GOAT Store Publishing

I guess it's the very end of the year -- we're within two hours of midnight as I start typing this -- so I thought I'd write up a quick reflection on what happened this year.

Before starting, I'd just like to point out that no, I'm not a loser. I'm a father of a not-quite-two-year-old who has been up way too late lately, so we're trying to get him back on schedule, and hanging out at home tonight instead of doing anything crazy. I'm also currently the husband of a wife with a nasty cold, so... the option is doing something that I find entertaining like writing a GSP update, watching Dick Clark do whatever it is that he does now, or just going to sleep.

So anyway, what did this year hold for GSP? It was actually a pretty big one in many ways!

The thing that dominated the year was the production and release of Atari Jaguar Skunkboards. The Rev 3 run that was due in early March had major supply issues with the chips, and so we ended up doing a LOT more work to produce them than we had initially expected, and we didn't release the first batch until nearly 10 months after they were due.

The delay wasn't all bad though, as the issues obtaining chips allowed us to get a second set of the now practically impossible to find parts and allowed us to manufacture a second run of Skunkboard Rev 3 boards. We named them "Ghosts" because they aren't supposed to exist, and decided to make the board color on them white. So far, so good with them, and we haven't yet sold out of them. At this point, there are well over 400 Skunkboards (including Rev 1 and 2) in production, really making this an extremely useful tool for Jaguar programmers and fans!

We also announced that we jointly with Beta Phase Games obtained the rights to two Jaguar titles. As of this moment, we haven't announced anything beyond that, but we are working diligently behind the scenes toward something you can be sure, and we're pretty excited about it!

Speaking of behind the scenes stuff, things have not been quiet on the Dreamcast front either. Although we have nothing to announce right now, we have signed and worked with multiple groups on Dreamcast projects for the future. There are no guarantees on anything, of course, but we expect that the future could hold some more really cool Dreamcast stuff from the company that figured out how to legally release titles for the Dreamcast in the first place.

Beyond that, the GOAT Store itself has expanded and expanded. I'm currently adding a whole ton of import retro games for the Famicom and Super Famicom, something that we hope gamers will appreciate finally being able to get some of the great unreleased NES and SNES titles for their collections -- either to complete them (stuff like Final Fantasy III for the Famicom) or to actually play them (stuff like Kid Dracula for the Famicom, and awesome Castlevania spin off from Konami).

Who knows what 2012 will bring? Well, we have some ideas, and I hope you stay tuned in to find out exactly what comes of it!