Waku Waku 7 on Neo Geo AES: The Number Is Not a Sequel, and There Never Was One

The number in the title has fooled people for thirty years. Waku Waku 7 is not the seventh of anything: Sunsoft’s cartoon fighting game reached arcades on 21 November 1996 and came home on 27 December 1996 as a Neo Geo AES cartridge, product code NGH-225, at 29,800円 before tax, under the Japanese title わくわく7. The English Wikipedia article is blunt about the number: “The ‘7’ in the title refers to the seven playable characters rather than indicating a sequel.”

It never got one, either. There is no Waku Waku 8, no remake, no revival. There is also no American cartridge: SNK published the arcade version in North America, but the home releases stayed in Japan — the Neo Geo AES cartridge, then a Sega Saturn port that needs a RAM cartridge to run, and a Neo Geo CD version that was cancelled before release. This guide covers what the cartridge is, why the home versions never left Japan, and how to find it — with the code at one shop and the hiragana title at the other.

• Japanese title: わくわく7 (Waku Waku Seven), developed and published by Sunsoft (サン電子 / サンソフト)
• Neo Geo AES (home cartridge): 27 December 1996 · product code NGH-225 · 29,800円 before tax, as recorded by the Media Arts Database
• Arcade (Neo Geo MVS): 21 November 1996 · board number NGM-225
• Japan only at home: the Neo Geo Master List records a Japanese AES release and no English AES release; the Saturn port was Japan-exclusive too
• Sega Saturn, 20 June 1997: two editions — bundled with the 1 MB RAM cartridge at 7,800円 before tax, or on its own at 5,800円. The game needs that cartridge either way
• Search in hiragana: わくわく7 finds it; the katakana spelling ワクワク7 does not on Buyee. Kataban’s catalog takes either spelling (rechecked 13 October 2026)

What is Waku Waku 7, and what does the “7” mean?

It is a big, loud, cartoon-shaped one-on-one fighter, and the roster is the joke: the English Wikipedia article says the game “features nine characters with significantly different playstyles, each parodying well-known characters from other games”, while the development section explains that the 7 counts “the seven playable characters”. Everyone has a Harahara move — a charged super that cannot be blocked or easily dodged, but that an opponent can interrupt while it is winding up. Characters get launched through the screen and can be hit while they are down.

It was Sunsoft’s third fighting game, after a Super Famicom title in 1994 and an arcade release in 1995, and it is the one people remember. AllGame praised “the graphical presentation as among the best on Neo Geo”. Much later, reviewing the modern re-release, Complex ranked it the twelfth best SNK fighting game, calling it “a trip” with “tight gameplay, super cheery graphics, and hilarious super moves”.

Why is there no American cartridge?

Because the home versions never left Japan. The Neo Geo Master List records the Japanese AES release as 27 December 1996 and leaves both the English AES column and the CD column empty. Wikipedia’s infobox lists the publishers as “Sunsoft (JP), SNK (NA)” — that is the arcade game, which SNK distributed in North America. The cartridge you could take home was Japanese.

The disc versions that might have widened its reach did not happen either. Wikipedia records that “A Neo Geo CD version was planned but canceled due to the system’s poor market performance”, and that the game “was subsequently ported to the Sega Saturn exclusively in Japan”, where it “requires the Saturn’s 1 MB RAM expansion cartridge”. Sunsoft sold that Saturn version two ways on the same day, 20 June 1997: bundled with the RAM cartridge for 7,800円 before tax, or by itself for 5,800円 if you already had one.

So for most of the world, this was an arcade game for twenty years, and the ways to own it at home were all in Japanese.

Why was there never a sequel?

The title already looks like a sequel, which may be part of why nobody made one. Sunsoft moved away from fighting games after it, and the series stops at one entry: there is no second Waku Waku game on any platform.

