Marushō Super Famicom Magazine: December 8, 1995 – No. 20 (マル勝スーパーファミコン 1995年12月8日号 NO.20)

This issue has an article for the unreleased Virtual Boy game titled “Out of the Deathmount,” containing screenshots that, as far as I know, have never been posted online before.

Attachments:

1. 

   marusho-sfc-12-8-95-vol.-20-cover-page.jpg
   

2. 

   marusho-sfc-12-8-95-vol.-20-page-16.jpg
   

3. 

   marusho-sfc-12-8-95-vol.-20-page-82.jpg
   

4. 

   marusho-sfc-12-8-95-vol.-20-page-83.jpg
   

5. 

   marusho-sfc-12-8-95-vol.-20-page-105.jpg
   

Marushō Super Famicom Magazine: October 13, 1995 – No. 16 (マル勝スーパーファミコン 1995年10月13日号 NO.16)

This issue has an article for the unreleased Virtual Boy game titled “Virtual Dodge Ball,” containing screenshots that, as far as I know, have never been posted online before.

Attachments:

1. 

   marusho-sfc-10-13-95-vol.-16-cover-page.jpg
   

2. 

   marusho-sfc-10-13-95-vol.-16-page-24.jpg
   

3. 

   marusho-sfc-10-13-95-vol.-16-page-101.jpg
   

4. 

   marusho-sfc-10-13-95-vol.-16-page-116.jpg
   

Marushō Super Famicom Magazine: June 23, 1995 – No. 10 (マル勝スーパーファミコン 1995年6月23日号 NO.10)

Attachments:

1. 

   marusho-sfc-6-23-95-vol.-10-cover-page.jpg
   

2. 

   marusho-sfc-6-23-95-vol.-10-page-9.jpg
   

3. 

   marusho-sfc-6-23-95-vol.-10-page-101.jpg
   

4. 

   marusho-sfc-6-23-95-vol.-10-page-110.jpg
   

5. 

   marusho-sfc-6-23-95-vol.-10-page-111.jpg
   

6. 

   marusho-sfc-6-23-95-vol.-10-page-112.jpg
   

7. 

   marusho-sfc-6-23-95-vol.-10-page-113.jpg
   

RedIsAGreatColor wrote:
I was wondering, is there a site where can download and print game manuals? I have the box for mario clash and would love to have a manual to go with it.

If you want, I can make a much higher quality PDF version of the Mario Clash manual and post it here on this thread, and if you want any more like them in the future, just let me know for which titles, and give me a few days to make and post each one.

bigmak wrote:
Can you guys take this to a private pm or something ?

How did I know that you would play forum topic policeman once again, bigmak? Does it really matter if people post a few extra things off topic on a certain thread for a while? It never lasts very long in any case; it takes up very little storage space on the site; and most people will never go back through the thread and look at the offtopic posts anyway. Nevertheless, I would say that this discussion is not at all offtopic, as it relates to explaining the truth behind this very noteworthy auction, which Mawa won.

The main point is, L___E___T proved with his Photoshop example that there are more levels of blue on various sections of the unique Virtual Boy box, such as at the top of the Virtual Boy and on the buttons, than there ever were on the full color retail boxes. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the box could not have resulted from sunfade. Thus, when Mawa gets his box, we can determine whether it is truly just a misprint or a genuine box variant, without having to worry about it being a sunfaded box. And this is something that certain Virtual Boy collectors will find to be interesting, since both misprints and box variants are collectible, though true box variants are certainly more collectible, which is why I find it necessary to debunk L___E___T’s wild claims publicly, in case he happens to cause doubts in the minds of collectors who will have an interest in this special box.

