NBC Master Guide notes

Detailed research notes. Quoted source text may be machine-translated.

Notes on the AW-NET pages of the NeoGeo Battle Coliseum Master Guide (Enterbrain, September 2005). Only the service information is translated, not the whole book.

Registration and account access — printed 004, scan leaf 5

Buy an AW card from the arcade's vending machine or staff; play NeoGeo Battle Coliseum using the card; access AW-NET through a supported mobile phone; register using the USER ACCESS CODE printed on the card's reverse. The fee is ¥315 per month, tax included. Initial registration requires a mobile phone; registered users can subsequently use the PC site at http://www.awnet.jp/.

The carrier menu diagram gives these contemporary routes:

• i-mode: iMenu → Menu List → Games → Games 2 → Arcade linkage → AW-NET. FOMA users omit Games 2.
• EZweb: Category → Games → General → AW-NET; alternatively Images/Characters → TV/Games → AW-NET.
• Vodafone live!: Menu List → Mobile games → Game-machine linkage → AW-NET.

The page reproduces three NeoGeo Battle Coliseum card designs and a mobile character-usage screen, not a registration form. The book does not recover carrier authentication, billing confirmation, successful enrollment or an entire mobile signup sequence.

PC website channels — printed 004–007

The interface uses CH channel labels: Game Introduction, Game System, My Data, Rankings, Data, Events, Shop, and Venues. My Data, Data and Shop are marked members-only. The footnote limits nonmember ranking access to the top ten in cumulative versus wins.

The site also has Flash Fight Broadcast footage, including the opening movie and boss-fight clips. Douglas Sheppard presents comments. The printed page calls for Macromedia Flash Player. This is web video presentation; it does not establish remote human fighting in NeoGeo Battle Coliseum. Illustrated channel guides also appear as background-stage reporters. They are not extra shop fighters.

My Data lets users set a player name of up to eight half-width letters, numbers or symbols, a three-character CPU-ranking name, an owned title, their prefecture, and purchased character options. A special awarded title cannot be replaced through the ordinary title-setting control. The ranking-name field excludes several printed symbols; retain the original glyphs for exact reconstruction rather than normalizing the yen/backslash glyph without further checking.

Records include cumulative versus wins, win streak, Double Assault hits, intrusions, CPU wins and CPU clears, with current rank and the amount needed to reach the next rank. They update when the AW card is used. The per-character purchase-completion display reaches 100% for eight purchased colours plus four purchased victory messages; default colours are separate.

Shared AW points — printed 005

These are shared AW points, not Fighting Level experience. The guide does not establish that only one of these awards applies to a session.

Fighting Level experience — printed 005

CPU battle win +1; CPU clear +100; versus win +10; versus perfect win +10; versus defeat +10. The note says the awards are cumulative.

For the winner, let the level difference be the loser's level minus the winner's level. Multiply the total awarded experience by 1/10 for a difference below −5, by 1 for a difference from −5 through 10, or by 1/2 for a difference above 10; then multiply by the loser's Fighting Level. Treat a loser level above 100 as 100. If the resulting award is zero, award ten experience instead. The page prints level requirements through level 19, then an ellipsis; it is not a complete maximum-level table.

Rankings and earned rewards — printed 006

Nine ranking views: cumulative versus wins; regional versus wins; versus streak; monthly versus wins; Fighting Level; successful versus Double Assault hit count; versus intrusion count; CPU wins; CPU story-clear count. Rankings are periodically aggregated.

The month-end top ten in monthly versus wins receive special titles and Evidence of a bully., translated here as Proof of Prowess, an effect that makes the fighter's body glow:

Data CH displays national character-use percentages and prefectural player share/distribution. These are aggregate community statistics, distinct from an individual's records.

Events CH describes a card-only competition over accumulated fight money. Payout accounts for the opponent's level difference. A Double Up option wagers half the player's health for double money. Winners receive AW points. Fight money, health wagers, Fighting Level experience and shared AW points are separate concepts.

Shop prices and controls — printed 007; selection confirmed on printed 010

Four default colours use A/B/C/D. Eight purchased colours use E+A/B/C/D and Start+A/B/C/D. Hold E plus the corresponding A–D button during the music immediately before the victory-message screen to select a purchased message. These are selectable text messages; the printed VOICE catalog does not mean downloadable phone audio.

Athena and Mars People appear merely by inserting an AW card, and also become available without a card through time release. They are distinct from the three paid bosses. Purchased bosses appear outside the ordinary character-select frame. The book states that the three bosses are added to the AW-NET shop through time release; it does not date each rollout here. The core roster is 34 default fighters + two card/time-release fighters + three shop fighters.

The shop table prints 34 purchasable title examples, explicitly stating that others exist. It is not a complete lifetime catalog. English glosses are descriptive, not claimed official localizations.

Palette reference — printed 018–056

Each has four default and eight AW-NET palette examples: 312 purchased palette examples, plus 156 default examples. Structured palette reference links each fighter/control to its original plate. Applying the printed shop’s lower-right special-colour price to Start+D across the plates is a layout inference; it is not 312 independently printed price statements.

Victory-message reference — printed 176 onward

The catalog separates battle voices from victory text and ordinary button-selected messages from the E+A–D messages that require AW-NET purchase. Opponent-specific victory messages require defeating the named fighter last. The book's large voice/text section includes CPU characters and is not a list of additional purchased fighters.

The 39 selectable fighters each have four paid E+A–D text slots, giving 156 purchasable message slots. CPU True Shishioh and Goodman do not add that four-slot purchase structure. Complete dialogue remains in the unchanged Japanese originals; selected service labels and explanatory English notes are provided separately.

The complete original PDF is preserved with original OCR and page maps.

Images and limits

They include printed PC/mobile interface screenshots and palette references, not recovered standalone AW-NET image assets. Complete billing/signup screenshots, server code, phone wallpaper/ringtone files, and the complete evolving shop catalog remain missing.

The original native message comparison now supplies all156 paid messages for39 fighters from leaves177–187, with separate English research translations. Matching Japanese cartridge entries verify shared glyph readings. The English resource contains dummy placeholders in those positions; this is not evidence about other cartridge builds or overseas subscriptions. Small printed/native differences and editorial whitespace remain labelled.

The original NeoGeo Battle Coliseum title-name gallery preserves64 aligned CP932 literals with separate English glosses: ten month-end top-ten awards,34 priced printed examples, twelve hollow-star titles and eight additional unstarred titles. Acquisition rules for the latter twenty remain unresolved. The shared pointer array continues into card/error messages; it does not independently establish a64-entry runtime title enumeration or complete lifetime catalogue. Original web IDs, exact dated availability and phone-reward binaries remain unrecovered.

A priority path returns indices1–10 from single set bits among the lower15 flags; the returned names match the ten printed monthly ranking awards. The fallback checks a selected byte against an availability bit. These are client-side observations, not recovered server grant rules. A comparison with65 does not enforce a65-title limit in the examined guard; the complete catalogue and acquisition rules for twenty additional names remain unproven. Four more encrypted/decrypted code-excerpt pairs and a selected instruction listing preserve the evidence.