What the game got instead was a steady stream of re-releases. In 2008 the Neo Geo version was included in Sunsoft’s Sunsoft Collection for PlayStation 2, although “licensing issues prevented inclusion of the Saturn version’s soundtrack”. The AES version reached the Japanese Wii Virtual Console on 27 April 2010 at 900 Wii Points. Hamster brought it back in the ACA NeoGeo line for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and Windows; the Media Arts Database dates the Switch release to 3 March 2017 at 823円 including tax. Those re-releases are how the game finally got an English-language audience — the Switch version holds 76.25% on GameRankings.

Which release is the Japanese cartridge, and what is its code?

Neo Geo releases carry two numbers with the same digits: NGM- for the MVS arcade board and NGH- for the AES home cartridge. Here they are NGM-225 and NGH-225. Kataban’s catalog tracks the Japanese cartridge, row M759428 in the Agency for Cultural Affairs Media Arts Database: released 27 December 1996, published by サン電子 (Sun Corporation, trading as Sunsoft), 29,800円 before tax, and a size of 259 Megs — the figure both the Master List and the database record.

That row has no product code of its own. We added NGH-225 to the catalog on 16 September 2026 from the Master List and from a Suruga-ya code search that returns this game and nothing else — which, as the next section shows, is unusual for these Neo Geo codes.

The Saturn release is catalogued twice in the Media Arts Database, once for each edition, and the two rows are identical in every field Kataban compares, so the catalog shows them as a single card. That is why a search for the title returns three results and not four.

Where can you buy the Japanese cartridge today?

Suruga-ya: the code works. On 16 September 2026, NGH-225 returned exactly one listing in the default view — わくわく7(ROMカセット) — and with sold-out items shown it gave results: 14. Breakdown of that sold-out view on 16 September 2026: 10 this game, the others other Neo Geo titles. Searching the title わくわく7 instead showed results by default: 7 (this game: 6, across its formats), and with sold-out items shown: 41.

Buyee: the code fails, so use the hiragana title. NGH-225 returned nothing at all. The title with the platform name, わくわく7 ネオジオ, showed results: 6 (Neo Geo cartridge: 1). On 16 September 2026 the others were an arcade flyer, two PlayStation 2 Sunsoft compilations, a Saturn copy with its RAM cartridge and a guidebook. The bare title わくわく7 showed results: 3,028, because わくわく is a common word in Japanese shop names — on 16 September 2026 the first pages were glass beads and children’s books, with Saturn copies mixed in and no Neo Geo cartridge at all.

Do not use the katakana spelling. ワクワク7 showed results on Buyee: 2,743, and on 16 September 2026 not one of them was this game — golf club heads, mostly. The game is written in hiragana, and Japanese shop searches take that literally.

Read the format before you pay. ロムカセット or ROM is the AES cartridge; 拡張RAM or 拡張ラムカートリッジ marks the Saturn bundle; 基板 is an arcade board; 体験版 is a demo; 説明書のみ is a manual on its own. Prices are a snapshot of 16 September 2026, not a going rate.

Why search Kataban for this one?

Because it forgives the spelling that the shops do not. Checked in a desktop browser on 16 September 2026, わくわく7 returns three results — the AES cartridge, the Saturn version and the Wii Virtual Console release — and Waku Waku 7 returns the same three. The katakana ワクワク7 now returns the same three as well: since 13 October 2026, when a search finds nothing, the catalog tries again with hiragana and katakana treated as the same (rechecked 13 October 2026). At the shops it still finds nothing. NGH-225 returns one: the 1996 cartridge, with its code, its date and the kana to look under on a Japanese shelf (ワ).

Waku Waku 7 · わくわく7 · Neo Geo AES, 27 December 1996 (NGH-225) · Sunsoft (サン電子)

Where to buy: Suruga-ya.jp — code (NGH-225) · Buyee — title (わくわく7 ネオジオ)
See the three releases on Kataban →

A fighting game named after its own roster size, sold at home only in Japan, ported once to a console that needed extra memory to run it, and never continued. The re-releases have made it easy to play. The 1996 cartridge is still the thing itself, and the number to look for is NGH-225.