ectoglow wrote:

wait, So they started as “EXT”, then went to “PLAYLINK” and then went back to EXT? does that mean there could be some US systems out there that say “PLAYLINK”?

“Yes” to the first question and “possibly” to the second one.

It would be interesting to find out who all owns a Virtual Boy system that has the “PLAYLINK” label next to the link cable slot and what the serial numbers are on the systems that have the “PLAYLINK” label, but I imagine that if we tried to ask people from the Virtual Boy community about this, almost nobody would check their Virtual Boy system and respond.

DogP wrote:
They’re not quite identical… you can see that they modified the mold for the US version, to change the text “PLAYLINK” (on the JP systems) to “EXT.” (on the US systems).

DogP

I actually checked my several Virtual Boy systems out after writing that, and only one of my Japanese units says “PLAYLINK” in that area. The other two Japanese units (one of which is the in-store demo system) say “EXT.” like the North American ones. Surprisingly, my North American demo system with a serial number under 1000 also says “EXT.” so I have no idea why some of the later systems had “PLAYLINK” and then they got rid of it.

bigmak wrote:
Is that a good price now a days ? I bought mine for like 100..and was called out..but of course that was quite awhile ago….

I made a price list containing average selling prices of CIB VB games in the last four months, and I largely calculated all of my prices based on eBay sold listings in the four months prior to April 23, 2013, and the average selling price of a CIB Insmouse no Yakata turned out to be $120.00, so I would say that $200.00 is on the high end.

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$15.00 was a nice offer.

The biggest problem with the first seller is that if he has no clue what the item is worth, how will he know what offers should be accepted? The same, of course, goes for the second seller, who must think that the first seller actually has a chance of selling these at a high amount.

I saw a pair of these glasses sell for $40.00 recently, and I thought that was a ripoff and could not believe that someone actually paid that much for them. The seller who sold the glasses most likely thought that $40.00 was a very high amount and was trying to get the most out of them that he could, and somehow he happened to succeed.

These things are far too common. There were likely hundreds of thousands of these originally made and included with Nintendo Power Issue 75. A good chunk of the Nintendo Power #75 issues being sold on Ebay all the time probably include these glasses in very nice condition, so it would be best to contact a seller who is selling the magazine for a reasonable price and find out if the glasses are included and what their condition is.

This is the first time when I see a fool:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Virtual-Boy-3D-Glasses-from-Nintendo-Power-issue-75-/130904984781?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e7a8b8ccd

who is very quickly followed by another fool:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Virtual-Boy-3D-Glasses-from-Nintendo-Power-issue-75-New-unused-condition-/281104737311?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item417325e41f

“Who’s the more foolish… the fool or the fool who follows him?”

I spoke to Krisse before about Mansion of Insmouse: Mario Madness Edition, and he said the reason why he only wants to post the patch in a somewhat prominent place is for legality issues. I guess it is legal to make a patch for a game, but it is then illegal to apply the patch to an illegal ROM and then play the game. Thus, he will put the patch on the site but not the patched ROM, so if someone wants to find the patched ROM, they will have to search through the forums and find where I posted it on my own volition, without getting permission from Krisse. I guess this would all apply to Faceball as well. Since Faceball:Remastered is a patched ROM, the patch as well as patching program would have to be released as separate items, in order for them to find a prominent place on the site. (Although, having a whole News article about the patched ROM with link to it seems rather prominent already to me.)

Since game patches are allowed prominent places on the site, I would suggest that “Game Patches” appear on the GAMES drop down menu beneath “Homebrew.” I think a lot more people would readily find them and use them if they appeared there.

ectoglow wrote:

As for the larger displays, I thought the only difference between US and JP was the Ad flaps and some random txt around the unit itself. Are there actual physical differences? Or is it just like the “difference” between the Floor and Counter models where if you have both the Japanese and US flaps you basically have all the parts for both.

I’m pretty sure that other than the ads and maybe some additional text, there are no differences between the two. But then again, the only differences between a Japanese Virtual Boy system and a North American Virtual Boy system are the serial number stickers stuck to them as well as the packaging that they came in. Thus, since these are regarded as separate collectible items by collectors, so also could the store displays. By the way, finding an original box that one of the larger store displays originally came in seems near impossible these days.

BTW, you guys are actually voting in the poll as well as posting to the forum, right?

I’ve already voted. 🙂

ectoglow wrote:

But what about the Japanese systems that didn’t come with a packed in game then? Surely that would even up the numbers. That and the Systems that Blockbuster had wouldn’t have “come” with Tennis then.

Well, it wouldn’t even it out since they produced CIB copies of the Japanese version of Mario’s Tennis, both for in-store demo only purposes as well as for commercial sale, and they probably would have tried to keep the amounts about equal with the numbers of systems being produced, I’m guessing. Nevertheless, I think extra carts would have had to be made for North American rental purposes, since a lot of carts could have been lost and never returned by renters, so Blockbuster would have likely ordered more Mario’s Tennis carts to restore the supply.

As for Baseball; just wow. Glad you guys got the connect you got since you’d probably end up spending a pretty penny more on… whats another abundant game we see cases of? I guess Japanese Vertical Force?

The problem with Japanese Vertical Force, or any Japanese CIB game for that matter, is that these games would not give the nice English inserts (English Precautions Booklet and Nintendo Power Subscription pamphlet) that have been coming with each new CIB release from the UncleTusker team. Thus, Virtual League Baseball truly is our only hope for these truly complete releases.

bigmak wrote:
😛 you just had to ask ben 😛

Cool! I wasn’t sure if the dumper was still in your possession or not. I’ll shoot you an e-mail about how you want to go about doing it. Assuming it gets to me okay, I plan to go on a dumping spree, dumping every single cart that I have in my collection! Mwah ha ha ha!

thunderstruck wrote:

Do you consider dumping them so that they can be compared on byte level?

