Original Post

Well, some topics seem to get off ‘topic’ lately, and get into a discussion of repros and the process…what we are doing next ect.

I thought it might be a good idea to post stuff on this thread..organize it a bit.

Maybe make other threads that deal with cart shells or if we have a viable connector ect.

Now…where are we atm with reproductions

Well let’s see

I’m planning on sending out the free carts still. Need to get the labels..I’m going to send out 70 carts it looks like.

People that get a free cart can order the packaging at tusks website. The packaging has a small hold up on the hint-book. We’re not sure how much it will cost yet..depends on how many pages the instructions and hintbook has…Poster looks really sweet..morintari did the artwork for the poster and hintbook ect..

For people that want to buy one CIB…we will offer a few CIB (25?) (should the labels be the same?) Funny thing happened. After I released the rom..I stopped getting emails about copy-write stuff.

Blox will be released soonish..we’re going to do a small release at first (25) to make sure there is interest. Blox 2 isn’t going to be done yet..small issue with the save function.

Fastball: remastered still looks like it’s a go. Most of thunderstrucks changes that he has planned has been coded..But the job of coding 50 + levels might take a bit.

We’re going to do a small resupply of the boundhigh/space pinball carts in tusks store (25 of each). This will be the last resupply planned for a bit..so we can get other games done. So, if you haven’t gotten one..order them now (will be a few weeks til we get the new carts in)

After that..nothings been decided.

If we do an english version of gundam..prices will be higher. Richard has to make it have sram..so production costs on his side will be higher. I can prob get the batteries pretty cheap on my side..and install them in the USA.

Other ideas…english version of space squash (if it gets fully translated). I think this is a much better game (fun) to play then gundam. But, you really NEED the translation of gundam to play it..while space squash you can just pick up and play. So, not sure on which one I’d like done first…but I’d like both done.

Homebrews ? Should we split the more ‘commercial’ releases with homebrew releases ? I guess we’ll have to see how well blox does.

Fishbones…

gamehero…

Soviet Union collection…maybe horvat can combine his roms into one ‘collection’..if he wants to..we can do a release with that…

Virtual Chris came out with a bunch of games..maybe a collection ? have to see the interest

Anyway..just wanted to update people on where we are at.

Also, 3 kinda small points I want to make..might seem small..but I want to get it out there before any potential problems happen…

1st. My thoughts might not be Tusk’s or Mindstorm’s…so if I posts my thoughts here..please don’t take it as their thoughts 🙂 Just cuz I say something here..doesn’t make it ‘official’ stuff.

2nd. You can post want you want to see done..but even if we get 20 posts saying ‘we want gundam’..don’t be upset if squash or something else is done first. Maybe we can get to the point that we have a vote on which game comes out next…but we aren’t there yet. We might not have the chips for a certain game..or the manual might not be done ect.

3rd. If I talk about games about to come out..or plans for future games..doesn’t mean we’re doing pre-order’s 🙂 It would be helpful to know how many people are wanting to buy a game..but I don’t think we’ll be taking money ahead of time yet. That first bound high thing was a bit of a mess. Tusk had the packaging..then all of a sudden we could do CIB’s..but people didn’t seem to understand the time it took to get the connectors send them off to mindstorm..get them back..put the carts together ect. If we do any type of pre-ordering thingy..I think Tusk will post on another thread or something.

-Bigmak

245 Replies

maybe a mario kart will be great i will love to see that coming

I think a demo card would be great. Just ine xard containing the hunter demo, virtual racer, mario kart and so on. I don’t know if this is technical possible though.

If you remember my demo with GameHero and Fishbone joined, it is possible, but Benjamin Stevens said that didn’t run correctly on hardware and I didn’t bother to look into the issue. You might need a bigger flash memory chip for this, or special hardware in the cartridge altogether to avoid the problems that come with ROM hacking.

But why would you want unfinished demos? If there’s going to be a multicart at all, it should have finished games on it.

Thank you BigMak for your public praise.

Thanks for keeping us informed Bigmak. It’s greatly appreciated! I know that whatever you guys put together will be amazing and I for one look forward to the next release you guys put together!

Thanks for the update.

I like the idea of English patched Space Squash and Gundam repros. I do see Gundam as a higher priority both because it has a full English patch,and is far less playable without knowing the language than Space Squash is.

HorvatM wrote:
If you remember my demo with GameHero and Fishbone joined, it is possible, but Benjamin Stevens said that didn’t run correctly on hardware and I didn’t bother to look into the issue. You might need a bigger flash memory chip for this, or special hardware in the cartridge altogether to avoid the problems that come with ROM hacking.

But why would you want unfinished demos? If there’s going to be a multicart at all, it should have finished games on it.

Of course I remember your demo but I wasn’t sure if you solved the running-on-hardware issue. I think some of the demos (especially VB racing and hunter) are outstanding great work that show what the VB would have been capable of. I really would like to see them make a full game. However, having a card I could plug in once in a while to play though all of these great demos would be cool as well.

There are other games I would like to see on card first though. I would be cool to have the translated Jap games. I also would like to see some of the Homebrews released. SU double cards sounds great. Or maybe Fishbone (cough)…

I would like to see space squash get a English release. Never really got on with SD Gundam, but im not dead against it getting a release.

Im definately up for fishbones though!

