marker. In a fit of justified anger Adol ripped the sticker off the cart and told Dion to set this fake shit correctly.
Upon Adol sending the cart to get his money back, Dion had claimed Adol should pay the $400.00 for the sticker he ruined.(Yes Dion was serious folks)
and in the end Adol got some rip-off compensation for about $100.00. I don't remember the full details but you can confer with Adol and ask him for a better explanation.

#9 Mike the Alias
Long time scene member Gui_Long, was ripped off by a Mike Zavala.
Mike sold Gui a Magical Drop 1 Jamma Board.
After he told Gui that he checked and found out he had received the money, he replied that he had received it that day and thus sent the board.
Still waiting to receive the pcb, after all these years. Mike never made good on either the pcb, or returned the money.

From many private emails during this time, several people felt that Mike was actually just a front "alias" used by Dion.
Either way, Mike is by his own admission a good friend of Dion's.
Scammers run in packs it seems.


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#10 Pre-Neoheaven Territory Scam.
Now at this time, many carts were priced based on rarity of their territory.
When newbies would look at HomeCart prices, they would typically request the cheaper language version.
As it's well known they play the same.

However, there were always a few, that didn't mind paying a little extra for exactly what they wanted.
These are the fellows this scam fed upon.

When someone would post on the DHP a "looking for" request, Dion would write them saying "I've got what u need".
As these carts are rare, & these newbies were already willing to pay higher than normal, often a deal would be quickly struck.
No problems, till the poor guy received his bootleg goods.

Expecting to receive a official rare SNK cart, What they in fact would receive, was the much more common language version, with a color copied insert, doctored to look like its rarer counterpart.
Receiving the more common version, that they could have gotten easily, & for allot less money.
Harder to catch, because the carts were official.
Several people started questioning openly why their games either came with no manual, (If they were lucky) the more common territory manual , or just a copied manual.
It was during this time, That Dions old school cheerleader, Chris Mullins wrote into his neoFAQ, that SNK often released Xerox copies of manuals , with official game sales.
Gee, I wonder why.


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#11 Dion tries to rip a Mouse. This Mickey's no pushover.
Long time scene member, & ng.com forum moderator Mouse_Master, had purchased two games from Dion being World Heroes 2 & Baseball Stars Pro to examine the quality of NGF's print jobs.
Of course one thing lead to another and Dion being the unprofessional jackass that he is.
Held MM's games from a dispute between Dion & Billkwando and as such started ignoring him that MM was forced on Oct 11, 2000 filed a fraud complaint with the IFCC and also with the US Postal Inspectors.

Two weeks later he hadn't heard any response from NGF on the deal they made in June of that year.
It was obvious that Dion would not respond even though they had been updating their website, bidding on auctions on Ebay,
posting to their Neo Geo list, and they have been in contact with Shawn about his Strikers 1945 Plus cartridge (and also Jeff Kurtz).

Another NGF BS scandal Finally in the end, The State Attorney's Office from Maryland called Dion at his home and forced and ultimatum to send Mouse_Master his goods or face criminal charges of Internet fraud.

#12 Billkwando's Blues...
Billkwando being new to the scene had struck a deal with Chris Ray. Originally at the time, Bill didn't know too much about Chris and as such didn't judge him because he was friends with Dion.
Originally Bill had an original Sengoku Cardboard box version which Chris had wanted. Bill agreed to swap the cardboard box version for a clamshell version of the same game and thus the deal was struck.
There was a lot of bullshit that went on between but Bill finally got his game from Chris. It was indeed a copy of Sengoku like he asked only the insert was fake and to make the insert fit properly inside the case,
Chris had cut the top of the insert paper with an exacto knife which actually cut some of the plastic on the top of the case.
Chris's excuse was that he didn't know Bill had wanted an original insert and tried to play it off as the 'corrected' ones he did were so much better.
Suffice to say Billkwando never dealt with Chris again for such an underhanded bullshit scheme.


