Super Fighter Team no longer publishing

[phart010 1,591]

Super Fighter team recently refunded me money for a preorder of the second run of Nightmare Busters. Wondering why, I went to their website and apparently they are no longer publishing, they are going to focus on developing only.

Dang. Now I need to pay scalpers for a copy of Nightmare Busters. I’ll probably just pass on getting that game at this point

Edited December 10, 2019 by phart010

[SoleGoose 87]

Crazy to hear since they haven't developed a game before, except Zaku (haven't looked at the history on that one in a while, could be wrong).

Eh, it looks like they might be talking about developing PC games. Strange departure from what they're known for.

Edit: looks like they removed all of their Genesis games too. Very odd.

[ALTQQ 87]

That's too bad, nightmare busters is a good tape.

[Scrobins 1,395]

Below is an email Brandon sent to customers who had pre-ordered Vixen 357 on the Genesis:

Greetings, dear customer.

We sincerely appreciate your pre-order purchase and appreciate your patience while we finished development, QC testing and product design. Your business, and your overall trust in our company to deliver a high quality product, truly means a great deal to us; to me, it is especially touching.

That being said, I'm afraid I must deliver some most unfortunate news: It pains me to announce that, due to the sudden and unavoidable loss of our manufacturing operations, we will be unable to complete the physical products which we promised to deliver before the end of 2019. Rest assured we will begin processing full refunds to everyone immediately. While I realize that you, and likely the vast majority of our pre-order customers, will be quite unsatisfied with a simple refund, preferring by far to receive the games we vowed to provide, I hope that you will accept our sincere and profound apology, understanding that this situation was absolutely beyond our control, leaving us with no alternatives.

When I founded Super Fighter Team in 2004, I made a promise to myself: If our company ever missed a product's officially announced release date, we will have failed as a publisher, shattering our customers' trust, and thus become unworthy to fulfill our obligations. For fifteen wonderful years in the business, we had never once missed a promised release date. However, as the old saying goes, "All good things must come to an end." Owing to our shameful inability to fulfill our duties this time, as a man of my word I must keep my promise. To this end, as of November 1st, 2019, Super Fighter Team has officially closed the publishing arm of our company. Our legacy as a reliable publisher has been forever tainted; we would not be able to continue knowing we let our customers down on this occasion.

While we intend to continue our efforts to develop high-quality game software, the production and publishing rights to any future commercial titles will be licensed or sold outright to other firms.

In closing, I would like to restate how much we appreciate your interest in, and support of our products. Many of you were dedicated to supporting us from our founding date, ordering most if not all of the games we released over the years. To those of you who own our past products, we truly hope you enjoyed them to the fullest. Throughout the years, my time at Super Fighter Team has given me the fantastic opportunity to connect with, and personally meet, many wonderful people from all over the world, creating fond memories that I cherish and will never forget. That, to me, was always more important than any sales figures.

Please find a way to forgive us, and me, even if this unfortunate incident has caused you to lose all faith in our company. It wasn't supposed to turn out like this. But, sadly, the world we live in is far from perfect. And as an old friend once told me, years ago, "Everyone will disappoint you eventually." I just hoped it would never be us.

Sincerely,

- Brandon Cobb
President and Founder
Super Fighter Team

www.superfighter.com

[sp1nz 471]

Damn.

I own many Super Fighter Team products and was thinking about getting the licensed Vixen 357 eventually.

All the best on their dev efforts in any case.

[Crazy Climber 150]

On 11/3/2019 at 11:25 AM, SoleGoose said:

Crazy to hear since they haven't developed a game before, except Zaku (haven't looked at the history on that one in a while, could be wrong).

Eh, it looks like they might be talking about developing PC games. Strange departure from what they're known for.

Edit: looks like they removed all of their Genesis games too. Very odd.

Yeah, I think they've developed a few PC games on their own IIRC

[Crazy Climber 150]

10 hours ago, Scrobins said:

 

When I founded Super Fighter Team in 2004, I made a promise to myself: If our company ever missed a product's officially announced release date, we will have failed as a publisher, shattering our customers' trust, and thus become unworthy to fulfill our obligations. For fifteen wonderful years in the business, we had never once missed a promised release date. However, as the old saying goes, "All good things must come to an end." Owing to our shameful inability to fulfill our duties this time, as a man of my word I must keep my promise. To this end, as of November 1st, 2019, Super Fighter Team has officially closed the publishing arm of our company. Our legacy as a reliable publisher has been forever tainted; we would not be able to continue knowing we let our customers down on this occasion.



www.superfighter.com

seems a bit dramatic...