Thanks, bigmak, for keeping us informed. And one more resounding thanks to UncleTusker, MineStorm, Benjamin Stevens, thunderstruck, KR155E, and everyone else who’s helping to make these a reality – I’m really psyched to add some “new” games to the collection soon!

i don’t know if this is even worth suggesting, but i’ve always wanted a reproduction of wario land that used a battery cage. i guess it wouldn’t be that difficult for someone to just alter the official cart to support a cage? i’m not experienced at all with soldering which is why i’ve hoped for some type of reproduction.

I’m all for Gundam Because I can’t play it otherwise. That and, while space squash is super fun, I don’t need to read it to play it. That and Gundam costs a minimum of $400, whereas a repro would be far less.

wish we could get Dragon hopper, or Zero Racers. there are no more Unreleased games out there that we have access to, right? Do we have access to the US Version of Insmouth Mansion?

Fishbone or a Multi Cart. A Multi Cart full of various homebrews would be great.

ectoglow wrote:

wish we could get Dragon hopper, or Zero Racers. there are no more Unreleased games out there that we have access to, right? Do we have access to the US Version of Insmouth Mansion?

Here is a list of VB games, which are all possibly out there somewhere in some completed state, but which are still not available to everyone:

1. Dragon Hopper
2. Mansion of Insmouse (North American Version)
3. Polygo Block
4. Virtual Block
5. Virtual Bomberman
6. Virtual Double Yakuman
7. Virtual Jockey
8. Zero Racers

Benjamin Stevens wrote:

Here is a list of VB games, which are all possibly out there somewhere in some completed state, but which are still not available to everyone:

1. Dragon Hopper
2. Mansion of Insmouse (North American Version)
3. Polygo Block
4. Virtual Block
5. Virtual Bomberman
6. Virtual Double Yakuman
7. Virtual Jockey
8. Zero Racers

North American Virtual Fishing that THQ localized may be out there as well.

Technically, any single game on the unreleased game list could be out there somewhere in some form (other than the ones for which we have heard from those who worked on the games that almost no coding at all was done for the games), but the games I mentioned stand above all the rest, since each game has good documented evidence that it was very much completed, such as a gaming magazine review of the game or an official flyer that was made and distributed for the game (remember, Faceball was only largely known by a flyer for a long time, and now we have it, so such could very well happen with any of the other “flyer games”) or evidence of a long period of development work done on the game, etc. Once I get done observing all the data in my Famitsu magazines, I hope to add some more games to the list that are very likely to be out there based on the documented evidence, and of course, I still hope to acquire more gaming data to expand the knowledge of this area as well, since I’m obsessed with such.

*EDIT:
Wait a minute, what all evidence exists for the fact that a prototype cart exists for the North American version of Virtual Fishing? I haven’t come across much, but if there is good evidence for it, then I’ll add it to my list.

*EDIT:
Wait a minute, what all evidence exists for the fact that a prototype cart exists for the North American version of Virtual Fishing? I haven’t come across much, but if there is good evidence for it, then I’ll add it to my list.

For some reason I thought THQ had a demo out if at either Winter CES 1996 or the first E3. Does anyone else have any info on this one?

Added in edit: Nintendo Power previewed it. One would think if it got that far they at least had started translating it.

http://www.planetvb.com/content/articles/scans/nintendo_power_usa/80_%2801_96%29/nintendo_power_usa_80_%2801_96%29_6.jpg

Yeah, the fact that Nintendo Power said they got an early version of the game and showed clear screenshots of it, which they likely created themselves by putting the cartridge in their Video Boy and then creating screen captures, sure is good enough evidence for me.

Okay, Virtual Fishing (North American Version) gets added to the list:

1. Dragon Hopper
2. Mansion of Insmouse (North American Version)
3. Polygo Block
4. Virtual Block
5. Virtual Bomberman
6. Virtual Double Yakuman
7. Virtual Fishing (North American Version)
8. Virtual Jockey
9. Zero Racers

Y’know reading the text in the magazine article with Virtual fishing, it doesn’t mention anywhere its a NA version, in fact it says:

‘recently they netted a rare Japanese specimen called Virtual Fishing for the Virtual Boy’

So as I see it an NA version isn’t out there.

Hedgetrimmer wrote:
Y’know reading the text in the magazine article with Virtual fishing, it doesn’t mention anywhere its a NA version, in fact it says:

‘recently they netted a rare Japanese specimen called Virtual Fishing for the Virtual Boy’

So as I see it an NA version isn’t out there.

I think they were simply trying to make a fishing pun while noting that THQ licensed (but did not develop) it.

Some important things to note are that the Japanese version of Virtual Fishing was released in Japan on October 6, 1995. The Virtual Fishing article that appears in January 1996’s issue of Nintendo Power was likely written no earlier than sometime in November of 1995, so that it could be published and sent to Nintendo Power subscribers sometime in December of 1995 (Nintendo Power subscribers were used to getting the latest issue a month early). Thus, this article should have been written after Virtual Fishing had already been fully finished and released for a month in Japan, and yet the writers had an unfinished copy that was sent to them and which they were writing about, while connecting it to THQ, who should have been the ones to release it in North America. This is very strong evidence of the fact that they were looking at THQ’s North American version of the game, because if they were simply looking at the Japanese version, it should have been completely finished by that time. This also seems to indicate that THQ was going to do more with the game than simply translate the Japanese text into English, because surely that would have been easy to do if they had received the original source code from Pack-in-Video Co. Ltd., and there would have still been a fully finished game with, perhaps, missing or Japanese text. It seems, however, that THQ was either making very significant changes or else remaking the game from the ground up.

Some good investigation work there Ben, seems logical with those time lines.
I wonder what the significant changes could be, maybe fish more known to the west?

 

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