[Benjamin Stevens]

You upset me by your revealing that you hadn’t even read anything that I had written. If you had, you would have noticed that I had already debunked your Smiths Crisps bag example, and yet you told me to look at it a second time, as if I hadn’t already contemplated it. Showing people a Smiths Crisp bag that was originally printed in all blue and then telling them to trust you that there used to be red in it is not a way to prove that red can fade from light and leave behind a nice light blue. Neither did you acknowledge any of the details I provided to show how the present contents of the box strongly indicate a good chance of the box containing an early system, rather than just being the result of a misprint. But that’s okay, I mainly wrote that for VUE Finder, knowing that it would mean something to him, since I know he knows a lot about the early systems and their packaging. But anyway, if it were possible for red to fade from sunlight and leave behind a nice light blue, why can’t I find a single example of it on the internet? I have spent hours and hours trying to prove YOUR point, probably many more hours than you have, and I can’t find a single photo or credible mention of red fading and leaving behind a light blue anywhere online, which is why I was hoping you could spend the time and find at least one for me, since you are so confident that it can happen.

Also, changing the color of an image in Photoshop in no way comes close to mimicking what happens when a mostly white LIGHT fades the colors of PIGMENT on an object over time, which is why when I find examples to prove my point, I pick examples of real world cases, such as this one:

Look at the definitely sunfaded Virtual Boy box and compare it to the unique box containing the light blue Virtual Boy. This is most likely a case where a Virtual Boy box had been left near a window, and only part of it was exposed to much sunlight for quite some time.

Now, the first thing to notice is that if you look at the red of the Virtual Boy that has significantly faded from the light, in no way at all is it beginning to leave behind the nice blue color that is seen in the unique Virtual Boy box. One should be able to tell that if it is exposed to more and more light over time, it will continue to approach closer and closer to white, and the blue in the unique Virtual Boy box will never miraculously manifest itself.

But the second and even more important thing to notice is the black near the Virtual Boy that has also faded from sunlight. Notice how much lighter this black is than the black that appears in the same spot on the unique Virtual Boy box with the light blue Virtual Boy. Consider how much lighter the black on the sunfaded Virtual Boy box would be, if the red was completely reduced to white. If you still want to believe that the Virtual Boy on the unique box had all of its red completely faded, and a light blue somehow was left behind, then how would you explain how the black around the Virtual Boy hasn’t faded much more significantly, along with the red?

I guess I should also point out how the Photoshop example you provided only further helps to prove that the Virtual Boy on the box isn’t a result of sunfading. The parts near the top of the Virtual Boy in the image you made are extremely close to being completely white, while the same spots on the Virtual Boy of the unique box are a much nicer and deeper blue. Plus, I can still see red in the buttons of the controller and in the text on the box of your example, which I’m not seeing on the unique Virtual Boy box.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 3 months ago by Benjamin Stevens.
• This reply was modified 10 years, 3 months ago by Benjamin Stevens.

Attachments:

1. 

   sunfaded-virtual-boy.png
   

2. 

   unique-vb-box.png
   

3. 

   sunfaded-virtual-boy-2.png
   

4. 

   sunfaded-virtual-boy-3.png
   

Wow… L___E___T, you apparently missed the fact that I completely debunked your crisp example with 2 very brief sentences that say all that needs to be said. It is obvious that none of my other reasoning has been thought about by you at all either. With that being said, I am simply going to make one last effort to try to get you to listen to reason, and then I am done trying, as you would rather believe what you want to believe than listen to reason.