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#13 Shawn Vs the NGF Strikers1945Plus

Originally Shawn had ordered around 8 AES carts from NGF, with Strikers, Ganryu, Pre-historic Isle 2, Neo Mr.Do, Bust-a-move Again, etc., which was an estimated $550.00 per cart.
As with NGF customer service it took awhile for the games to arrive. The only cart that had come in DOA was Strikers. Shawn understandably sent the Strikers to Jeff Kurtz to see what was wrong.
Upon Jeff Opening the board he found out that the conversion job that Chris had done to be the worst mess he had ever seen.

It should be noted that Chris Ray was trying to dump the game out of his hands by constantly telling Shawn that the NGF warranty was Void if anyone else tampered with the inside of the game.
These pictures illustrate the poor quality, just plain terrible work done on what NGF describes as one of their "Big" games.

Suffice to say Shawn did finally get compensated but as with all NGF scandals, He had to embarrass Chris Ray on the forum public to get his money back.

#14 The King of Crump 2000
This version was very limited, & was completely bought out by NGF.
It was made by SNK & shipped in good faith to them.

Then, upon receipt, they replaced the Insert & Manual cover. Printed with their URL Logo.

This was noticed in Mikhail's in-depth kof2kus report as anomalies he couldn't explain till now..
NGF then replaced all official Insert's, & manual covers with these high quality fakes.
Keeping the real one's for themselves.

Now you understand why they were so adamant, "Call SNK" Cause when you did, SNK said Yes. Not then knowing what NGF had done.
What they never expected, was that the gritty little facts would surface.


Of course NGF were constantly on the neo-geo.com forums ripping on people and telling them to call SNK of Japan and confirm this release.
They then proceeded to say how ashamed they were of people giving them hell over this when they were doing this for the fans.
It wasn't until much much later that the proof finally came out that indeed NGF did have the rights to the U.S. KoF2K.

How was this discovered? A kof2kus was bought, then shipped to SNK.
SNK confirmed that the game was theirs, but that the art was not what they had shipped.
This is sad, just plain sad. I've heard of greed, but never realized someone would be so mean to their loyal supporters.


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#15 I swear it was the Post Office's Fault!!
Back in the day when Gargoyle was new to the scene he bid on a copy of Ninja Masters that Dion was selling on ebay.
The Auction ended at $335.00 for the Ninja Masters. This was a standard, fair price at that time for an original Ninja Masters.
Upon receiving the game Garg found out that Dion had sent him a conversion with color copied insert & sticker.

No where in Dion's auction was this game stated as a conversion and as such Garg wanted to send the game back and get his money back for the fake game.
All he was got was a run around with Dion who kept trying to offer garg half of what he paid to send it back.


After posting his dilemma publicly, Dion agreed he would refund Garg's money. Garg sent the game immediately.
Dion claims he never got the game and would not refund until he got it.


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#16 The Slug keeps rolling on!
Dion Dakis is a master of knowing when games will come out. He has informed people numerous times that Metal Slug 3 would NEVER be released as an US AES game, EVER.

Even after it became common knowledge that it was going to be released via the NeoStore, he completely denied the existence of such a game.

Even up to one month after the release he continued to deny it's existence until......

Shock of shocks! What's this? Suddenly Dion puts the word out on an "offer" of his.

He'll buy your "inferior" MS3 AES off you!

The reason for this was so that he could "correct" them
(read: discard all original -packaging/documentation included with the games and replace them with "official" NGF versions).
Yea what a deal indeed. Send him your authentic, authorized SNK insert, & he'll send you a copy of one he made in it's place


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#17 Rare (Fake)Official carts direct from SNK Europe.
Before many fans knew about Dion's selling of fake inserts, He attempted to hype the value of his goods by telling people they were actually rare carts from foreign SNK distribution houses.

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There's a LOT more shit they've pulled but this is just an example of the two worst people ever that have literally shitted up one of my favorite hobbies.

~S N K

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dude... i read mira' sis' essay, but you don't have boobs

gimme the shorten version now plz