JAPAN SECRET UNDERGROUND ROM CLUB MEMBER #1
Way back in January of 2002, while I was doing some of my late night internet searching, I stumbled upon a Japan geocities web page. The page was mostly an FAQ or a "how to" on the NeoRageX emulator. It was all in Japanese and at the time, there were not any translator applications available. However, a picture is worth a thousand words, and long story short, the web page used several screen capture images throughout the descriptions which were used to depict what was being discussed in greater detail.

As I continued to look around, I soon realized that the game images being shown were screen shot captures taken with the NeoRageX emulator program. They were in essence emulated screen shots of NEOGEO games. But not just ANY NEOGEO games mind you, no, many of them were of UNRELEASED NEOGEO games. (protos)

This was extremely significant for TWO main reasons. Firstly, finding ANY screen shots of ANY unreleased NEOGEO games was extremely rare and hard to find back then. Very few magazines covered the NEOGEO and most that did were in Japan and none of them had been scanned and archived yet at this time. (not to mention that since they were emulated pics, the quality was the best that had ever been found or seen). Secondly, the fact that they were emulated by definition meant that they had been dumped. (the rom data for the games had been found, retrieved, and saved by someone).

In addition to never before seen emulated screen shots of Last Odyssey, Warlocks, Ironclad, and Ghostlop, there was a screen capture image of the GAME MENU LIST from the NeoRageX emulator. And this list contained the names of many other unreleased games, as well as never before heard of game titles as well. It was indeed an incredible discovery for all of these reasons and more.

WHO WAS UKICHI?
Ukichi was the FIRST source ever found that had 100% confirmed NEOGEO proto games. More importantly, they were also confirmed to be "safeguarded" because the rom data had been copied and saved onto a computer and was confirmed working in an emulator. What we did not yet realize at the time, was that this source would later come to be known as a member of the "Japan secret underground rom club". A club whose membership required the contribution of an as of yet undiscovered and/or undumped NEOGEO rom, which upon joining would result in the member subsequently gaining access to all of the previously contributed rom data files, conditionally given only after a swarn promise of absolute confidentiality and non disclosure agreement. Yeah, it's like that.

SECRET ROM CLUBS...SERIOUSLY?
Think I'm exagerrating? Don't believe they exist? Here's proof of one:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3anja/labyrinthe-japanese-game-discovered-on-private-forum

Yeah, it's like that.