If one carefully and thoroughly observes all of the dozens and dozens of VidPro cards with severe sunfading, concerning which I provided the means to find and observe these in my previous post, one should be able to figure out how the changing of colors through fading by sunlight or white light from another source works. The general principle that reveals itself is that the white light, whether from the Sun or some artificial source, is trying to “bleach” the colors of the object being hit by it, in order to make the object become “white” like itself, or rather, in order to eliminate all colors of the object and leave no color behind. Nevertheless, the 3 “primary” (with reference to the ROYGBIV color model as a reference, which seems to work best for what our eyes can see and for this particular discussion) colors – red, yellow, and blue – are the colors that are the strongest at withstanding the whitening or eliminating power of the white light, which is why these are the 3 colors seen last on objects during the color-fading process from white light. Therefore, for the most part, if a certain color on an object predominantly consists of red, as this color gets hit by the light and approaches closer and closer to white, the red color will still persist and show itself unto the end, while the lesser colors within become whitened or eliminated first. And the same thing applies, for the most part, to colors that predominantly consist of either yellow or blue. So for the most part, even if a red color on an object has a little bit of yellow or blue added to it, in order to change its shade of red, while the little bit of yellow or blue will, in fact, be overtaken and eliminated by the white light early on during the fading process, the majority amount of red will keep standing until the bitter end, should it ever fully progress that far, and since the little bit of yellow or blue within the red was never strong enough to show itself in the first place, which is why the object originally appeared red to one’s eyes, it will certainly never become strong enough to show itself during the whitening process as the white light eliminates both it and the predominant primary color. This is because every color within is becoming whitened and eliminated during this process, with no addition of any particular color to change the predominant primary color to one of the other primary colors. Once again, the same thing applies to colors that predominantly consist of yellow or blue, which have a little bit of one or both of the other 2 primary colors added to them to change their shades a little. The predominant amount of the primary color will, for the most part, prevail and show itself forth unto the end, while the weaker primary colors within the color become eliminated first and never become strong enough to show themselves over the predominant primary color. Now, the reason why I have been adding the phrase “for the most part” is because of the special properties of blue. Among the 3 primary colors – red, yellow, and blue – blue is the best or “strongest” color at withstanding the whitening power of the sunlight or other white light hitting it, so it becomes eliminated at a slower rate than the other two primary colors, and this is a fact that is definitely verifiable through independent research. Thus, it would probably be the case that if you had a color consisting of 45% blue and 55% percent red or yellow, because blue is stronger than the other primary color of either red or yellow – how much stronger, I admittedly do not know and thus cannot quantify – and is, therefore, better at withstanding the whitening power of the light, the blue might be the one to prevail at some point, while the red or yellow color becomes whitened first, in which case the blue might show itself more at a certain point in time and then unto the end of the whitening process. Nevertheless, with only small amounts of blue being added to red or yellow, the blue is not even close to being strong enough to ever show itself over the red or yellow that overpowers it because of its majority hold on the color, so in those cases, the small amount of blue succumbs to the whitening power first, becoming eliminated and never revealing itself. In other words, the original color would really have to be close to being a blue in the first place over a red or yellow, in order for it to have a chance to prevail during the fading process due to its little bit of extra strength at resisting the whitening process, so such would probably only happen in cases like with purples that had a little more red than blue and with greens that had a little more yellow than blue.

This is why in every single case among the dozens and dozens of VidPro cards that have succumbed to fading by white light – in most cases for longer periods of time than the unique Virtual Boy box – whenever a color originally appeared as any form or shade of the primary color red, it continues to remain red as it is approaching a more white color, even though it may have had a little bit of yellow and/or blue added to it originally to change its shade of red, in which case the yellow and/or blue are getting wiped out quicker, or have already been fully eliminated, during the fading process and therefore cannot show themselves over the overpowering amount of red that still remains with the color. And the same thing applies to all original shades of the primary colors yellow and blue, even with some of them having a little bit of one or both of the other primary colors being added to them to change their shades somewhat. In no case with any shade of red or yellow does any shade of blue begin to reveal itself as the red or yellow approaches white. But as I said, with the color blue, there is indeed the unique property that it is stronger and better at resisting the whitening power of the white light than the other 2 primary colors, though it is certainly not “invincible” to it, which again I will say can be verified by independent research. This begs the question: What happens in the case when you have the same amount of each of the 3 colors – red, yellow, and blue – being mixed together, which just so happens in the case of the “color” black, which is a combination of an equal amount of all colors? Since blue is stronger than the other 2 primary colors and becomes reduced or whitened at a slower rate than them, it prevails over them during the whitening process, even though it’s original percentage within the black was the same as theirs. Thus, as black or a shade of gray gets faded by the white light hitting it, the blue within begins to show itself, rather than the red or yellow. This is why when sunfaded pictures are observed, blue is often noticed so much more than the other two colors, red and yellow, especially in cases with colored drawings that originally had a lot of black outlines, shadows, etc. with each object pictured. All of the black and grays begin to turn blue, so everything begins to look outlined with blue or shadowed with blue, etc., and one’s eyes notice that more than the light reddish or yellowish colors within the objects pictured.