[thesubcon3 18]

So I know for a fact that Eli aka Piko Interactive bought a lot of the Super Fighter Team IPs (I was a guest at his store opening and he mentioned it to me but I didn’t ask which games)... I’m not sure exactly what he has but I could ask him as he is definitely still creating physical games of ones he owns...

[Tanooki 4,581]

If he's welcome back here I think he could explain it probably best if it would fill in some of the holes with that story of the shutdown and things that went on in that respect.

[pich 5]

Hey Guys,

I hope I am welcomed here. So to give a little insight, we do own several SFT games we bought out over the years.

Here is the list:

Water Margin - The Tale of Clouds and Wind
Generals of the Yang Family 
Brave Battle Saga - The Legend of the Magic Warrior
Canon - Legends of the New Gods
Ya-Se Chuan Shuo
Shui hu zhuan
Conquering the World III
Thunderbolt  II
Thunderbolt  
Squirrel King
Super Magician
Magic Girl
"Shuihuzhuan: Liangshan Yingxiong
Heroes of the Marsh"
Xi You Ji/ Journey to the West
African Adventures
African Adventures 2
Crazy Bowling
Little Geniuses, Go!
Panda, Go!
Volleyball Hominid
Xiang Yu: The Overlord of Western Chu
Battle of the Red Cliffs
Mermaids of Atlantis: The Riddle of the Magic Bubble
Sheng Huo Lie Zhuan
Devilish Mahjong Tower
Taiwan Tycoon
World Pro Baseball
A Q Renkan Awa
Sonic Dragon

There were other 5 titles but we sold those to another company which were:

Smart Mouse
Earth Defense
Tom Clown
Funny Boy and Balloon World
Mallet Legend.

 

[supergamboy 47]

So among those, Magic Girl is the only one that I recognize as a title SFT had previously released (though certainly they must have owned the rights to several other games that they hadn't yet done anything with).  So for Genesis titles that leaves the following unaccounted for:

- Beggar Prince
- Cascade
- Legend of Wukong
- Star Odyssey
- Vixen 357 (never released/now scrapped)

I saw on Sega-16 that you'd reached out to Brandon about Vixen 357, and I imagine these other titles for which SFT is best-known.  Good luck!

Edited November 5, 2019 by supergamboy

[pich 5]

Actually I forgot to add Beggar prince and Legend of Wukong, we just got those two like a few months ago.

No dice on Vixen tho.

[fcgamer 3,940]

I know all those titles, I have original first prints of basically every single one. With these I always felt the same as i did towards the Greg pabich cheetahmen rerelease, better to let sleeping dogs lie, as I personally have zero interest in the reprints of these. But that's just my personal opinion, and I wish no ill will towards anyone doing reprints.

About squirrel king, although I guess @pich owns the rights to the name and code, considering it's a literal clone of Rescue Rangers 2, no way it could ever legally get reprinted in the USA without undergoing drastic alterations.

[pich 5]

Just now, fcgamer said:

 

About squirrel king, although I guess @pich owns the rights to the name and code, considering it's a literal clone of Rescue Rangers 2, no way it could ever legally get reprinted in the USA without undergoing drastic alterations.

Yes definitely needs to be retouched before going out.

Beggar Prince and Legend of Wukong had very small print runs tho, some people may be interested in those.

[fcgamer 3,940]

1 minute ago, pich said:

Yes definitely needs to be retouched before going out.

Beggar Prince and Legend of Wukong had very small print runs tho, some people may be interested in those.

You mean super team fighter print runs? In Taiwan, Ive seen both those games numerous times compared to some of the other titles on the list. 

[pich 5]

Just now, fcgamer said:

You mean super team fighter print runs? In Taiwan, Ive seen both those games numerous times compared to some of the other titles on the list. 

Yes English Versions.

[thesubcon3 18]

For me I’m most interested in the aftermarket releases where either it is now in English or if someone like Piko has finished the game.
 

I typically don’t care for 1 for 1 releases but something that adds to the overall gaming experience. To me a first print release in an unfamiliar language isn’t of interest to me as I can’t play it. 

[pich 5]

There some pretty good stuff like Journey to the West Beat'em up. It is an great DOS game, which has full source and assets, and it would be incredible on Genesis. Some awesome RPGs etc.