Yes, if I receive help from someone(s), I will gladly dump and freely release the ROMs for comparison purposes.

I don’t currently have a VB dumper in my possession. If one was mailed to me, I would dump the games and even make fresh dumps of the commercial versions and then return the dumper to the sender. I’ve heard before that the EPROM carts don’t require the same kind of dumper as the commercial carts, but I don’t currently know how to dump the EPROM carts either, so if a VB dumper for commercial carts cannot be sent to me for this purpose, then I would need to be taught the other way to dump the EPROM carts, which I guess doesn’t require as much as the commercial carts.

mawa wrote:
i also know some places in japan ( 3 )where they still have the floor displays but they never want to sell it to me in the past 🙁

This brings up a good question that collectors must ask themselves: should the large Japanese store displays be regarded as different items than the large North American store displays, especially since they have very noticeable differences like the ad inserts? If so, then a completest would need more than just 4 store displays to complete his collection.

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ectoglow wrote:

But… I must say I am also curious about how it came to be Baseball (one of only three third party US games).

I believe the fact that it was a third-party title as well as a very early release explains why there were so many made. When Kemco was deciding how many copies to produce, they would have had to determine this based on statements from Nintendo about how many Virtual Boy systems were projected to be made and sold. This number was obviously much higher than what the actual numbers turned out to be. Thus, I think the fact that they were a third-party would mean that they weren’t as up-to-date on what was going on at Nintendo, so Nintendo could produce their copies of games more in accordance with the number of systems that were actually being produced, whereas Kemco probably had to do more guess work. Also, the fact that Virtual League Baseball was released so early on didn’t allow Kemco to see how bad the Virtual Boy’s sales were going to be. Atlus and Ocean would have gotten to see this better before mass producing their games, so they evidently decided to make many less copies in expectation of lower-than-projected sales, resulting in Jack Bros. and Waterworld being so rare now.

I actually believe that there are more copies of Virtual League Baseball in existence than there are Virtual Boy systems, but I don’t have any official numbers to go by. This may also be true for Mario’s Tennis carts, since every North American system had one packed in, plus there would have been many additional ones made and sent to Blockbuster for rental.

I received my copy a couple days ago and read something that said there is special hidden content in the game. Is all of the hidden content already known, or is this new stuff that we will have to figure out?

ectoglow wrote:
Where do you keep getting these Baseball Carts?

Hopefully from a source who will not be found out by too many others, lest more deals be made and the supply runs out too quickly.

The best value that I have ever got on a Virtual Boy game was for a complete-in-box copy of the North American version of Mario’s Tennis. Some seller on Amazon.com had listed a Mario’s Tennis, saying that it came “in its original box.” As most people already know, the little description is all you ever get on Amazon.com, so if you want to know more or see pictures, you always have to contact the seller, who many times may not be willing to send you pictures, probably due to laziness most of the time. Well, the brief description instantly made me think that the seller did not know what he had, since he surely would not have said that if he knew the history behind the game, namely that Mario’s Tennis never came with a game box but was packed in with the system and was only sold with Blockbuster’s “For Display Only” boxes after the retail life of the Virtual Boy. Just to be safe, I sent the seller a message, asking him if the “original box” had the label in the lower right corner of the front of the box that said “FOR DISPLAY ONLY,” and I also asked him about the condition of the box. Not very long after the seller got back to me, saying that the box did in fact have the “FOR DISPLAY ONLY” label in the lower right corner on the front and that the box was in very good condition with hardly any marks on it, I then clicked on the “Add to Cart” button and purchased his CIB Mario’s Tennis for 20 US Dollars. This was only about 2 years ago, when the average selling price for a North American CIB Mario’s Tennis on Ebay was about 120 to 140 US Dollars. The prices seem to keep slowly rising since then.

Even though the big 4 are very rare everywhere, they are certainly the least rare in Japan, and it does seem that Japanese sellers do not try to place as high of prices on them as sellers in the rest of the world.

I speculate that there is probably some old video game store owner in Japan who isn’t even fully aware of all of his inventory stock, and if he would ever go through all of the boxes in his storage space, he will find an unopened 20-piece box of SD Gundam Dimension War or Virtual Bowling.

If he does, he may even then decide to put it up for auction just to get rid of the darn thing. (fingers crossed)

You’re welcome. 🙂

I hope to sit down and play these things through in the not-too-distant future and see if there are any differences in the games from the commercially released versions. These carts were said to have been originally sold by an ex-employee of Nintendo of Japan. If that is the case, then I am guessing that Atlus and Hudson Soft would have sent these carts to Nintendo as “final review” carts, with the expectation that Nintendo would say that the games were good to go and could be commercially released. That being so, there are probably no noticeable differences between these versions and the released ones, but at least I will have lots of fun trying to verify if this is the case.

3 more prototype carts have been added to the old collection. 2 of them contain Panic Bomber and the third one contains Jack Bros. (both Japanese versions). Once again, I took apart each prototype cartridge and made high resolution scans of both sides of the PCB as well as the shell pieces for each.

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I hope to get all 4 models in my collection someday, but right now, I’ve got the 2 smallest ones. It’s very hard to find the larger ones with both original ad inserts, which are definitely necessities for me.

mxpxrobbie wrote:

I was under the impression the FlashBoy+ is no longer being made… I am interested in one – not really into collecting the games, but I definitely want to play them on my VB!

Richard still makes and sells them, as he advertises here:

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=13655#forumpost13655