With all of this being explained, I am going to add that it would be more plausible that a wizard waved a magic wand on a red color to make it blue than that a red color turned to blue as a result of sunfade. Seriously… everything that I have written is based on the law of light, which is part of the laws of nature, which remain consistent for all time. You will never find a genuine case of a red color turning to blue from sunfade, not in any of the dozens and dozens of examples that I tried to point you to and not in any other example on this earth at any point in time. Of this, I am 100% certain, which is why I know you will never be able to show me a genuine case of such.

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
Hey, vuefinder83.

I read both of your posts and appreciate your comments.

First of all, I want to say that I won’t be bidding on the auction, as it seems the auction’s seller has created a restriction that won’t allow my proxy service to place a bid for me.

But secondly, I was looking at all of the VidoPro cards of that eBay seller, cheapgamestuff, from whom you got the picture of the Wrestlemania VidPro card, and what I saw seemed to confirm my suspicions. If you observe his many NES and SNES vidpro cards that he has for sale, you will see that almost all of them have had their colors reduced to very light red, yellow, and blue only. The important thing to note with this is that whenever something was originally a nice red, it has been reduced to a very light red, and nice yellow colors have been reduced to very light yellow colors, while nearly all other colors have been reduced to a light blue.

Before viewing all of these, I highly doubted that red would be able to be reduced to a blue color, since red and blue are primary colors with both light and ink. All of these VidPro cards now make me almost 100% certain that red cannot be reduced to a light blue. It can be reduced to a very light red and maybe an almost white, as you yourself noted, but not to any form of blue.

Perhaps you can now see why this makes me even more certain that the light blue Virtual Boy on the box front was never a nice red color, for if it had been, and it had its color reduced from sunlight, it should now be a very light red or almost white color.

Actually, to further prove my point, let’s closely examine one of the seller’s NES VidPro cards and compare it to its NES box counterpart. I chose Smash TV for this example, as it originally contained very nice red and blue colors, as well as other major colors like yellow, green, and purple.

If you observe the very sunfaded VidPro card and compare it to the game box, which shows what the colors on the VidPro card used to be, you can plainly see that what used to be deep red colors have become light red, and bright yellow colors have become light yellow, orange colors have become lighter oranges or closer to lighter yellow colors, while greens and blues have become forms of light blues, while the purples on the bows have actually become light reds.

But the thing I want you to notice the most is this: Look at the bad guys in the background. They were originally all black, white, and gray, but their gray colors, as a result of sunfade, have become a light blue. I don’t know of any better way to help prove 1 of 2 possibilities:

1. The image on the front of the Virtual Boy box largely appears with the same colors that appeared when it was originally printed.
2. If number 1 is not true, then the image on the front of the Virtual Boy box in the auction in question used to be a completely colorless image, otherwise known as a black and white image, but as a result of sunfade, the gray areas have turned a light blue over time.

Attachments:

1. 

   smash-tv-vidpro-card.png
   

2. 

   smash-tv-box.png
   

Hey, vuefinder83.

I read both of your posts and appreciate your comments.

First of all, I want to say that I won’t be bidding on the auction, as it seems the auction’s seller has created a restriction that won’t allow my proxy service to place a bid for me.

But secondly, I was looking at all of the VidoPro cards of that eBay seller, cheapgamestuff, from whom you got the picture of the Wrestlemania VidPro card, and what I saw seemed to confirm my suspicions. If you observe his many NES and SNES vidpro cards that he has for sale, you will see that almost all of them have had their colors reduced to very light red, yellow, and blue only. The important thing to note with this is that whenever something was originally a nice red, it has been reduced to a very light red, and nice yellow colors have been reduced to very light yellow colors, while nearly all other colors have been reduced to a light blue.

Before viewing all of these, I highly doubted that red would be able to be reduced to a blue color, since red and blue are primary colors with both light and ink. All of these VidPro cards now make me almost 100% certain that red cannot be reduced to a light blue. It can be reduced to a very light red and maybe an almost white, as you yourself noted, but not to any form of blue.

Perhaps you can now see why this makes me even more certain that the light blue Virtual Boy on the box front was never a nice red color, for if it had been, and it had its color reduced from sunlight, it should now be a very light red or almost white color.

vuefinder83 wrote:
Now had it been a japan mosaic demo unit with a “un”pixelated Virtual Boy on the box, then that would be something special. But the VB pictured on that box isn’t big enough to be one.

I’m not exactly sure why that would matter, given that the Mosaic box was made after the first retail boxes with the red Virtual Boy on them, as the Virtual Boy Serial Number Inventory proves. Come on, vuefinder83! I thought that you of all people would notice the amazing things that all fall into their proper places with this auction being discussed. It’s not just the box that is special about it.

A very important thing to consider with the Virtual Boy system, along with its packaging and contents, in question is that if the VB box in the auction is actually not the victim of a misprinting or fading from the Sun, and it truly was intentionally made largely as it appears in the auction now, with just some minor scuffing, scratches, dents, etc. being added to it over time, notice how nicely it as well as everything else presented in the auction fits into an “intermediate stage” of the Virtual Boy system with its packaging and contents – if such an intermediate stage ever truly existed – following a logical progression with the other known Virtual Boy systems and their packaging and contents:

Earliest Virtual Boy systems:
All-white system box with no image on front
VB head unit, stand, controller – none of which has a wrapping
Holding tray for contents with no cardboard overlay
No instruction manual and no other insert
Adapter tap
No serial number or very low serial number on bottom of head unit

Virtual Boy system in question and currently up for auction:
System box with virtually colorless image of Virtual Boy & controller and with white lettering on front
VB head unit, stand, controller – none of which has a wrapping
Holding tray for contents with no cardboard overlay (at least, none is pictured in the auction)
No instruction manual and no other insert
No adapter tap (if there ever was one, it has since gone missing)
Serial number, or lack thereof, is not revealed in auction’s description

Retail Virtual Boy systems (some produced before the mosaic boxes, as Serial Number Inventory proves):
System box with full color image of Virtual Boy & controller and with red lettering on front
VB head unit, stand, controller – each of which has a wrapping
Holding tray for contents, as well as a cardboard overlay
Instruction manual and other inserts
No adapter tap
Higher serial number on bottom of head unit

Carefully compare the details of each corresponding line with the others, and can you not see a logical progression of the contents being added (with the exception of the adapter tap, as it was decided early on, before mass production, to sell it separately, probably to save on the total costs for each system package) or “upgraded” during the production process of the Virtual Boy?

What if… just what if the Virtual Boy up for auction and being discussed isn’t missing any contents at all and is, therefore, “complete”? The seller might think that the instructions and other inserts are missing, as he describes in the listing, but what if there truly never were any instructions or other inserts or a cardboard overlay with this system and its box, indicating that this is a system made very early on? After all, usually when a person decides to keep a system’s box stored somewhere for safekeeping, he is usually also okay with keeping all of the other extra contents not needed for operation, such as the instruction manual and inserts, etc. – whether it be inside the box itself or somewhere else safe. This is especially the case since the box takes up the most amount of space, and people usually throw away things in order to make more room for whatever. Nevertheless, a person who is willing to throw away a box is also usually willing to throw away an instruction manual, or else keep the instruction manual in a safe place elsewhere but get rid of the large box to save space. Nevertheless, preserving a box while losing the instruction manual is much less common, I would think, though it certainly happens. And perhaps even the seller might think that his Virtual Boy’s box is a victim of fading from the Sun, as others also do, but what if that image lacking color on the box was truly made intentionally, standing as evidence of having been made during an intermediate stage of the progression of the Virtual Boy’s box over time, in which case the seller himself doesn’t even know what a unique specimen he truly has, which he is now selling to the highest bidder, without drawing any special attention to it.

If only the serial number, or lack thereof, of the head unit in the auction were known, as such would certainly help to answer a lot of questions. Of course, there would even be a problem there, for it is, indeed, known that over time, many Virtual Boy systems have been separated from their original boxes and placed into the boxes of other systems, so there would be no way to know for sure if the system included in the auction is truly the original head unit belonging to the box in the auction. Of course, if the serial number would be shown to be low, and the box truly is an early form of the VB box, then I’d say it would be very likely that the head unit truly does belong to that box. Nevertheless, it could still also be the case that a wrong head unit got placed into what could be a genuine, early version of the VB box. Otherwise, it is just a fluke box that just so happens to be connected with all the other aforementioned things, each of which just so happens to fall into the right place along with the box, in order for it to look very much like an early production system with packaging.

[Benjamin Stevens]

Various Smiths Crisps bags in the past have been made with only blue in the logo, as a google image search proves. Thus, the picture in the link you provided shows that this bag was simply one such bag with an all blue logo.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 4 months ago by Benjamin Stevens.
• This reply was modified 10 years, 4 months ago by Benjamin Stevens.

Nanis149 wrote:
… Why does the one already scanned have the duracell sticker?

Well, the vast majority of all North American retail boxes had these stickers placed on them before being put out for sale, so if a collector, who happened to acquire one that never had the sticker or that had the sticker carefully removed, doesn’t make scans of such and submit the scans to the site, the site just has to go with what it’s got.

thunderstruck wrote:

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
… but sunfade causing all red places to be uniformly light blue baffles me.

It actually looks almost like a misprint. If you look at the Virtual Boy text the red didn’t turn blue but white. I have never seen sunfade completely remove one color.

Yeah, I am leaning more towards the side of it being a misprint.

[Benjamin Stevens]

Camera wrote:
The seller mentions that it’s sun faded in the description.

本体外箱は日焼けやダメージがあります。

Which means something like “The box has sun fading and damage.”

A mention of sunfade from the seller still doesn’t help to explain why the box is uniformly a light blue in all of the places where it should be red. If the seller had this box when all of the places that should be red were red and then he saw these places turn blue over time, I would love to know what conditions he kept it in to produce such.

I would expect sunfade to cause all or some of the red places to turn an orangish color, as seen in the photo below, but sunfade causing all red places to be uniformly light blue baffles me.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 4 months ago by Benjamin Stevens.

Attachments:

1. 

   virtual-box-box-with-sunfade.png
   

2. 

   virtual-box-box-maybe-with-sunfade.png
   

3. 

   virtual-box-box-in-good-condition.png
   

L___E___T wrote:
That’s just a regular VB box with severe sunfade. You can still pick up the blue that has kept more colour.

Not trying to be a downer, but would feel bad for anyone spending money on a rare item.

Really? I’ve never seen red change to that color of blue from sunfade before.

Another VB Box variant?

http://page3.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/c548200191

It doesn’t seem to be a false-color image, as the cartridges in the same photo appear in their proper colors.

Attachments:

1. 

   vb-box-variant.png
   

Since the guy is obviously not an avid Virtual Boy enthusiast, I was actually surprised at how well the Virtual Boy was spoken of. I might just have to subscribe and check out his other videos.

HorvatM wrote:

Benjamin Stevens wrote:

KR155E wrote:

Did anyone notice how page 39 refers to Mario Clash as Mario Smash (bottom left)? Theories anyone?

Dang… I hadn’t noticed that before. “Smash” is certainly a vastly different word from “Clash” to be just a typo. Hmmm… Perhaps there is, indeed, the possibility that “Mario Smash” was going to be the title at one point, but when they went through the catalogue and updated everything to Clash, they forgot to update the one on page 39.

I don’t know where the footage is from, but see 6:41 of this video:

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6412&forum=1&post_id=34519#forumpost34519

Wow… that is very conclusive, indeed. So “Mario Smash” truly was a working title for Mario Clash.

I created a PDF file containing all of the introductory documents in the E3 1995 Nintendo Press Kit, as well as all of the News Releases that made mention of the Virtual Boy.

Attachments:

1. e3-1995-nintendo-press-kits-virtual-boy-coverage.pdf

KR155E wrote:
Thanks for the great scans, Ben!

No problem!

Did anyone notice how page 39 refers to Mario Clash as Mario Smash (bottom left)? Theories anyone?

Dang… I hadn’t noticed that before. “Smash” is certainly a vastly different word from “Clash” to be just a typo. Hmmm… Perhaps there is, indeed, the possibility that “Mario Smash” was going to be the title at one point, but when they went through the catalogue and updated everything to Clash, they forgot to update the one on page 39.

Also great to finally have a good image of the prototype VB system box. Is it just me or does it look a bit better than the final box?

I have also liked the image of the prototype box more than the retail box ever since I first saw images of it online, so it was nice to find such a high quality image of it.